Individual, Open

For various reasons, not one of the most recent World Championship medallists travelled to Tokyo for the delayed Olympic Games, although Michael Jung, Olympic champion in both London and Rio, and top ranked Oliver Townend were there to respectively lead the German and British efforts. In his first two Olympic appearances Jung has always been well placed in dressage, but this time he exceeded expectations and led the field ahead of Townend and Hua Tian of China.

Jung’s cross-country round was blighted by an incident at fence 14c. Since 2020 “frangible pins”, a safety clip allowing a fence to collapse to avoid dangerous rotational falls for horse and rider, had been added to the fences. Jung’s mount Chipmunk struck the fence and the log dropped to the floor, accumulating 11 penalties for the pair. A later appeal on the basis that the pins had not been correctly attached after a previous incident was rejected.This tightened the competition to the point where a single fence knocked down meant the difference between Oliver Townend in first and Kazuma Tomoto of Japan in fifth after the end of the cross- country. Unfortunately, the day was overshadowed by death of Jet Set, the mount of Switzerland’s Robin Godel, who was euthanized after suffering an irreparable ligament rupture in his lower leg.

The first round of show jumping saw a clear round from Julia Krajewski of Germany move into gold medal position ahead of Townend, with veteran Australian Andrew Hoy edged into contention. Townend’s two British teammates also remained in the hunt for the medals. After the team medals were decided, the top 25 continued to decide the individual medals. Briefly, it looked like Kazuma Tomoto was going to win an improbable individual gold medal for the host nation, but a faultless round from 62-year-old Andrew Hoy put paid to his ambitions.

Tom McEwen briefly harboured dreams of being Olympic champion when Townend faltered, but Julia Krajewski and Amande de B’Neville were as precise and brave in their jumping and secured the title - 57 years after Lana du Pont became the first female competitor in Olympic eventing, a woman finally stood on top of the Olympic podium.