3rd September 2007
Britain has qualified for next year's Olympic Games in Beijing after finishing fifth at the European Championships in Turin, Italy, 30 August-2 September.
Laura Bechtolsheimer achieved Britain's highest score. The youngest team member at only 22 skilfully rode the exuberant Mistral Hojris into 13th place with 69.583%. Emma Hindle and Lancet II gave a strong performance, but made a costly mistake in the one-time changes, which put them in 17th place on 68.042%. Yesterday, championship team debutantes Anna Ross-Davies and Liebling II scored a solid 67.41% for 19th while Fiona Bigwood and Mr G De Lully had an uncharacteristically low score of 65.167%, which put them 29th.
Chef d'equipe David Trott said: "It's great that we've qualified for Beijing. At times we were actually close to winning the bronze medal - it was all nail-biting. All credit to Silvia Ikle, who was the last Swiss rider to go. She pulled it out of the bag and boosted the Swiss team to fourth [by 0.2%]."
