The British squad for Paris 2024. Photo courtesy of Team GB.
Who’d be a British selector, right? In this economy, with this many extraordinary horses and riders taking up spots on that spicy meatball of a long-list?! No. Thank. You.
But somehow, that selection committee has managed to come to the end of what we can only imagine was a deeply fraught process, with several fist-fights (maybe), a few arm-wrestling sessions (probably), and probably at least one instance of playing blindfolded darts to try to make a call between two riders (almost certainly), and has emerged, battered, bruised, and ready for social media to rip them to shreds, with a team of four horses and riders.
We could write thousands of words on how terrible we feel for several of the obvious omissions on this list, who deserved selection enormously but have the misfortune of representing a country with just, well, way too many options. Instead, we’ll wish for brilliant autumn campaigns, major, career-boosting victories, and many open doors to come for them and move swiftly on to the four horses and riders who have been selected to represent Great Britain at this summer’s Paris Olympics, where they’ll aim to retain the team gold won in Tokyo.
The four selected combinations are as follows, in alphabetical order:
- Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo – twelve-year-old British-Bred Sport Horse (Birkhof’s Grafenstolz x Cornish Queen, by Rock King), owned by Michele and Archie Saul and groomed by Sarah Charnley
- Laura Collett and London 52 – fifteen-year-old Holsteiner gelding (Landos x Vernante, by Quinar Z), owned by Keith Scott, Karen Bartlett, and the rider, and groomed by Tilly Hughes
- Yasmin Ingham and Banzai du Loir – thirteen-year-old Selle Français gelding (Nouma d’Auzay x Gerboise du Cochet, by Livarot), owned by Jeanette Chinn and The Sue Davies Fund, and groomed by Alison Bell
- Tom McEwen and JL Dublin – thirteen-year-old Holsteiner gelding (Diarado x Zarinna, by Canto 16), owned by Mr and Mrs J Lambert and Deirdre Johnstone, and groomed by Adam Short
Notice that that’s four, and in alphabetical order, rather than three and a reserve – that’s because, apparently, the selection committee is just like the rest of us mere mortals and, for now, can’t quite make the call on who’s going to be travelling reserve. We expect this will follow closer to the competition, which begins at the end of next month, once observations have been made about the horses’ form in their final preparations.
So, to recap, that’s our reigning European Champions (Ros and Lordships Graffalo), who also won Badminton last year; a combination who’ve won all three of their five-star starts and were part of the gold medal-winning team at Tokyo (Laura and London 52); our reigning World Champions and CHIO Aachen champions, who also won Luhmühlen’s Olympics-Lite CCI4*-S a couple of weeks ago (Yas and Banzai du Loir); and a former European Champion horse and his new-ish rider, with whom he’s finished in the top three thrice at five-star (Tom and JL Dublin). MAN, OH MAN.
We’d say ‘good luck to the rest of the world’, but that would be doing eventing a disservice: the Brits didn’t have their day as a team in Pratoni, and while this is arguably the most formidable team of the Paris line-up, one of the things that keeps us all coming back to this mad sport is how truly unpredictable it can be. One thing’s for certain – we can’t wait to watch these guys give it their all at Versailles in a month.
View more of EN’s coverage of the Paris Olympics here. We are pleased to bring you our Olympic coverage with support from Kentucky Performance Products.
