On a difficult day, horse and rider are teammates to the finish

At the end of eight minutes in the Olympic dressage in Paris, Caroline Chew patted her horse Zatchmo. Once, twice, multiple times. A pat of comradeship, perhaps. A pat in appreciation of a journey made together. Sure he didn’t have the best of days but this 32-year-old human and 15-year-old horse, they were in this together.

Satchmo was the nickname of the famous trumpeter Louis Armstrong. The musician loved a show but, on July 30, the horse, whose name starts with a Z, didn’t so much. “I was so relieved we came through,” said Chew, “because he was really, really overwhelmed by the atmosphere when we went in.

“I think it’s because it’s a full stadium,” she said. This Zatchmo hadn’t seen so many spectators, nor heard so much cheering. Champion athletes get stage fright and so why not horses.

“He got a little bit uncertain,” said Chew. “And it took us, I would say, a good two minutes into the routine before he started regaining his confidence. But (you) just stay with him.”

It wasn’t the best eight minutes of Chew’s riding life and she acknowledged it. In Group A, which had 10 riders, her score of 63.351 was the lowest. Later, she’d say of their performance, “Not very good. There were a lot of mistakes. I was happy because he got better and better and more confident. And that’s what you want as a rider.”

It matters where Chew finished after eight minutes of work, but what also matters is that she got those eight minutes. After all, she, of all people, knows that in sport competition is never a guarantee. In 1996 in Atlanta, judoka David Khakhaleishvili went to the wrong place for his weigh-in and was disqualified. In 1972, Rey Robinson and Eddie Hart, the 100m world record holders, were misinformed of the time of their heat and failed to run.

Luck lingers at a Games. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes – as with Chew in 2021 – it’s a bloody lip. Her horse then, Tribiani, had suffered a tiny cut and the judges halted her Olympic ride. Days later as she told this writer her story, a single telling tear had rolled down her cheek. She hadn’t got her eight minutes, just barely five before being interrupted.

It was heartbreaking, but athletes are brilliant at tearing off their rear-view mirrors. They look forward, not back. “There’s no choice,” explained Chew. “If you want to compete, you have to leave something like that behind.”

This time in Paris, there was no blood and no visible tears. This time she was not pleased, but she did the one thing athletes must. Not just to get to an Olympics, which she did while working hard enough as a lawyer to get promoted in May, but to complete a journey.

“I think I was quite honest before the Games,” she said. “I had no real expectations because I knew I’d be carrying a lot of nerves with me and a lot of mini trauma with what happened in Tokyo. And I was just so happy to be able to do this again in front of my family, my friends, my colleagues”.

On a brutally hot day, the only relief was the sheer beauty of the Chateau de Versailles. Quite fittingly, this formal sport, full of polish and elegance, was being held in the once residence of King Louis XIV. There has been negative chatter on Paris’ organisation but, on the matter of spectacular venues, it has been victorious.

Apart from journalists from the venerable Horse & Hound magazine – made hilariously famous by Hugh Grant in Notting Hill – this is not a sport usually frequented by mainstream journalists. But then this is the allure of the Games, where fans get to flirt for two weeks with BMX cycling, the modern pentathlon and canoe slalom.

Equestrian’s dress code would make skateboarders roll their eyes. But both sports are exercises in control while wearing helmets. Except one is about managing a device on wheels, the other involves control of something alive, beautiful, moody and majestic.

And how deep this relationship runs was almost movingly revealed in the way Chew spoke of Zatchmo later. What did she like about him she was asked and on a grim day a smile emerged.

“He tries so hard. Even when he was really overwhelmed there, you could see he kept offering what he thought I wanted. He’s just too nervous to really understand what I was asking of him. There’s not many horses that can start like that and calm down when you’re asking really difficult things of them and you’re in a really big arena.

“He did try and do that. He’s really great.”

And so maybe that’s why she was patting him in the sandy arena after they were done. In praise. In thanks.

You know, just the stuff that partners do.