A bizarre regularisation successful modern pentathlon has near an jock successful tears, aft she plummeted from the golden medal presumption to past place.
Germany's Annika Schleu was starring the modern pentathlon - comprised of fencing, swimming, amusement jumping, shooting and moving - heading into the jumping event.
Yet successful modern pentathlon, athletes don't thrust their ain horses for amusement jumping. Instead, they get conscionable 20 minutes to enslaved with an unfamiliar equine that they're assigned for the competition.
It sounds similar a look for catastrophe and it surely was for Schleu. The German was hardly capable to get her gelding to prosecute and it jumped lone a fewer fences earlier abandoning. Schleu, who burst into tears midway done the ride, scored zero points and crashed from archetypal to last.
OLYMPICS LIVE BLOG: DAY 15 UPDATES, NEWS | TOKYO GAMES EVENT CENTRE: SCHEDULE, RESULTS, MEDAL TALLY
The carnal was ironically named Saint Boy and proved Schleu's idiosyncratic devil. The German finished 4th successful the lawsuit astatine Rio 2016 and her hopes of a medal successful Tokyo had been dashed successful the cruellest imaginable manner.
Former British pentathlete Heather Fell was horrified by the incident.
"Annika Schleu is having a real-life nightmare. It's hard to watch. It's hard to commentate," Fell said connected BBC commentary.
"Her look says it all. The assemblage don't truly cognize however to react. It is heartbreaking."
Schleu, a metallic medallist astatine the 2018 satellite championships, recovered somewhat successful the shooting and moving but her Games had been ruined. She finished 31st of 36 athletes, having topped the fencing rounds earlier the amusement jumping debacle.
Great Britain's Kate French won gold, Lithuania's Laura Asadauskaite metallic and Hungary's Sarolta Kovacs bronze.
Schleu wasn't unsocial successful being brought undone by her random horse. Ireland's Natalya Coyle was placed 4th earlier the amusement jumping, yet her equine baulked astatine respective jumps and she dropped to 19th successful what was her last Olympics.
"It's truly disappointing," said Coyle. "It's not however I wanted to extremity my career.
"I accidental it's conscionable added disappointment due to the fact that to beryllium 3rd successful events and to beryllium truthful adjacent and to consciousness similar it's a spot snatched distant from you, it's truly disappointing.
"That's pentathlon, unfortunately. I knew it was going to beryllium pugnacious erstwhile I watched the archetypal rider not get astir truthful I knew that was truly tough.
"I thought I had made a bully program and it worked a batch successful the arena but helium conscionable didn't privation to spell adjacent it.
"One of the fences beforehand, it was my responsibility - I should person checked before. But I thought it was each going OK and past it [the horse] stopped and past it stopped again."
For a regular dose of the champion of the breaking quality and exclusive contented from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!
English (US) ·