Bettina Hoy
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| Olympic medal record | |||
| Equestrian | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | 1984 Los Angeles | Three-day event team | |
Bettina Hoy (born Bettina Overesch on November 7, 1962) is an Olympic-level equestrian rider, who competes for Germany in Eventing competitions. Bettina competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics and in the 2004 Summer Olympics.
[edit] Olympic Summer Games 2004 in Athens
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In the Summer Olympics 2004 Equestrian Championship, Hoy became sort of a "Don Quixote" of that summers' event, a tragical figure. She finished the Three-Day-Event as the best overall rider. Unintentionally, she passed the start line after a brief warming-up. The clock did not start to run by mistake, and Hoy could not realize her mistake as no running clock set in at the indicator panel. She crossed the start line repeatedly then, assuming her very first attempt for glory would begin. According to the rules, the clock would have had to set in after she crossed the start line the very first time she had passed it. She managed to concede no mistakes on the course and achieved a new best time, ranking the German team 1st in the team scoring table and Hoy first in the individual performance.
After a protest by the French Olympics team, the gold medal was stripped from Germanys' shoulders and Hoys' run was disallowed. The German team received a penalty of 12 points for a violation of the time limit. After an appeal by the German Olympics team, the Gold Medal was re-awarded to the German team and Hoy. The opinion of the court was, that the team may not be punished for the mistaken clocking and judged that Hoy's achievements complied with the standards.
After a second objection by the Olympic delegations of France, the United Kingdom and the US, the decision about the case was handed to the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sports). The court decided very briefly after the end of the Three-Day-Event, that Germany has to be disallowed the gold medals. The courts' decision sparked an outcry in Germany as well in a lot of other countries Olympic Delegations that took part in the competition, most of them stating that an athlete cannot be blamed for mistakes in timekeeping and that courts should not have the power to disallow gold medals if the local organization fails. The bitter aftertaste remains, that courts might interpret more out of a competition than the common people do and that articles in books count more than a sportlers' honestly achieved fame. Hoy vowed she still feels as a winner nowadays, so does her husband, the Australian rider that took part in the same event, Andrew Hoy. Hoy also congratulated all other riders and teams for their medals, as she felt they did the necessary thing to make their countries proud of their accomplishments. The court reasoned their judgement by stating that the FEI arbitral court was not in any position to allow or disallow any gold medal to neither the German team, nor Hoy. Furthermore, the result called by the ground jury would have had to withstand the cause of events, even though the basical error in timekeeping was in their direct responsibility.
Hoy came in 9th then after the ruling and therefore caused the setback of the German team from Gold to an unappreciative 4th place. Regardless, Hoy was celebrated as "Gold Medal Winner of the Hearts" (literally) and gained huge attention by the German media, starring in three of the major 5 TV shows briefly after the Olympics. She sometimes joked she would have never gained such fame if she would have won the Gold - something rather regular for the German public if it comes to equestrian sports as they are widespreadly dominating it, even though the German team did not manage to score big yet in three-day-events ever since two decades.
After the Olympics 2004, a small, gold-plated statue was modeled for remarking her success and can be seen in the city hall of her birth-town of Rheine in Northern Westphalia.
[edit] Personal
She lives in the United Kingdom, with her husband Andrew Hoy, who competes at the Olympic level for Australia. The Hoys are a rare married couple competing in the same Olympic discipline for different teams in the same year (see also Raphael Poiree and Liv Grete Skjelbreid Poirée).
