(Excerpt from Horse Sport)

Forty years after Canada earned its only Olympic Team show jumping medal, the Canadian team stood on the medal podium today.

Canada’s team captain, Ian Millar, was daring last night in predicting a medal today. After the loss of Mac Cone’s mount, Ole, Canada lost the luxury of a drop score, in a contest where the best three scores count. But, the remaining three team members met the pressure head-on. Jill Henselwood on Special Ed produced the first faultless round of the day, after many of world’s top riders had incurred double-digit scores. Lamaze and Hickstead had an uncharacteristic single knockdown, still a strong score in tonight’s competition. Millar and In Style entered the ring under tremendous pressure and delivered a perfect clean round.

This is Ian Millar's ninth Olympic Games and having never earned a medal, he was elated, but emotional. He lost his wife, Lynn, to cancer in March and said, “This one’s for Lynn.”

His 34-year-old son, Jonathon, and 31-year-old daughter, Amy, were both in Hong Kong with him. His goal now is for them to be his team-mates in 2012.

Forty years ago, almost to the day, Canada fielded its first-ever Olympic show jumping team. Jim Elder, Tom Gayford and Jim Day brought home Canada’s only gold medal of those Games.

“It’s been a bit of a drought,” Millar admitted, “but we knew coming here we had the team that could do it if things went our way.” Canada has not finished better than ninth in Olympic team show jumping since a fourth-place finish in 1988.