It certainly hasn’t. Since her fall, she has come back with such explosive resolve, she has now won gold in two successive Olympic games. Plus a bronze. No wonder her helmet was decorated, like Simone Biles’s gymnastics outfit, with Swarovski crystals: this is the queen of her sport.
“How many? I don’t know,” she said when asked how many crystals were glittering in the glorious Parisian light. “But you’re welcome to count them.”
In truth, she was more concerned with talking up the wider significance of the team achievement than she was in chatting about her outfit. Because this was a result that spoke volumes. Coming at the end of a traumatic week for equestrianism, in which the very future of the sport was placed in doubt by the bullying antics of one of its leading practitioners, here at last was good news. Across three days of gruelling competition, at times undertaken in torrential rain, at others in blistering sunshine, Britain’s team produced a performance that was as close to being flawless as it comes in a sport fraught with jeopardy.
“Hopefully this answers all that,” said Collett of the all-enveloping noise around riding. “It’s huge. Seeing our horses go in there, look a million dollars and perform like they have all week, hopefully that shows what goes on. Horses don’t go like that if they’re not happy.”
Eventing is the triathlon of horse sports. Across three days, three very distinct disciplines have to be mastered: dressage, cross-country and showjumping. And to add extra nuance, while they negotiate the terrain, riders are competing both as individuals and as a team. Like golf, the idea is to score as low as possible by accruing as few errors. The GB team came into the final day with all three of their riders so well placed, overall they were already in the gold medal position. They would have been even further ahead had Canter not been penalised for what experts will tell you was the most dubious of errors in the cross-country section, when she knocked over a flag atop one of the fences with her elbow. The GB team had appealed, pointing out the horse had crossed the obstacle flawlessly. But the objection was dismissed.
