'I considered kissing the sand'

Groom Mark Beever recalls his stubborn superstitions, swearing in front of royalty - and the emotion of winning gold

- Groom Mark Beever, Jennifer Donald

THE Seoul Olympics in 1988 was probably the best Games I went to – partly because it was my first, but also it was a long way to go and an amazing country, a whole new experience.

I’d started working for Nick Skelton two years before. Preparing for my first Olympics was daunting, but the federation sent us trunks with a list inside telling us what we could and couldn’t take on the flight – things like wooden-backed body brushes aren’t allowed.

The British team of Nick, David Broome, Joe Turi, Malcolm Pyrah and Michael Whitaker stayed at Hickstead for the week before we flew, to get the team together and train in the arena. That was quite a week – we were worn out before we got to the Olympics!

We had special permission to fly the horses across Russia. It was still a long flight, at around 18 hours, but the athletes had to fly round Russia, so theirs was a very long trip. We had to land in Russia and armed guards came on board for checks before we could proceed.

When we landed in South Korea, ITN News was filming as I took Apollo off the plane. I remember being hit by the heat. The horse complex was amazing, with a swimming pool for the horses, lovely arenas and woods for hacking. The team competition took place there, but we were all shipped to the Olympic stadium for the individual final. That made it feel like a proper Olympics. But there were no stables there; they had set up stalls for all the horses and you had to tie them up all day. Luckily Apollo was laid-back about it, but can you imagine that happening now?

They put down a surface outside the stadium to warm up on, then you walked in over the running track to where the jumps were, on the same grass where they’d earlier held the shot-put and so on.

There was unbelievable team spirit with the eventers and the dressage squads. I can’t possibly comment on the party we had after Mark Todd and Charisma won gold, but that was a night I’ll never forget!