Morning:
8°c
She was almost last, but by no means least. In the sheeting Hong Kong rain, Britain's Mary King, 69th out of 70 competitors in the riding order, this morning rode a thrilling, near-perfect circuit of the cross-country course to haul Team GB - and herself - back into the medal zone.
Two-thirds of the way through what is no longer called the three-day event, Britain is now at bronze in the team competition, behind Germany and Australia, with hopes that a good showjumping performance tomorrow can lift it further.
Team GB's road to recovery was the twisting 4,560-metre course at the Beas River Country Club, fifteen miles north of Hong Kong's towers and more than a thousand from the main action in Beijing, a city deemed too diseased to host championship horses.
After a deeply disappointing Sunday, Britain's William Fox-Pitt admitted this morning that the effort the eventing team needed to make was "not superhuman, but not far off." That turned out to be a fair prediction of what followed.
On a day like this, and a course like this, nobody was ever going to manage the three-odd miles and 29 fences in the eight minutes recommended.
But Fox-Pitt, on Parkmore Ed, made up for his 34th place in the dressage yesterday with a seriously impressive ride, recording the second-fastest time of 8min 25secs and a penalty of just 10 points. His individual ranking is now 14th.
This, however, is the only Olympic sport where women compete alongside, and on equal terms with, men. On Call Again Cavalier, it was King, a former butcher's shop assistant from Devon, who saved Britain from disaster yesterday. And today it was King, after a ride of 8min 43secs and 18 penalty points, who brought herself up from overall ninth to fifth, the highest-ranking British rider, and the serious prospect of an individual medal.
Roared on by members of Hong Kong's massive expat British contingent, who lined the sodden course, King finished with her hand over her mouth in excitementa doily of white sweat hanging down the horse's front.
"We're all over the moon," she said afterwards. "We have pulled back up to a real competitive place."
The weather, if not ideal for spectators, was probably the best of the available options for a northern European horse. What was, a few days ago, a near-typhoon, threatening to halt the competition, diminished to a drizzle then ended as a deluge, mitigating some of the fierce 32-degree heat which had been the competitors' most serious concern.
"You don't notice the rain," said King. "It goes so fast. It was a very busy course to ride, and you're just trying to get round."
Tina Cook, on Miners Frolic. and Daisy Dick. on Spring Along, also turned in strong performances and pulled themselves up overall from 13th to 10th, and from 37th to 24th, respectively.
"We were completely blessed with the weather," said Dick. "Everything was coming at you at a thousand miles an hour, but Spring Along was fantastic."
The Australians, meanwhile, the big winners of yesterday's dressage, lost ground, ceding first place to Germany.
Nine of the starters - almost a tenth of the field - were eliminated after falling in this most dangerous and testing of events. Alex Hua Tian, China's first ever competitor, was one of them, out after falling at the Yu Ta Hai Rockery. "I am so disappointed with myself," he said, miserably. "It was completely my fault. I can't believe it has ended with a fall."
The Hong Kong Olympic experience is very different from the Beijing one. This "special administrative region" is the only place in China that holds mass demonstrations to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It is, indeed, the only place that is allowed to.
There have been no major demos here this week - but in a place still unquestionably marked by its colonial heritage, with its Leyland double-decker buses and its British-style street signs with the names given first in English, Olympic fever is noticeably less pronounced.
Yesterday in Victoria Park, the lawns were filled, as usual, with thousands of Indonesian maids on their Sunday off. But an area where the locals could come to watch the proceedings in Beijing on a big screen was almost deserted.
The big Hong Kong story this morning is a fatal building fire, not the Olympics. And although Hong Kong is horse-mad, some locals, accustomed to the sugar rush of the racecourse, have complained that the equestrian events are "boring."
But as they go into the final day, less than the cost of a single mistake separates the teams here. And Britain's medalwinning canter 1200 miles to the north is being replicated in Hong Kong. That, for now, sounds exciting enough.
