EQUESTRIAN: Cool Collett takes 2012 chance in her stride
12:00pm Friday 10th February 2012 in Sport
Laura Collett
THIS coming season, Wiltshire eventing star Laura Collett will be aiming to end her sensational rise to prominence by clinching a place at the Olympics.
The 22-year-old, who is based at the Membury Estate near Marlborough, probably counts 2011 as the greatest year of her blossoming career so far.
She managed an eighth-placed finish on her Badminton debut and third at the Barbury Castle Trials, leading to her first appearance for the Great Britain senior squad at August’s European Championships.
If Collett, riding her 13-year-old bay gelding Rayef, can continue to ride the upward curve that has seemingly powered her to the top of the eventing world just over 18 months after entering senior competition, she could find herself with a place at London 2012.
But despite the pressure being firmly switched to on, she is maintaining a relaxed attitude to what could be a monumental campaign.
“There’s massive hype about (the Olympics) being here and when we first won the bid, I loved to think that there was a chance of being in contention but I never really thought there would be,” said Collett.
“To be in 2012 and to have people talking about it is amazing and I just have to take it all as experience.
“If I don’t get there then just being involved in it all has been a great experience.
“Obviously it’s in the back of my head but at the moment, my main priority is to get Rayef fit and well for Badminton and keep all the other horses coming through.
“It’s very easy just to think that there’s one event this year, but there’s an awful lot that goes in to the preparations and it’s almost what you do to get selected that’s the important thing.
“But I just have to keep thinking that there are so many more chances and I guess that for a lot of the older riders, there’s more pressure on them because it might be their last Olympics.
“I’ve told myself there’s not any pressure.”
Despite tasting success at almost every turn last year, Collett’s senior international debut in Germany didn’t go to plan.
She and Rayef were eliminated in the cross-country round in Luhmühlen, Germany.
But the Wiltshire-based starlet says that suffering bitter disappointment at the European Championships may just have been a blessing in an extremely convincing disguise.
“If you look at what happened, with it not going to plan, I think in a funny kind of way I have to take the positives,’’ she explained.
“If that had gone well, the pressure would have been massive and expectations for the Olympics would have been even higher.
“I would have given anything to have had a good debut but that’s the way it went. This way, knowing I have to go out and prove myself and him (Rayef) at Badminton gives me more of an aim, rather than thinking that I’ve got my place.
“Because it was such a massive disappointment after such a good year and my first time with the senior team, I really wanted it to go well but you have to find a positive, otherwise you’ll drive yourself mad.
“You’ll never get anywhere in the eventing world that way because there are so many disappointments.”
Despite taking a relaxed approach to the 2012 campaign, a place at the Olympics is still the big prize in Collett’s eyes and if she tells mum Tracey that she’s going to achieve her dream, then it’s more than likely that she will.
Not that it is down to over-confidence.
“Ever since she took up eventing seriously when she was 12 or 13, she’s always had this canny thing,’’ explained her mother. “She decides she’s going to win something and then does it. It’s not in a big-headed way and she’d only tell me, not anyone else.
“But she says what she’s going to do and then does it.
“She didn’t actually tell me last year that she’d decided that she was going to get on to the senior squad but I worked out that she was going to do it.
“After we got home from Barbury, she did say ‘I did do enough, didn’t I mummy?’ and I said ‘yes, you have.’ “Again, she’d decided and she just has an uncanny knack.”
