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So What Happened to Germany

August 18, 2025

A tie for fifth was not even a consideration as these trials got underway. Perhaps some overconfidence and a feeling of “How good we really are” filled the German’s teams minds as they prepared for the finals. Last week the Germans won three golds in equestrian eventing and dressage.

What on earth was happening to the hot favourites who normally prove so untouchable at this level of the sport?

All eyes were on the Germans who, so surprisingly, were trailing the field after yesterday’s opening round but any hope of a rapid climb up the order would be halted by 19 faults for Marco Kutscher when, in an effort to take a sharp check after a strong ride to the water, he stopped Cornet Obolensky in his tracks. Clearly unsettled, the handsome stallion completed, dropping several fences on his way home.

Even Meredith wasn’t really sure what was going on. “It’s not like we are not used to pressure, it’s just a big surprise here today,” she said afterward. She was happy with her round with Shutterfly - “I was maybe too fast into the triple”, she admitted, but she had expected that her team would have produced better results. So had here been a German miscalculation about their whole approach to this Olympic contest? Had they been over-confident in the early stages? “We had a plan, that we would use the first competition to train a bit the other day - it wasn’t that we didn’t take it seriously but maybe we didn’t get that right,” she said. “We are going to have to go back and sit together and discuss what has happened - it’s certainly not what we expected,” she added.

She said the course was “well set, but when I walked it I thought 50% of horses will jump into the water - there is almost a 90 degree turn there - and at the triple at the end you need to jump in short. We’ve only seen one clear so far, its a good, fair course but we will have to prepare for the second round tomorrow - if we get into the top eight teams tonight. If we do get through we won’t be giving up, we will come out fighting,” she insisted

The heavily favored German team was never a factor in the final competition and finished fifth with 34 faults.

Written by European News · Filed Under Europe, Europe and British Isles, Olympics 2008 
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