United States Eventing Association

Ten Years of Eventing: Bettina Hoy's Olympic Double Start and USA Gets Bronze in Athens

The USEA is pleased to present a series of stories written by Joe Verga that chronicles Eventing from 2000-2010.

The 2000-2010 decade was, in many ways, a renaissance for Eventing. It was filled with great moments and incredible accomplishments featuring some of the greatest riders the sport has ever known. Some events would capture our imagination because of the magnitude of the accomplishment while others will never be forgotten despite the fact that the story didn’t end with a blue ribbon. With that, I present the biggest stories in U.S. Eventing from 2000-2010.

2004: Bettina Hoy’s Olympic Double Start

One of beauties of Eventing is that subjectivity is effectively minimized in our sport. One might object to how hard their dressage test was scored or perhaps who was selected to the U.S. Team but that is pretty much it. Then the 2004 Athens Olympics comes along and suddenly Eventing was ablaze in controversy at the conclusion of the competition!

The 2000 Sydney Olympics had given the U.S. great hope going into 2004 and Athens. And why not, the team looked stacked! I’m not sure which was more impressive – the list of riders or the legendary horses. Led by Kim Severson and Winsome Adante, this U.S. team was also comprised of Amy Tryon (on Poggio II), John Williams (aboard Carrick), Julie Richards (on Jacob Two Two), and Darren Chiacchia (with Windfall II).

The storyline of this unpredictable Olympics, however, would read like soap opera. The surprise after dressage was a little-known, 24-year-old French rider named Nicolas Touzaint. Aboard his horse Galan de Sauvagere, Touzaint had the lead with only 29.4 penalty points. Two British riders, Pippa Funnell and Jane Hoy, were two/three with Bettina Hoy in fourth and Kim Severson in fifth.

Following his perfect cross-country run, Touzaint maintained his lead with German rider Bettina Hoy (aboard Ringwood Cockatoo) edging up into second and Kim Severson now in third.

In the 2004 Olympics the individual champion was determined by two rounds of show jumping. It was in the first of those two rounds that the controversy erupted, the flames of which would not be finally put out until three days after the final competitor had left the arena and Olympic medals had changed hands multiple times. There would be multiple appeals by several nations, prepared statements by riders, and efforts to frame the course of events in a more favorable light, but in the end Olympic officials got the call right.

Here’s what really happened:

The controversy began when Bettina Hoy crossed the start line twice.

Kim Severson recalls, “She went to the first fence and wasn’t sure if the bell had sounded so she made a circle and then approached fence one again. It was unfortunate, but what you learn from that is that you always look at the countdown clock to see if it is running.”

The countdown clock became the crux of the matter because the German team claimed afterwards that the clock had not started yet when Bettina crossed the start line. There is nothing wrong with crossing the start line before the clock has begun counting down, but once it does, crossing that line begins the timer for your round.

To compound the problem, the ground jury saw Bettina circle after crossing the start line, got confused, and mistakenly reset the timer instead of letting it run. Almost the moment Bettina completed her rail-free round, the protests began.

The German contingent had Hoy make a statement: “The rules say I have 45 seconds to cross the start line after the bell rings. When I was close to the start line I saw 35 seconds left on the clock, so I decided to do another circle. After I had finished my round, I had a clear round inside the time."

The French team protested that the time for the round started when Bettina crossed the start line for the first time. The ground jury ruled that the French were correct and the round had begun when she crossed the start line the first time. Going back to the video tape they determined that her round was 14 seconds over optimal time so they added 14 penalty points to her score. Not only did this drop Bettina Hoy from the medals but the German team as well!

The second round’s big surprise was the collapse of French rider Nicolas Touzaint who added 19 jumping and time penalties during the round, dropping him from first to ninth. Unfortunately the dust-up over Bettina’s first round was not done yet. The German team appealed to the International Equestrian Federation (FEI), stating that Hoy could not have known she had crossed the line when she first did because the clock had not started, the decision to add the time penalties were reversed. Suddenly the Bettina Hoy was back in first place again and team Germany was inline for a gold medal as well!

Kim Severson summed up the afternoon, “I dropped a rail in the second stadium round to drop us out of the medals. Then the French rider, who was winning at the time, plowed through the course after having been clear during the first round with rail after rail down. As this is happening we realized that I was moving up into the medals, but the issue with Bettina hadn’t been resolved so I went up to the podium to get the bronze medal and the U.S. team didn’t get anything.”

Bettina Hoy said, "All day long I had mixed emotions, from happiness to sadness. I had no idea that I had passed twice the starting line. I realized it only 15 minutes after my competition when the French protested."

Although the medals had been awarded, the issue was still not settled. The British, French and American teams appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS). The CAS' verdict three days later was that the FEI appeals panel had overstated their jurisdiction in removing the time penalties.

Suddenly it was like a giant Christmas gift exchange. Hoy gave her individual gold to Leslie Law of Great Britain. Leslie Law sent his silver to Kim Severson and Kim Severson passed her bronze medal along to Great Britain’s Pippa Funnell, who had been on the outside looking in. The team medals likewise switched hands with France moving from silver to gold, Great Britain exchanging bronze for silver, and the Americans getting the bronze.

Kim recalls, “I felt this was really unfortunate because they (the American team) never got their opportunity to be on the podium to get their bronze medal.”

In one momentary lapse, Germany had gone from first to fourth and Bettina had lost both of her gold medals.

“She really took it hard and was angry (about the appeal from the U.S., French, and U.K. teams)," said Severson. "I’ve gotten to know Bettina since then and she is really a great lady. That’s life though."