Nicholson keen for 7th Olympics

Andrew Nicholson is getting used to Olympic-sized letdowns but his latest crash-and-burn is not the end of the road for the veteran horseman, although it's likely to be for his horse Lord Killinghurst.

Nicholson, 46 and at his sixth Games, hit the deck yesterday after Lord Killinghurst failed to handle the second-last obstacle at the Beas River cross-country course, a tricky two-fence jump with a sharp change of direction.

Nicholson was eliminated and will watch from the stands tonight as the rest of the Kiwi team try to improve on their current sixth placing in the show jumping.

Joe Meyer is the leading individual in 19th place, the England-based rider moving up the standings after a successful appeal against a 20-point penalty for running off the course.

Nicholson's fall proved costly to New Zealand's team chances and his own individual hopes. He was going at breakneck speed in an effort to minimise time penalties and if he'd gone clear he would have been right up with the leaders and would have lifted New Zealand's score.

He'd taken the aggrssive approach with the blessing of his team-mates, including Mark Todd, who had taken the opposite approach, sacrificing his personal hopes in order to return a solid, safe, score for the team.

The best three scores count for team standings but with Nicholson eliminated and Heelan Tompkins incurring 75.2 penalty points in cross-country, New Zealand really has only three riders left in contention: Meyer, Caroline Powell, who is 26th and Mark Todd, who is 28th.

"The Olympics are not lucky for me," Nicholson said in reference to a show jumping meltdown on Spinning Rhombus at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and a fall at Athens in 2004.

Undeterred he will press on to London 2012, where "if I'm good enough to be selected", he will try to make it to his seventh games on one of his younger horses after he admitted Lord Killinghurst would head to retirement after long, hard career.

Another who could be at London in four years is Todd, who was like a man half his age after dismounting from Gandalf, after a conservative but immensely satisfying cross-country display.

"I couldn't be happier with the horse. He was a little bit green in a couple of places but this was a tough course and he proved he is a world class horse. At no point did I think 'oh my god ...'."

The minimum age for an eventing horse is eight-years-old and the way Todd was talking he seemed keen to press on further with Gandalf, who is a relatively young 10-years-old.

And if age is a relative thing, it seems Todd feels pretty young too: "I felt really good out there," he said with a wide grin.

- © Fairfax NZ News