Dujardin’s record ride
Dressage star becomes GB’S most decorated female Olympian
Charlotte Dujardin trotted into the record books yesterday, winning a sixth medal to become the most successful female British Olympian in history.
The previous record of five medals was first set by the tennis player Kitty Godfree at the 1924 Paris Games and it had stood for almost 100 years.
But if Laura Kenny (née Trott) gets her way, Dujardin’s heroics could be surpassed within 10 days. Such is Great Britain’s transformation from nohopers to world-beaters, the mantle of most successful athlete of all time could change hands in the blink of an eye.
The fact that women are setting the pace is perhaps no surprise.
Mark England, Team GB chef de mission, had already declared 2021 “the year of the female Olympian” after announcing a squad where women outnumbered men for the first time (by 201 to 175).
For the moment, yesterday was Dujardin’s day. She won a bronze in the individual dressage to go with three golds, a silver and another bronze won over the course of three Olympics. She equalled the record on Tuesday in the team competition, putting her level with Godfree and the British rower Dame Katherine Grainger.
“It is mind-blowing,” said Dujardin, 36. “To think I have achieved all of that. It’s just so surreal.
“There’s so many incredible sportswomen that have achieved so much, and now I’ve done that and more and topped it all. Yesterday I was level with Katherine Grainger and now I’ve beaten her. You only ever dream of these things happening. And it’s actually happened.”
The success moved the normally unflappable Dujardin to tears. “I cried and I never cry,” she said. “I got really
‘I cried and I never cry. I got really emotional because it means so much and I’m just so, so proud’
emotional because it means so much and I’m just so so proud.”
Dujardin praised her “pocket rocket” of a 10-year-old horse, Gio, who was a last minute stand-in after her preferred ride was declared unfit after picking up a minor, unspecified injury. Gio came to the Tokyo Games so late in the day – he was only declared her official entry on July 2 – that the horse and rider had never completed their routine to the music until yesterday.
“I’ve got a new dancing partner, Gio. He is a pocket rocket,” she said, “I’d never ridden to it [that particular music] before. That was the first time tonight, he gave everything and I’m so overwhelmed and so grateful.
“Bringing a horse that has not a lot of experience, you don’t know what to expect, but he has given the last three days absolutely everything.”
With the Paris Olympics in three years time, Dujardin and Gio will most likely break records in 2024 and do better than a bronze. “It’s going to be another colour,” Dujardin added with some conviction.
Given that Carl Hester, her mentor, is competing at Tokyo at the age of 54, it seems likely that Dujardin will go on to set more and more records over a long career. She may, in time, win so many medals that the total will stand for a further 100 years.
Dujardin’s success owes a lot to her determination. She was born in Enfield, a suburb of north London not known for its equestrian heritage, and grew up in Leighton Buzzard, in Bedfordshire, where she trained by the light of her mother’s car headlamps so she could keep riding in the dark.
“Charlotte was the most determined child who would cry as a toddler if she was removed from the back of a pony,” her mother Jane has said previously.
“She would ride every day after school and I would even have to shine the car headlights on so she could keep riding.”
In 2002, Jane inherited some money from her mother and used it to purchase Dujardin’s first horse, Fernandez, for the sum of £18,000.
She began her history-making journey with two golds at London 2012 on Valegro and won a gold and silver at Rio on the same horse four years later.
“When you’ve had a horse like Valegro it’s very difficult to find another horse to do what he’s done,” said Dujardin. “But in my head I know I can do it again.”
The Daily Telegraph’s equestrian correspondent said Dujardian’s achievement in winning bronze on such an inexperienced horse was almost akin to “Lewis Hamilton attempting to triumph at the Monaco Grand Prix in a Vauxhall Astra”.
In winning bronze, Dujardin also prevented German riders from completing a clean sweep in the individual medals.
Laura Kenny, 29, with four golds earned at London and Rio has the chance to surpass Dujardian’s medals total next week.
On a bicycle rather than a horse, Kenny defends her Team Pursuit and Omnium titles and will also be competing in the Madison race, a new Olympic event for women.
Kenny has the chance to rack up seven gold medals. That would put her one ahead of her own husband Jason Kenny, 33.
However, the sportsman is also making a tilt for the record books. He competes in three events at Tokyo, hoping to overtake Sir Bradley Wiggins’ record haul of eight medals, five of them gold.
At the end of an evening of mounting drama in the equestrian arena, Charlotte Dujardin found herself fighting back the tears as she was crowned the most decorated British female Olympian of all time. Her bronze in the individual dressage is the sixth medal of her bullion-lined career, putting her on top of the British podium, ahead of the rower Dame Katherine Grainger and the roaring Twenties tennis player Kathleen Mckane Godfree.
