William Fox-Pitt, who was in individual gold after the dressage, had a fantastic round on the course untill a small miscommunication between him and his steed Chilli Morning at fence twenty, the Ski-jump, resulted in 20 penalty points. Addint the 10.4 time penalties he droped to the 22nd place, but it still Britains best rider.
"It was all my fault" the rider admitted afterwards. "Chilli really had a good round, it is such a pitty this happend"
Chris Burton now holds the individual lead after a fault-free round on Santano II and the Australians also lie in the team gold medal position.
“I didn’t expect this,” said Chris. “This little horse has far exceeded our expectations. I didn’t expect him to be so fast and I’m just going to enjoy today – as for tomorrow, whatever!”
Joining him in racking up a clear round were his team mates Sam Griffiths and Stuert Tinney who just accumulated some time penalties, but in doing so catapulting team Australia to the first position just in front of New Zealand.
German eventing machine Michael Jung and his 2012 Olympic ride La Biostique Sa had a rocky start with a amazing safe at jump 6ab, two small corners. But the Rolex Grand Slam winner steamed on towards home with a clear round that was fifteen seconds within the time finishing on his dressage score of 40.90 now standing second behiind Burton.
As a team the Germans have slipped to fourth in the team standings as Ingrid Klimke (Hale Bob OLD) and Sandra Auffarth (Opgun Louvo) both had one run-out and Julia Krajewski (Samourai Du Thot) was eliminated after three unexplainable refusals, as Krajewski had no explanation for the poor ride today. Auffarth initially had 40 jumping penalties on her scorecard, but this was reduced to 20 as she was judged not to have crossed her tracks during a sticky moment at the first water.
Astier Nicolas, the first out for France, put the first fault-free round on the leaderboard and sits in individual bronze at the end of the day with Piaf De B’Neville. The French also hold team bronze due to great rounds from Mathieu Lemoine and Thibaut Vallette.
“It’s a huge feeling to go clear, I realised the pressure I was under to do that for my team,” said Astier.
New Zealand holds the team silver position. Mark Todd, Clarke Johnstone and Jonelle Price had to deliver as their pathfinder, Tim Price, had a fall on the flat during a tight turn at the Malmesbury Cottage (fence 23 and 24). But the next three riders all scored jumping clears and Mark Todd is in individual fourth on Leonidas II, who had just two time-faults.
“We were on our minute markers all the way round and and I thought for a bit we might have done it, but the last section has jump after jump after jump,” he said.