Olympic equestrian champion Ben Maher reflects on Paris 2024 gold medal

Olympic champion Ben Maher believes that Team GB’s “sneaky” individual ratings were the key to their Paris 2024 success.

The 41-year-old, from Elsenham, stormed to team jumping victory alongside Scott Brash and Harry Charles in Versailles to claim his third Olympic gold medal.

The trio were generally regarded as underdogs going into the event, but Maher noted that, despite not having much experience as a team, their own individual successes would have shown that Britain were always there to take gold.

“Winning in Paris was incredible,” he said. “I’ve been very lucky to experience that in London as well, but every event has a different emotion or feeling for personal reasons.

“This one was a great team with a big team spirit that is hard to emulate all the time. But it all came together on the day.

“The Brits always tend to be the underdogs, but it’s about peaking at the right time.

“If you had looked at our individual rankings and performances then our rating maybe would have been a bit higher than it was going into Paris, so we were a bit sneaky coming in the backdoor. Luckily for us, everything worked out.”

Just two weeks after competing on the Olympic stage against the backdrop of Versailles, Maher was back jumping in front of the Royal Hospital Chelsea at the London leg of the 2024 Longines Global Champions Tour.

He finished fifth as part of the Shanghai Swans team in the Global Champions League in London.

“Being part of a GCL team is tiring as there’s a lot of travel involved, but it’s a real dream team scenario,” said Maher.

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