Leslie Law Predicts Olympic Team Gold For Great Britain

The reigning individual gold medalist won’t be participating in this year’s Olympic Games, but he’s betting on a showdown between his fellow Brits and the Aussies.

It’s quite an open team competition in eventing this year. I can’t see anybody setting out really as clear favorites. [Horse injuries cost the British team their 2006 World Champion, Zara Phillips, and 2008 Badminton CCI**** runner-up Lucy Wiegersma; neither Bettina nor Andrew Hoy will ride for their respective countries of Germany and Australia].
  
I think it’s going to be the same names you’re used to hearing—Great Britain, Australia, France, the United States and Germany. You can see them all putting up a good overall team
performance.

I’ve got to stick my neck out, so I’m going to go for Great Britain to win the gold. The British team has a wealth of experience with William Fox-Pitt (on Parkmore Ed) and Mary King (on Call Again Cavalier). Those two should log very good scores, so they’ll just need to get one more for the team, and I would like to think that they could do that.

If Daisy Dick can pull off a decent dressage score with Spring Along, she’s got the experiences on the team now to see her through. Tina Cook’s also back there with a nice young horse, Miners Frolic, and then there’s Sharon Hunt, who’s quite solid with Tankers Town. I think they could definitely get one score from those three to put together a good team score.

But I think it’s all going to be close, because I’d have to say all the same things for Australia. The Frederickses—Lucinda and Clayton—are both on fire, quite honestly. So again, they just need one more good score, which they can easily get from any of their team members [Sonja Johnson with Ringwould Jaguar, Megan Jones with Kirby Park Irish Jester and Shane Rose with All Luck]. The team competition will be quite tense and exciting.

I think anything could happen for the bronze, but I’ll give it to the United States, as I’m living here!
Phillip Dutton will be as professional as ever with Connaught, and Amy Tryon’s there too with Poggio. I think those will be the two countable team scores, so again, they’ll just need one more. I think it’s going to be Becky Holder who’s right up there. Her dressage and cross-country with Courageous Comet are solid, and her show jumping has improved drastically, so I think she’ll put up a good team score as well.

Germany and France will also be strong, and I think New Zealand actually has a good team chance
as well. Andrew Nicholson will be well-experienced with Lord Killinghurst, and he could easily pull off a good show jumping round in the first round. Mark Todd with Gandalf and Caroline Powell with Lenamore are both going to be good, so I think New Zealand is going to be a solid bet too. But, overall, it’s really an open team competition.

All of the horses I've picked for possible individual medals are good enough in the dressage and cross-country, but above that, they are very capable show jumpers, and the two rounds of show jumping are going to decide everything for the individual medals.