H&H Hero to Hero Andrew Hoy and Katy Marchant

KATY: Covid’s been a funny one – I’ve tried to make the best of a bad situation. We were at the World Championships in March 2020, the last qualification event for the Olympics, as Covid kicked in. That was a really stressful period because it was a struggle for me to get qualified as a rider without a strong team, even though I was finishing in the top five. But thankfully we got qualified, because then we came home and went into lockdown.

I was one of those people who said, “They’re never going to cancel the Olympic Games.” But actually, not travelling for a year and having 12 months’ stress-free training has been amazing and I’ve never felt better. What about you?

ANDREW: My horse, Vassily De Lassos, is young in terms of the years left in front of him, so for me I felt it worked to my advantage. It’s given me the opportunity not to be pressured to try to get to a target point as quickly, and time to train step by step in a logical manner.

I‘ve actually ridden horses all my life, my family have horses and my sister Amy Sherrard does a little bit of British Eventing. So to a certain extent, I understand the difference between