For four decades Carl Hester has competed at the top of the sport in dressage, but the Paris Olympics may have been his last.
The 57-year-old rider is a seven-time Olympian. He contested his first Games in 1992 in Barcelona and has ridden for Great Britain at every games since except 1996 and 2008, earning four Olympic team medals, highlighted by a team gold in 2012.
His most recent medal: a team bronze captured at the Paris Games on Saturday.
One day later, Hester followed up that performance with the highest scoring Freestyle of his Olympic career in Sunday’s Individual Final.
“My God, I’m really happy—possibly the best freestyle I’ve ever done,” enthused Hester after his round. “[Fame] was the best he’s been all week.”
With two-tempi changes on a curve into a double pirouette and two-tempi into one-tempi changes, Hester’s test on the 14-year-old KWPN stallion had a high degree of difficulty. But their coup de maître was the swan song at the end, Mary Hopkin’s Those Were the Days—signalling the end of the test and, possibly, that of Hester’s competitive career.
“Why should I not retire after that?” said Hester. “I’m not sure, I could repeat that again.”
The performance earned Hester and Fame a new personal best score of 85.161. It’s just 1.319 off his career personal best of 86.48, earned on En Vogue at the 2020 LeMieux National Grand Prix Championships, and his best ever Freestyle score at an Olympic Games.
So if Paris is in fact the final Games of his career, he’s ending it on a high note.
“There’s two ways of looking at that,” continued Hester. “Either I’m getting better because today was my best day. Or I should stop there and not watch the downfall.”
But, as one reporter pointed out in the mixed media zone after the Freestyle, Hester “still has youth on his side” by comparison to countryman John Whitaker, who, at age 68, is still competing for his country in show jumping—and winning—at the 5* level. (Whitaker was member of the victorious Nations Cup team at Hickstead the month prior.)
“I do, if you look at it like that,” smiled Hester. “I also have a life and I’ve got other things to do.”
Whether he hangs up his shadbelly or not remains to be seen. But Hester has no intentional of putting away his riding boots.
“I’m not getting out of the sport,” he continued. “I still love training and riding and I love training people. That’s my passion. I’m not one of those [riders] just teaching for the sake of it. I love it. So no way I’m going to stop that.
“But this feeling that you have for days on end before you compete, I can tell you it’s not easy to live with, for any of us. I mean, most mornings at 3:00 am you’re lying with your eyes wide open, thinking about if it’s going to be okay.”
Still, he admits, the adrenaline of Olympic competition is not without its allure.
“I just hope I don’t get stopped for speeding on the way home. I am on a high.”