Maher admits his Tokyo glory was a blur but says it will be ‘hard to top’ as he prepares for the
London International Horse Show
![Showjumper Ben Maher on his golden moment: ‘I just had to take every risk’](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8184c2660712d45a6f91db9e15f31e52346885d6/462_20_2502_1501/master/2502.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=8d80b37bc43a9b39cd0e87c803645758)
It was the achievement he had been working towards since childhood, years of graft and practice distilled into less than a minute in a Tokyo arena. So what does Ben Maher recall about the foot-perfect round that earned him the individual jumping gold at the Olympics in August?
“I don’t really remember anything,” he says, which seems a shame, as his 37.85sec aboard
explosion W was flawless from start to finish. But perhaps it had to be that way. The kid whose enthusiasm for show jumping was fired by a visit to the London International Horse Show decades earlier was still in there somewhere, but his 38-year-old brain flipped to short-term memory only, keeping him in the zone as the fractions ticked away.