‘You can really feel the emotion’: home crowd relish rider’s Olympic eventing dressage performance

Frenchman Stéphane Landois delighted his home crowd when rocketing into provisional second after his Olympic eventing dressage test at the Paris Games. Riding SCEA Ecurie Du Cerisier Bleu and Eric Landois’ Chaman Dumontceau, he impressed the judges with an accurate and fault-free test to score 24.4.

“There is an emotion about this place, and we can all feel it. When I went into the arena, I felt so proud to see all the people enjoying our sport and appreciating it so much,” explained Stéphane of the gelding he took over the ride on after the tragic death of his previous rider, 22-year-old Thaïs Méheust, who was killed in a fall with this horse in 2019.

“You can really feel the emotion. There’s a lot of atmosphere in the arena, but for my horse, it was a great thing, because at the end of the warm-up I didn’t feel I had him quite where I wanted him to be, and then when I went in, it gave him that extra lift, and so he did such a good test.”

Following Laura Collett’s simply sublime Olympic eventing dressage test with London 52, there were a number of other great tests that went into the top 10. One of those was Japan’s Yoshiaki Oiwa, who slotted into second at that point with Pippa Funnell’s 2019 Burghley winner MGH Grafton Street on 25.5, before being overtaken by Stéphane.

“He knew that today was the time to show something, so I’m very happy,” said Yoshi, who rides 16-year-old ‘Squirrel’ out of Pippa’s yard in Surrey. “It’s a very new partnership – my first competition with him this year was in March, so it was a bit challenging for us, but it has all gone well.”

New Zealand’s Clarke Johnstone was another to put in a very polished performance with the elegant Menlo Park, scoring 25.7 to put them into provisional fourth.

“I have been dreaming of doing a test like that at the Olympics because he’s been training so well,” said an emotional Clarke, who tragically lost his partner Codey at the end of 2023. “My horse has been so with me and feeling amazing in his body and calm too, so I’ve been thinking he could do a test like that, and to actually do it – I’m just so, so proud of him and proud of myself.”

Clarke explained that he almost changed his mind about Menlo Park’s Olympic eventing dressage preparation earlier today.

“I watched the first few go and I thought it looked very electric in the main arena and maybe I should pre-ride him. But we decided to stick with what we’ve been doing, which has been steadily getting the scores lower and lower over the last couple of years, and he was just so with me. He did have a little look at the gate stewards before we went into the ring, but he brought it back and he was just a delight to ride in there – really on the aids and just giving me everything.”

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