Hester into two finals while Heather also progresses in Paris
Carl Hester has two Olympic dressage finals to look forward to this weekend as he attempts to stand on the podium for a fourth consecutive Games.
Not only will the Sark star be an integral member of the Great Britain trio in Saturday’s Grand Prix Special team final, he and his mount Fame have also progressed to Sunday’s Grand Prix Freestyle individual final having registered the second best score of the non-automatic qualifiers at the picturesque Chateau de Versailles venue and seventh best overall.
The only combination ahead of the seven-time Olympian and Fame in the ‘next-best-scores’ standings was teammate Lottie Fry on Glamourdale, the 2022 world champion, who produced an excellent score of 78.913% as first to go on day two, yet incredibly that was only good enough to finish third in an extremely strong Group E.
It means that the third GB rider Becky Moody on Jagerbomb, the reserve who replaced Charlotte Dujardin, was the only member of the team to progress automatically to the final despite being the lowest scorer of the three.
The trio’s efforts over the qualification see Team GB’s combined score of 231.196 ranked third of the 10 nations who will compete in the team final behind top-ranked Germany (237.546) and Denmark (235.730).
‘Our whole team this past two days has performed amazingly, and really put us in a good position for the weekend,’ Fry told the British Dressage website.
Scores are not carried forward as the riders start afresh in the finals.
Hester already has the full set of gold, silver and bronze team medals from London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 respectively.
Meanwhile, at Roland Garros Heather Watson and Katie Boulter pulled off a shock by beating the sixth seeds to reach the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles.
The GB duo proved too strong for the Brazilian pair of Beatriz Haddad Maia and Luisa Stefani as they won 6-3, 6-4 in 1hr 26min. to set up a last-eight clash with the Italian third seeds Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini.
