One slip brings agony for Skelton once again

Eight years after he agonisingly dropped out of the gold medal position in Athens, Skelton’s hopes were sunk in Greenwich Park at a fence called Cutty Sark.

It was the first error over six rounds of team and individual jumping at London 2012 for 54-year-old Skelton and his brilliant stallion Big Star.

But it was magnified by its painful significance as Skelton slipped from a potential gold medal jump-off with the now newly-crowned Olympic champion Steve Guerdat, to finish equal fifth alongside his British colleague Scott Brash.

Guerdat, 30, and Nino des Buissonnets ended an 88-year wait for a Swiss showjumping gold medallist.

Holland’s Gerco Schroder and the aptly-named London took silver after a jump-off against Cian O’Connor and Blue Loyd 12, who landed Ireland’s first medal of the Games.

As was the case yesterday, Skelton had been last to go in Athens. On that occasion, two fences down saw him plummet 11 places with Arko, although at least this time around Skelton had already collected the considerable prize of a team gold medal.

But two days after the British team were memorably crowned Olympic champions, the golden double most of a capacity 23,000 crowd craved was not to be.

Ben Maher, having had a fence down in each of yesterday’s two rounds, ended up ninth.

“It has happened before, and it has happened again,” a rueful Skelton said. “That is our game, you know. You touch one pole, and you can’t get it back.

“What can you do about it? You cannot go back in there and change it.”

“At least we’ve come away with a gold medal, which is brilliant. It is great for the sport, great for me. It’s a pity today didn’t end differently, you know, but that is what happens.”

Asked if he was thinking about Athens, Skelton replied: “No. No, no. Not at all. I know I was sitting on the best horse today, and he was unlucky.

“It has been an amazing experience, and great to win in London, it’s just a pity it all went wrong today.

“Everyone thought it was going well – I did too – but I just touched the pole at the wrong time and that was it. I feel sorry for the people that came today.”

If Skelton required an immediate pick-me-up, then it came via a glowing tribute from his team gold medal-winning colleague Maher.

“Without Nick on our team we wouldn’t have won this week,” said Maher. “He has been in this sport for what seems like forever, and he has been fighting for the team all week. We won the team competition, which was the ultimate aim before we came.”