Wednesday, 01 January 2025
British Equestrian would like to congratulate Nicola Wilson on her MBE awarded in the 2025 New Years Honours list for services to sport as a coach and mentor. Since her competition career ending fall at Badminton Horse Trials in 2022, Nicola’s journey has been inspiring, humbling and a lesson to all in overcoming adversity. Having won championship medals at Olympic, World and European level as an event rider, Nicola continues to put back into the sport with her mentoring, coaching and support of young riders, and in her role as Chair of the Riders Advisory Group on behalf of the World Class Programme. A well-deserved honour for one of equestrian sport’s finest ambassadors.
British Equestrian would also like to commend the 13 Olympic and Paralympic equestrian athletes who each brought home medals, including two team golds, from Paris 2024.
Helen Nicholls, Performance Director said; ‘’Winning a medal at an Olympic or Paralympic Games is an incredible achievement, to take the top step of the podium and gold is the absolute pinnacle of elite sport. The achievements represent years and years of ambition, commitment and hard work and are a true example of setting your sights on a goal or dream and believing that you can achieve, something we should all recognise and aspire to. It’s everything that sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games is about, and I could not be prouder of every one of our riders, the horses and their owners and support staff who managed to pull off the unique feat of every single rider returning from Paris with a medal – a 100% success rate.’’
The eventing team brought home the first gold medal for Team GB and the showjumpers added another team gold to give a tally of two gold, one silver and nine bronze medals across the Games . Eventers Ros Canter, Laura Collett MBE and Tom McEwen MBE were sublime under the added pressure of going to Versailles as favourites to successfully defend the gold they had won in Tokyo 2020. The showjumping trio had a quiet confidence in their own chances which was duly rewarded for Scott Brash MBE, Harry Charles and Ben Maher MBE, whose third gold medal puts him in the upper echelons of Britian’s most successful Olympic athletes.