BRITAIN’s seven-time Olympian Carl Hester got his nation underway in the dressage competition at the Paris Olympic Games in Versailles when riding in Group A in Tuesday morning’s Grand Prix test, a qualifier for both today’s Grand Prix Special (team final) and tomorrow’s (Sunday) Freestyle to Music (individual final).

He is riding the beautiful 14-year-old stallion Fame (Bordeaux x Rhodium), owned by British rider, Fiona Bigwood. They finished with a score of 77.345%, which saw them sail through to the individual final on Sunday and also helped Britain move through to the team final, where they are expected to win a medal.

After a turbulent week, which saw his teammate and friend Charlotte Dujardin withdraw from the Games, following the release of a video which showed her whipping a horse on the legs, Hester was asked about Charlotte and he replied: “I’m here, I haven’t seen her, but I know that things are very difficult. She’s a mother, she has a child at home, she’s paid very heavily for this in a way that you just wouldn’t believe. But she’s surrounded by people that are trying to help her.

“She obviously accepts what she did, which she had to do, and I’m glad she’s done that for her. This is four years ago, people do make mistakes. Right now, it’s going to be a long road for her and a lesson for everybody, we have to put the horses first.”

Hester added he had not previously seen the video and it was not filmed on his property.

Olympic debut

Hester’s teammate Becky Moody made her Olympic debut, after being called in for Dujardin, and riding her home-bred 10-year-old gelding Jagerbomb, she topped Group C with a score of 74.31%.

“He’s so special to me,” Moody said. “I bred him, so we have done everything together. And yeah, I think we both went in there a little bit nervous and apprehensive, but we helped each other out. And I’m just so proud of him.”

Jagerbomb (Dante Weltino x Jazz) is the third foal out of a mare that Moody competed to Grand Prix before she picked up a field injury. She said she almost sold him, but “no one was willing to buy him”! Not from an equestrian background, Yorkshire-based Moody, who was making her debut at a senior championship, started in Pony Club and worked her way up. Asked about the name of the gelding, she said: “I bred him 10 years ago and, at that point in my life, I might have been partial to a jagerbomb. But also my grandad, who was called Norman, we’d all call ‘Bomb’, so it was a little bit of a homage to him as well as the alcoholic beverage,” she said with a laugh.

Asked about the Dujardin video, Moody said: “Fundamentally, my overriding emotion was sadness, because it is not a reflection of our sport. But also, for me, it’s not a reflection of what I know about Charlotte. But, you know, she has said everything she needed to say about that, she has owned it. I think that everybody just has to remember the human in this situation.”