‘Tiny margins decided the medals'

Richard Davison analyses the riding in Tokyo and where the freestyle was won

- Polly Bryan

CHARLOTTE DUJARDIN’S brilliant individual bronze in Tokyo has left me on an adrenaline high. The standard of riding at the top end of the freestyle was awe-inspiring.

What struck me about almost all of the final group of big-hitters – Charlotte, Cathrine Dufour, Isabell Werth and Jessica von Bredow-Werndl – was their maintenance of unwavering focus while under extreme pressure.

These riders’ technical skills, competitiveness and training ability are already proven and are arguably on an equal level. So what about the qualities of their horsepower?

Each of those four riders rode faultlessly (that does not usually occur at an Olympics) and none of those horses made any significant mistakes (equally not usual).

So on the night, as neither the riders nor their horses could go any better, did it come down to which horse had the fewest inherent, if minute, weaknesses?

Of course, the freestyle provides the opportunity to camouflage weaknesses to some degree within the floorplan, while also capitalising on scoring points from the horse’s strengths. And that is exactly what each of these riders did.

So I am going to say that since the riding standard was equal and exemplary across the top four combinations, on the night each of these riders could not have produced enough extra points from their horses to have changed the order.