Éric Navet

French horseman Eric Navet followed in the footsteps of his father Alan, who missed the 1964 Tokyo Olympics with a broken ankle. Trained on ponies from a very young age, Eric won national youth titles and a European youth championship between 1976 and 1977. He was individual and team world champion in 1990, in Stockholm, riding Quito de Baussy, winning the 1991 European gold in La Baule, France, with the same horse.

At the 1992 Barcelona Games, Navet broke the Olympic curse that weighed on his family by winning a team bronze medal, thus erasing both his father’s negative experience and the trauma of Los Angeles 1984, when the French team lost out on medals after the fall of teammate Pierre Durand. In 1994 and 1998 Navet was on the podium at the World Championships (team silver in both cases) while in 2002, in Jerez de la Frontera, he won a team gold medal and a silver medal in the individual competition, behind the Irish non-Olympian Dermott Lennon.

Two years later bad luck hit him again at the Athina Olympics where his horse was the victim of an injury. Navet won five French National Championships (1992, 1997, 1998, 2004, 2007).