Olympic Diary 29: In the Final!!
Augustin OLD and I were awarded 73.61 percent today in the Special which meant 17th place so we are qualified for the Freestyle Final on Thursday.
Fotos: Rzepa
In the beginning everything went so well: the greeting, the trot extensions, piaffes, passage and even the extended walk. But then the collected walk and transition in the piaffe were not quite ideal. Maybe my aids were not clear enough for Augustin. After this slight irritation things went well again - until we came to the flying changes with two strides. Augustin had to apple and that put him off stride a bit. But then we were good in the pirouettes that followed and were really straight on the final line. Most of it was good enough to have hopes for our third ride in the really fabulous Olympic stadium in Greenwich Park. My father and Wolfram Wittig were pleased with me. So I'm looking forward to the Freestyle!
First though, team gold was taken by Great Britain with rides by Valegro under Charlotte Dujardin and Uthopia with Carl Hester that gave you goose bumps. The Germans, after having won eight Olympic Games in a row, had to be satisfied with second place. The Dutch team took bronze bronze, especially thanks to the strong rides of Adelinde Cornelissen on her World Cup winner, Jerich Parcival.