In the End, It’s A Double Gold for Germany and Individual Bronze for American Kim Severson; Americans Left Off the Team Medal Podium

By the United States  Equestrian Federation

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It was certainly a day of surprises at the 2004 Athens final day of eventing competition as a series of confusions left the final standings and the Olympic Team medal up in the air for more than an hour. The concern centered around German rider Bettina Hoy and whether or not she should have been assigned penalty points for, what she is saying, was unknowingly causing a technical refusal when she crossed the start line once, and then crossed it a second time, believing that the second cross was the official start of her qualifying round of the show jumping phase. This left the Ground Jury and the Appeals Committee involved in sorting out exactly what had happened and making a call to, at first, add time penalties to her score. The FEI officials then retracted the penalties saying that the rider’s time clock had been restarted, “resulting in a clear injustice to the rider concerned. The committee, therefore, removed the time penalties,” according to Freddy Serpieri, vice president of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) and president of the Appeals Committee, in a jam-packed post-medal awards ceremony press conference.

According to Hugh Thomas, a member of the Eventing Appeals Committee, the infraction was originally noticed by a member of the Ground Jury – not brought up by one of the Team camps for a competing country as was widely suspected – and that once the Ground Jury noticed the infraction, it was acted upon and discussed for a period of an hour-and-a-half before a final determination was made