Law's long wait for gold ends at parade in London

Leslie Law's eight-week wait to receive his Olympic gold medal ended at Buckingham Palace yesterday. But the 39-year-old three-day eventer, whose day began with the Olympic "Parade of the Heroes" through London, had scant time to savour his belated glory.

Leslie Law's eight-week wait to receive his Olympic gold medal ended at Buckingham Palace yesterday. But the 39-year-old three-day eventer, whose day began with the Olympic "Parade of the Heroes" through London, had scant time to savour his belated glory.

Law, the 39-year-old son of an HGV driver, left almost as soon as he had received his award from Princess Anne. A riding commitment at Pau, in the south of France, meant he had to take a taxi to an M4 services, where he was to meet team-mates waiting with horseboxes, before travelling across the Channel.

The news that Law, who originally took silver in Athens, had been promoted, arrived two days after his return to Britain, as he was competing at a minor event in Solihull. The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld Britain's claim that Germany's Bettina Hoy had infringed the rules during the show-jumping section, which meant that the team also moved up from bronze to silver.

"I got a call on my mobile from our Performance Manager, Yogi Breisner," Law recalled yesterday. "He said 'Are you sat down?' and I said I was, because I was still on my horse. Then he told me I had been upgraded to gold.

"I had tried not to be too hopeful, in case I was disappointed. But after talking to the British Olympic Association chief executive, Simon Clegg, I thought he seemed confident and so I secretly borrowed a little of that myself. I don't suppose any British Olympic champion has had to wait as long for the medal.

"Winning gold makes me feel that I have achieved at last. I have been much more relaxed and calm in competitions since, and have ridden better for it."

While the Athens Games have had a transforming effect on Law, the impact has been nothing like as dramatic upon Matthew Pinsent, who took his place on route from Green Park to Trafalgar Square alongside the three team-mates with whom he won his fourth rowing gold.

But he conceded that the experience of his most recent Olympic success had been a "magnification" of what had happened before. "It has been bigger than Sydney," Pinsent said.

Although he is no longer an International Olympic Committee member, Pinsent said yesterday that the chairman of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, in recognition of Pinsent's long-term potential, had promised to write to him around Christmas about the possibility of finding him a role in the organisation.