Equestrian: Rookie Tompkins stands out from NZ team

By KEVIN NORQUAY

ATHENS - She was the youngest rider, he was the oldest horse and together Heelan Tompkins and Glengarrick were the outstanding New Zealand combination in the Olympic Games eventing competition.

Olympic rookie Tompkins, 26, and her trusty 18-year-old gelding ended the individual competition in eighth place, proving their critics wrong by their deeds.

Tompkins has bristled at those who said her treasured "Nugget" was too old and unsound to be an international eventer. Athens was a chance for the pair to prove the doomsayers wrong.

And they did.

Thirteenth after the dressage, they climbed to 10th after the cross-country, capping it off by dropping just two rails in two rounds of pressured showjumping.

Of the other New Zealanders, Matthew Grayling finished 15th on Revo with 63.20 points, while two-time world champion Blyth Tait climbed from 54th after the dressage to 18th, ending up on 73.00 points.

Daniel Jocelyn and Andrew Nicholson were not among the top 25 riders to contest the individual showjumping round.

Though Tompkins came up just short of a bronze, she was all smiles at the end.

She had tested her childhood heroes, she told NZPA. Next time she would beat them.

While eventers do not talk in ifs and buts, if she had not clipped two rails in the showjumping she would have won silver. But she did, so she didn't.

"Obviously I wanted to go clear, because I feel I am capable of it ... the pole he took, he so nearly didn't," she said.

"I was like 'oh, stay up!' I've just got to be happy with my result ... I just like winning, but in lots of ways I have sort of won in my own space.

"I have just got to accept that for now, go out there and do it better next time.

"I wasn't far off and I there are so many things that I know I could have done a bit better."

Tompkins said Athens would be the last competitive outing for Glengarrick.

Asked whether Glengarrick had proved a point in Athens, she said "oh yeah, oh yeah".

"In so many ways it's not about saying it, it's just about doing it; he's come here and he's done it," he said.

"I'm so proud of him, I'm so proud I was right, I stuck to my guns and so many people came down on me.

"It's not about being smug, it's just about saying -- if I say I have got a good horse, I've got a good horse."

While most of the team are leaving Athens, Tompkins intended to stay around and sample the Games atmosphere.

Athens was also the swansong for Ready Teddy, the horse Tait rode in Athens and won a gold medal on at Atlanta in 1996.

Tait said Ready Teddy, the only eventing horse in Olympic history to have competed in three consecutive Games, would live out his days on a south Auckland farm.

Tait, 43, was less forthright about his own future, but did acknowledge he was winding down his eventing career.

He told NZPA he might have brought his other Games-qualified horse, Eze, to Athens had he known what the cross-country and showjumping courses were like.

Eze is less nervy than Ready Teddy, who destroyed Tait's hopes of a second Olympic gold when he became unsettled in the dressage.

"When you go to the Olympics you expect to get a championship track and Ready Teddy is the best cross-country horse I've had, so that's why I chose to bring him, but it wasn't a cross-country competition unfortunately," Tait said.

"I've given it my best shot. We had such a small cross-country course that the competition has become very, very focused on the dressage. I couldn't predict that."

- NZPA