“It’s so surreal. I can’t quite believe it,” she said, clutching her sixth medal with such enthusiasm it might have been her first. “To find myself level with Katherine Grainger yesterday [after the team event], even I was a bit speechless. Now I’ve beaten her, I’m so proud of myself.”
Reflecting on the odds stacked against her, Dujardin admitted that she had not thought she stood much of a chance on Gio, a young horse of just 10, which in dressage terms is an absolute beginner. “I can honestly say it might not be a gold medal for everyone that sees it, but for me it’s a gold medal. A horse that has as little experience as he does, but he goes in there and he tries and he makes you so proud. I feel so emotional. Honestly, he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s phenomenal, wow.”
Gio, who Dujardin adoringly refers to as “Pumpkin”, is a chestnut gelding who came in as a last-minute replacement for her preferred horse, Mount St John. After the final she revealed just how much of an outside chance they had. “I just kept thinking, ‘I’m going to go wrong’. This floor plan was literally done just before we left, the music was being put together and finished whilst we were out here [in Tokyo]. Pumpkin’s only done one freestyle in his life, so he has no experience at all … so tonight was the first time I rode the whole combination of music and floor plan.”
Eyes shining with tears, she told the BBC: “I cried, and I never cry. I got really emotional because it means so much and I’m just so, so proud.”
Her nerves to clinch the bronze medal were certainly put through the wringer. For a sport as civilised as dressage, the manner in which final positions are calculated can induce panic attacks in even the most sturdy. Dujardin was obliged to stand at the side of the arena after her routine watching the final rider Dorothee Schneider, of Germany, who was aiming to join her compatriots Jessica von Bredow-werndl and Isabell Werth on the podium. It was, the 36-year-old reckoned, three minutes of exquisite torture.
“A killer,” she said. “All these combinations that I followed were very, very experienced horses that had been doing it years and years. Did I really think I was going to beat [Schneider]? Not really. But I went in and gave it my best shot. Thank God I got the medal. To break those Germans up feels even better,” she laughed, referring to what might have been a German clean sweeep.
Dujardin was right to be nervous. As they proved in the team event, the Germans are supreme at dressage. The order of performances in the final was determined by qualifying scores, so the better riders came out towards the end. Until then the few in the stadium, and those at home trying to negotiate their way from the BBC to Eurosport and back, had to sit through the alsorans. The music the outsiders chose varied from La Donna e Mobile, through a medley from Les Miserables to an easy-listening mash-up of Pink Floyd.
The first Brit up was the veteran Carl Hester. Grinning cheerfully, he was controlled, smart and organised as ever. His neatly delivered routine put him at the top of the leaderboard after the first section of riders. Sadly, his turn in the medal positions was not to last long. Charlotte Fry, on Everdale, was next for Great Britain. The 25-year-old Olympic debutant made a couple of mistakes in her first individual final, her horse a little eager in places, raising on to its hind legs at one point and all to the tune of Rihanna’s Umbrella, which was timely given that as she finished the rain was beginning to fall.
It was after the second break that the big guns arrived. Like the brilliant German Bredow-werndl on TSF Dalera, who did incredible things to a soundtrack from the movie La La Land, her horse gently bouncing across the sand in the most genteel and refined pogo (that might not be the technical term). She put herself unassailably at the top of the pile. Werth is hugely experienced – the 52-year-old won the individual gold medal in Atlanta, 25 years and six Games ago. As in the team event, Werth chose Beethoven as her backing track and she was flawless, everything she tried executed to perfection, putting herself into the silver position.
So when Dujardin arrived into the arena, she knew she was going to have to be almost as good as she had been in Rio, when she delivered a staggering 93 per cent. In dressage terms that is close to perfection, the equivalent of the perfect hat-trick, or the century at Lord’s before lunch. Her ability to communicate through a touch of her heel or a pull on the rein is unsurpassed and she looked to be working brilliantly with her inexperienced horse. She grinned when she finished, and gave Gio a friendly, congratulatory smacking round the ears. As the judges made their calculations, it turned out she had scored 88.543. It left her in the bronze medal position, anxiously waiting to see what the third German could muster.
Now she can begin to think of Paris. And the rider from Enfield, north London, reckons the future is bright for her and Gio, with a host of prospective medals to add to her record-breaking collection. “He’s 10 years old and look what he’s done. He’s going to be a superstar. When you’ve had a horse like Valegro it’s very difficult to find another to follow him, but in my head I know I can do it again. Bring it on. I cannot wait.”