Eventing cross country held up by falls

The cross country leg of the London 2012 three day eventing competition here on Monday was running over an hour late after the tricky Greenwich Park circuit caused a series of falls. Chief among them was Canadian competitor Hawley Bennett-Awad, who was flung to the ground after her horse, Gin and Juice, came a cropper at the third fence -- the Bandstand Rails. Bennett-Awad was taken away in an ambulance to a local hospital for X-rays, with organisers stressing her injuries were not life threatening. Others who failed to negotiate the twisting course were Alena Tseliapuskina of Belarus, Australian Sam Griffiths and Japanese Buddhist monk Kenki Sato. Britain's Mary King was in the middle of her round when she was held up stopped for a couple of minutes after a fall ahead of her. She reported: "It was quite a nice place to be stopped before the big climb. It didn't make any difference. If anything it helped him (her horse Imperial Cavalier) get up the hill." After putting in a clear round on Rutherglen, Australia's Andrew Hoy, 53 and competing in his seventh Olympic Games, commented: "It's a very, very tough course. "These are not the most difficult of fences that I have ever jumped but the terrain is. You could not settle into a nice rhythm."