Steve Guerdat is traveling to his sixth Olympic Games. The excitement before Paris is the same as at the premiere, the team around him is stronger than ever. The dream of another gold is alive.
The 42-year-old, not really a man of big words, makes no secret of his expectations in the run-up to the Games. "I've never traveled to the Olympic Games with such a strong team as I have now to Paris. By a long way! Anything other than a medal would be a disappointment," he emphasizes. While Martin Fuchs begins with "The big goal is a medal" on the day the Olympic menus are handed out in Dietikon and Pius Schwizer follows up with "We hope for a medal", Guerdat talks about "gold with the team" - and later adds "gold in the individual".
The votes are not plucked out of the air: All three Swiss riders have already topped the world rankings in their careers, all three have a palmarès that many of their colleagues can only dream of, and all three are currently on world-class horses in Dynamix (Guerdat), Leone Jei (Fuchs) and Vancouver (Schwizer).
"I'm just as ambitious and excited as I was before my first Games. Routine would not be conducive," says Guerdat. When his wife recently enquired about the number of Olympic participations during the selection decision, he had to count them himself, says the Jura-born rider, who settled down in Elgg in the canton of Zurich after buying the riding facility. "I am someone who looks to the future."
A few more horsepower
The London 2012 Olympic champion has been looking ahead to Paris for two years now. At that time, he began to realize that he had an exceptional horse in the now eleven-year-old mare Dynamix de Belheme, one "that has a few more horsepower", as Guerdat says. "Dynamix is one of the best. She has natural abilities that other horses don't have."
The results also prove this: Last September, Guerdat was celebrated as European Champion in Milan in the saddle on Dynamix. Against this background, nobody would believe Guerdat if he hid his gold ambitions. Guerdat and Dynamix, together with Fuchs and Leone Jei and Sweden's Henrik von Eckermann on King Edward, make up the top three on paper.
A format with pitfalls
"I have a great opportunity in Paris. But there is always an unknown side to sport," says Guerdat, outlining the starting position. The new Olympic format since Tokyo, in which each day starts from scratch and the results of the previous day no longer count, opens up the field. In addition, there is no scratch result in the team classification. One refusal by a horse and everything is gone. As a reminder: Great Britain, Germany and France did not finish the competition in Tokyo 2021. France, which was on course for gold before final rider Pénélope Leprévost was eliminated after the second refusal, was particularly hard hit.
"No medal, that would be a big disappointment. But sport can be like that," warned Guerdat. In Rio 2016, he was an even better rider than in 2012, Nino was in equally good form, they reached the jump-off again, "and yet there was no medal in the end". Now he is once again a better rider than in Rio, the horse is absolutely top, but this is no guarantee. "What counts in the end is that you don't have to regret anything, that you didn't fail to do something that was within your power."
Guerdat is considered a perfectionist. He accepts this assessment, but describes his nature differently: "The horses don't get you out of bed in the morning and say: 'Jump with me'. But we always expect 100 percent from them. And if I expect 100 percent from the horse, then the horse can expect 100 or even 105 percent from me. That's not just about perfectionism, but also about respect."
