Horses don't share

You have to feel sorry for Andrew Nicholson. It happened again. The other half of his rider/horse team did him in.

Lord Killinghurst, the horse, had a look at the second of two brush jumps and decided 'There just aren't enough oats in the world to get me going over that'. As it happened Nicholson went over the fence, with the horse navigating a way through it.

It's probably not much consolation, but this isn't as bad as last time. That was Barcelona in 1992. Nicholson could afford to knock over seven fences and still bag gold. While I am becoming a fan I don't know a lot about equestrian.

To me that looked like a Brazilian soccer team 5-0 up against New Zealand with five minutes to play. There wasn't any urgent cries to, 'Dig deep and scale that mountain'.

Only, no one told the horse. Spinning Rhombus could have seen too many old black-and-white World War II movies. The footage of tanks crushing forests must have left a lasting impression. The horse decided the best way was to emulate the blitzkrieg. It flattened all the fences, knocking over nine of them, leaving a stunned Australian pocketing an utterly unexpected gold medal.

Nicholson later admitted Spinning Rhombus had talents other than jumping. We tended to agree with him.

This time I inclined towards sympathising with the horse. The horse's name implies that it is male. That was a rough brush fence set to rip along its belly, not once but twice. Chaps can have a heightened awareness about that sort of thing. You don't see many of them scraping around their regions with wire brushes.

Of course, this might not have been the problem. Lord Killinghurst could have been popped down to the vet, known the scalpel, and emerged from the anaesthetic with a more aerodynamically efficient undercarriage.

If so, its refusal was a mystery. If the horse was as nature intended then it becomes perfectly understandable to dig in the hooves and say 'Once is enough. This far and no further!'

We will never know. Horses don't share.