Team Gold for Great Britain at Tokyo 2020!

Sophie Wells and Don Cara M © British Equestrian / Jon Stroud Media

Great Britain wins the team gold medal and Sophie Wells scores an amazing personal best in the Paralympic team final at Tokyo 2020

This weekend has been the team Paralympic competition at Tokyo 2020, and after Sir Lee Pearson and Natasha Baker earned amazing scores yesterday (28 August), it was Sophie Wells’ turn today (29 August). Despite enormous pressure, she certainly didn’t disappoint as not only did she do enough to put Great Britain at the top of the leader board, and score another gold medal, she scored an awesome personal best, too!

Sophie Wells and Don Cara M were Great Britain’s only combination to go of the day. Having won individual silver in the Grade V test earlier on this week, if Sophie could match her score from that test – 74.405% – it would put the team in a positive position. However, after a beautiful test that incorporated tidy transitions and bold extensions with excellent balance, tempo and rhythm, despite an unwanted flying change in the counter-canter, she was rewarded with a personal best of 75.651%!

This gave Great Britain a strong lead on a total of 229.905 (an incredible average of 76.635 per rider) – but with fantastic riders still to come from the Netherlands, USA and Denmark, there was no time to relax and fans had to hold their breath until the very last minute!

While Kate Shoemaker scored 71.825% on Solitaer 40 for the USA, Sanne Voets scored a massive 78.200% on Demantur for the Netherlands, and Susanne Jensby Sunesen scored 72.250% on Leeds for Denmark, despite their best efforts, nobody could quite meet Team GB’s lead. On final totals of 229.249, 224.352 and 224.324, respectively, the Netherlands and USA took silver and bronze, while Denmark missed out on the podium by a miniscule margin of 0.028.

Full team results…