A white-gloved finger that Jessica von Bredow-Werndl pushed between the face mask and the shield of her helmet - you could tell how she was feeling.

She wiped a few tears from her eyes, which looked out into the world almost in disbelief.

Shortly afterwards, when she was listening to the German national anthem with the gold medal on her chest, she shook her head twice in a daze.

Evi Simeoni

Sports editor.

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She looked cautiously to the left and right, as if to check whether all the surroundings that she had just seen clearly were still there.

Everything about her seemed to ask: Really?

I am an Olympic champion?

Like a sleeper who has dreamed something wonderful and is now a little afraid of waking up.

But it's true: Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and her Trakehner mare Dalera won the individual finals in Tokyo, with the monumental score of 91.732 percentage points, and is now at the top - more than the 35-year-old Bavarian from Aubenhausen near Rosenheim can be in the Not reaching the world of dressage.

One can only try to repeat it, like Isabell Werth, who is 17 years older and won seven Olympic gold medals, one of which was in the individual ranking in 1996.

"I am grateful to you from the bottom of my heart"

After the joint team gold on Tuesday, this time it was silver for the great champion from Rheinberg with her chestnut mare Bella Rose, the fifth silver, also a strong piece in her collection.

Although: Winning would have been even better, she did not hide that.

And she had tried everything to make it.

For a short time after her freestyle she even believed that she could have trumped her teammate after all, she said, but then with 89.657 percentage points she was a bit behind the competitor from Bavaria.

"We accept the result like that," she said.

"C'est la vie."

Yes it is. Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and Dalera were better, they delivered an almost perfect freestyle. The lightness of Tokyo is the result of years of hard work, and Isabell Werth was also involved in this development. When Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and her brother Benjamin landed in a sporty dead end after their junior years, she helped them out again as a trainer. "I am grateful to you from the bottom of my heart, even if you don't want to hear it," she said on Wednesday to the teacher who had now beaten her.

Actually, two Olympic Games would have been necessary to properly celebrate Dalera and Bella Rose, these two exorbitantly talented mares. Each of them and their rider would have had what it takes to be an Olympic dream couple, each could have shaped its own era. That is why, if it was a question of boxing and not of the elegant dressage sport, this final would possibly be called the battle of the century.

“A terrific fight,” said national coach Monica Theodorescu. Third place, a little more earthly, went to the British Charlotte Dujardin, Olympic champion of 2012 and 2016, with her chestnut gelding Gio and 88.543 percentage points. Only the third of the German gold team, Dorothee Schneider from Framersheim, could not keep up with the highs. Your performance with the gelding Showtime ended in a fiasco. "Too much risk," she said. The two landed in 15th place with 79.432 points.

The draw wanted Jessica von Bredow-Werndl, who had already achieved the highest marks in the qualification and in the team competition, to submit. To the music of “La La Land” the two celebrated each other as if they had actually disappeared into their own world. Immersed in the here and now, in their golden tunnel, they lined up one extreme difficulty after the next. "I've noticed that I can take more and more risks," she said. "Sometimes I felt like I was riding a fire dance, on a knife's edge," she said. “I asked myself: how far can I go? But it all worked out. "

Not that Isabell Werth gave her anything with Bella Rose. Shortly afterwards, these two also set off fireworks to mark Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”. The passage and piaffe of the chestnut mare deserved a standing ovation. And when the horse turned 360 degrees at the very end in the last piaffe, as if it could sparkle in all directions, there was hardly an eyewitness who did not have goose bumps.

It was small technical discrepancies, barely noticeable for laypeople, that made the difference and a basic problem that cannot be resolved is that Bella Rose is not able to step with the hindquarters as far under the body as Dalera at a strong trot. But what does that mean in view of their great class? "It was her best freestyle," said Isabell Werth. “I don't know what else I could have done better.” Regardless of the medal that came out of it - she was just happy about the exam, and you could see it in her: Again the overwhelmed radiance with which she was already during the day had previously ridden out of the arena in the Grand Prix Special, and this time long before the final greeting line-up.

Bella Rose, who only recovered from a dramatic injury in 2018, finally made her big appearance at the age of 17. It was, explained Isabell Werth, the last start of the horse at an international championship. She is now looking for a suitable opportunity for her glamorous farewell. Which does not mean that Isabell would stop at the age of 52. She has enough young horses in the stable to keep riding. "It'll be a few more years," she said. And in three years, the Olympia 2024 will take place in Paris.