| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
Bettina Hoy with Ringwood Cockatoo, CCI 4* Lexington 2009 |
||
| Equestrian | ||
| Olympic Games | ||
| 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.
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At the 2004 Summer Olympics, held in Athens, Hoy competed in the three-day eventing competition, both as an individual rider and as part of the German team.
After the dressage and cross-country stages, Nicolas Touzaint was leading the field on the third day, Hoy was in second place, France was leading the team event, with Germany in second place as well. In the first round of show jumping, the third and final event, Hoy (the final jumper for the German team, as the best placed German rider) did not knock any fences down, resulting in Germany winning team gold, with Hoy keeping her second place in the individual event. After this round of Show Jumping had finished, the ground jury overruled their own original decision, stating Hoy had crossed the starting line twice, and adding 12 time penalties to her round. As the ground jury did not start the clock as Hoy crossed the starting line, with no intention to approach the first fence, they actually decided and signalled to Hoy that her round had not yet started. There was no benefit for Hoy in that mistake by the ground jury.
Therefore, after a protest by the German team to the appeals panel of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI), stating that Hoy could not have known she had crossed the line when she first did because the clock had not started, the decision to add the time penalties were reversed. The German team was awarded the gold medal.
In the second round of Show Jumping, counting for the individual event only, Hoy had one fence down and two time penalties, adding to six penalties, which still left her in second place. Yet following her round, the final rider, Nicolas Touzaint, still in the lead at that point, added 19 penalties to his result, dropping him to ninth place, with Bettina Hoy also winning individual gold as a result.
However, the British, French and American teams subsequently appealled to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), making use of a formal mistake in the written reasoning given by the appeals panel of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI). The CAS' verdict was that the FEI appeals panel had overstated their jurisdiction in removing the time penalties. The CAS also stated that its decision was not based on any matters of FEI-rules, just on formal jurisdictional reasons. As a result, Hoy and the German team lost their gold medals, Germany getting placed 4th, Hoy 9th. Britain's Leslie Law received the individual gold medal, America's Kimberly Severson the silver and Britain's Pippa Funnell the bronze, Nicolas Touzaint finished 8th. In the team event, France won the gold, Britain the silver and America the bronze.[1]
Bettina and her husband Andrew Hoy, who competed at the Olympic level for Australia, had lived for 12 years in Gloucestershire, at the Gactcombe Park estate of The Princess Royal. The Hoys are the only married couple that has ever competed against each other in different teams for the same Olympic medals. In January 2009 both Hoys moved to the DOKR (Deutsches Olympia Kommitee für Reiterei) in Warendorf, Germany. In June 2010 Andrew Hoy moved to Farley Estate in the UK. He now lives in Wiltshire. In November 2011, Bettina publicly announced their separation. [2]