GB Qualify for the Olympics
Friday, August 31, 2007
Britain has qualified for next year’s Olympics in Beijing after finishing fifth at the European Championships in Turin, Italy, 30 August-2 September.
Laura Bechtolsheimer achieved Britain’s highest score. The youngest team member at only 22 skilfully rode the exuberant Mistral Hojris into 13th place with 69.583%.
Emma Hindle and Lancet II gave a strong performance, but made a costly mistake in the one-time changes, which put them in 17th place on 68.042%.
Yesterday, championship team debutantes Anna Ross-Davies and Liebling II scored a solid 67.41% for 19th while Fiona Bigwood and Mr G De Lully had an uncharacteristically low score of 65.167%, which put them 29th.
Chef d’equipe David Trott said: “It’s great that we’ve qualified for Beijing. At times we were actually close to winning the bronze medal – it was all nail-biting. All credit to Silvia Ikle, who was the last Swiss rider to go. She pulled it out of the bag and boosted the Swiss team to fourth, by 0.2%.”
All four British riders have qualified for the grand prix special tomorrow (Saturday) and the top 15 go through to the freestyle on Sunday.
The highly-respected British-based Finnish rider Kyra Kyrklund, who is competing as an individual, was 11th with 70%.
For more info and full results, click www.fise.it.
