Gregory gets new lease of life with Lucky Star
For a husband and wife dressage team, one Olympic dream is over and another is starting again.
Hong Kong dressage rider Aram Gregory will not qualify for the Olympics, but wife Jane (nee Bredin) has been selected to represent Great Britain on Lucky Star, a horse Aram competed with at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.
Jane represented Great Britain during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta but was then absent from international competition for many years because she did not have the horses to compete. But with Lucky Star, she won a competition in May and this month scored a personal best in a grand prix freestyle in Lipica, Slovenia.
'I never set out to be selected,' said Jane, who will compete with teammates Laura Bechtolsheimer and Emma Hindle. 'He is a good horse and just got better and better. It's like a second lease of life with my riding career.'
In what she called a surprise year, Jane began competing with Lucky Star at smaller national shows before moving on to international competitions in Germany. She was 'absolutely astonished' to win the Munich CDI in May.
'It was like winning a gold medal,' she said. 'Winning in Germany is not easy.'
While Aram was born and raised in Hong Kong, Jane has only been to Hong Kong twice - once to meet her husband's mother and the second time was to get married in 2006 after a 20-year relationship.
Jane said she was looking forward to making the trip, calling it a perfect venue choice and a chance to meet her husband's friends and fill in the gaps of her husband's childhood. At the same time she understood her husband's disappointment as he faced both an eligibility (he holds a British passport) and a qualification battle.
'For Aram it's disappointing,' she said. 'It's going to be tough for him. But he has big goals, he wants to win a medal at the Asian Games and with his riding he has a realistic chance. He knows a lot more about the experience now [and while] it's disappointing not to qualify, it's a shove in the right direction.'
With the Olympic qualification deadline only three days away, Aram was unable to qualify with Lascar, who became ill on a flight from the United States to Europe and was not fit enough to qualify.
