Germany recover from trials of 'Horsegate'

Germany's equestrian team swept to Olympic jumping gold and there was no hiding their delight at the fate suffered by their rivals.

Germany's equestrian team swept to Olympic jumping gold and there was no hiding their delight at the fate suffered by their rivals who deprived them of the three-day event title last week.

HT Image

The German team thought they had won the three-day title but were stripped of the gold when the French appealed over a technical infringement by a German rider.

Germany counter-appealed and were reinstated before France, Britain and the United States went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and had the result changed once again.

Late Tuesday, the French team had to retire after the first round when one of their horses Dileme de Cephe pulled up lame, the United States took silver after a jump-off while Britain failed at the qualifying stage.

"The French team was one of the favourites for these Games, they are the defending world champions and what happened to them to day was quite disappointing," said German rider Ludger Beerbaum.

"But this is sport. It just wasn't their day. I heard that somebody started to blame the grass for the injury to their horse but I don't think that there is any relation."

It was Germany's third successive gold in the event acheieved with just two fences down in the two rounds and it was also a fifth gold for Beerbaum in his fifth Games.

"I was really annoyed with what happened with the German eventing team ad very disappointed," added Beerbaum.

"But today I tried to be focussed and it worked out well."

Teammate Marco Kutscher insisted that the events of last week cast a shadow over the normally genteel sport.

"We did spend a lot of time in that issue and we thought it wasn't nice issue," said Kutscher.