- Another horse riding drama instead of happy ending in the Olympic quintet
When Annika Zillekens experiences a déjà vu in the obstacle course at Versailles, her teammate Rebecca Langrehr is sitting on a side bench, crying bitterly. Three years after the scandal in Tokyo, the German pentathletes are once again experiencing a horse drama at the Olympics in Paris and missing out on the medal final. Ironically, it's the discipline of show jumping, which is in the Modern Pentathlon program for the last time at the Summer Games and caused so much controversy and animal cruelty accusations in 2021, that is once again the Germans' downfall.
Zillekens had hoped to make peace with the Olympics in Paris. In Tokyo, she gained notoriety under her then name Schleu when her horse completely refused to move, and she desperately tried to make it go on with whip strikes, crying. The images went viral, and Zillekens and coach Kim Raisner were reported for animal cruelty, with cases later dropped. Zillekens even received death threats.
Two seconds away from a Hollywood story
The team wanted to put all that behind them and make positive news in the picturesque setting of the Château de Versailles. But when Zillekens started with Arezzo de Riverland, she stumbled heavily at the fifth obstacle, and the horse refused. "At that point, my competition briefly fell apart," she said later. She finished the course but incurred many penalty points. She couldn't make it into the top nine of her semifinal in the bonus fencing, swimming, or laser run. Bitterly, as the 10th place, she missed the next round by just two seconds.
This meant the experienced athlete missed the Sunday final and a potential redemption ending to her career, as she's retiring from competitive sports to become a teacher. "That wasn't the happy ending and Hollywood story I had hoped for," Zillekens said, tears in her eyes. "But compared to Tokyo, I've made my peace with it." Then she went to find her friends, family, and her little daughter Frieda among the spectators in the gardens of Versailles to cheer on the men in their evening final.
German pentathletes seem cursed
In 2008, Lena Schöneborn won Olympic gold in Beijing - since then, it's been a curse for the Germans in riding. "I'm so disappointed that we can't show at the Olympics that we're good riders," Zillekens lamented. Time and again, problems with the animals have cost the athletes success, and the lowest point was reached in Tokyo. Knowing the special tension, the pentathletes even brought a DOSB sports psychologist to Versailles on the second-to-last Olympic day for support.
And then, Langrehr's competition ended before it even started. The Berliner fell with her horse on the warm-up area and hit her head hard. The horse was immediately taken out of the race, but it was too late for a horse exchange. A German protest was rejected. The 26-year-old broke down in tears, with many staff members consoling her.
Confusion over jury decision
"The horse seemed fine to me. I asked the owner and he said everything was good," Langrehr recounted afterward. The behavior of the responsible veterinarian left the team puzzled. "We never saw her check the horse at all," said Langrehr. She herself was examined, "everything was fine."
With zero out of 300 possible points in riding, Langrehr had no chance of making it into the top nine athletes. She came last in her semifinal. "I'm very shaken, disappointed, and sad," she said. However, she doesn't want to let this episode take away her joy in pentathlon - and she's already looking ahead to 2028 in Los Angeles. "I want to achieve at least one more good Olympics."
Other teams might have benefited from the Germans' misfortunes in show jumping, as the discipline's exclusion from the Olympics after Paris likely reduces their competition. Despite the other pentathletes' concerns, the jury made a decision they believed was best for the welfare of Langrehr's horse.
