Individual, Open

After her great success at the 2012 Games Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro had been unbeatable in championship competition since then, but the horse was seen as coming to the end of his career at Rio. German veteran Isabell Werth outscored Dujardin in two of the four phases of the competition but the medals were to be decided exclusively by the scores in the Briton’s speciality, the final Grand Prix Freestyle to music section. Dujardin scored within a percentage point of her own world record to become the first British woman ever to retain an individual Olympic title and briefly become Great Britain’s most successful female Olympian before Laura Trott’s subsequent wins. Werth’s silver was her 10th medal in an Olympic career that began in 1992 and she was joined in the medal positions by her compatriot Kristina Bröring-Sprehe. Another German-born rider, Christian Zimmermann, became the first ever Olympic equestrian to represent Palestine while Australia’s Sue Hearn was a débutant at the age of 60.