MY OLYMPIC STORY
Blyth Tait on jumping barn roofs, “freezing” in the Atlanta heat and the day his eight-year-old prodigy won Olympic gold
I’VE been to four Olympics and ridden four different horses. Some have gone well, but there have also been disappointments – you can only do the best with the hand you are dealt.
The one that stands out is Atlanta 1996 because Ready Teddy won gold. But my first Olympics, Barcelona 1992 on Messiah, were probably more memorable.
We’d already won double gold at the World Equestrian Games in Stockholm, but nothing compares to the atmosphere of the Olympics. Barcelona was particularly dramatic, in flashy Spanish style.
Walking into the stadium for the opening ceremony with the whole New Zealand team, you were hit by a wall of noise. It made me realise that the Olympics are so much bigger than anything I’d ever experienced, because the whole world in every walk of life gets immersed in it.
With Messiah being world champion and runner-up at Badminton, I went in with high expectations. But he stood on a stone after the trot-up and bruised his foot. He was tender on his sole, so I couldn’t get the work into him that I normally would.
When it came to the dressage, I did the test without a proper warm-up. He was so fresh that he blew up – disastrous. I felt “woe is me”, but my team-mate Andrew Nicholson said, “Get your act together. You’re in a team. There are two more phases.”
Messiah had to do another trot-up to prove he was sound, and he gave me his usual brilliant ride across country. He was so tough, scopey and brave as could be. It was the most difficult Olympic track I can recall. It was on a golf course, with hillocky, unbalancing terrain. We had to jump onto the roof of a barn, then off and bounce over an ornate stone wall and into a pond. It was dramatic and spectacular, the sort of course you dream of riding.
Messiah’s fast clear moved us up from the bottom quarter to the top quarter. Don’t forget that we also had the roads and tracks, which ramped up the endurance and soundness element, but he was a thoroughbred and did it easily.
Come showjumping, and I was sitting about ninth. It was under lights and futuristic with photographic images imposed on the rails, and it caused a lot of trouble. But Messiah was a great showjumper, jumping clear and winning us individual bronze.
The moral of that story is that it isn’t over until the fat lady sings. You can’t just give up because you’re in a grump about your dressage. At the start of the week, we hoped that the team could drop my score – but we ended up with team silver.
AN EMERGING TALENT
UNLIKE for Messiah, the master plan for Ready Teddy did not include the Olympics in 1996. I had my Burghley winner Chesterfield as my team horse, and was hoping to have Asp
