大象传媒

With the British show jumping and dressage teams for Beijing announced this week, I am quietly confident about the chances of Team GB's equestrians at the Olympics.

Starting with the three-day eventers, it was obviously a shock when but I still think we could win the team competition. is in particularly good form with three horses to choose from, all of which could win him the gold.

This will be Mary King's fifth games, so she has the most experience out of the eventers and, like William, her horses are top notch. I spent the day with Mary and her daughter recently while filming for Sportsround, and she sounded really up for another Olympics. Mary is such a professional, she always puts in a great performance.

It'll be a first Olympics for Sharon Hunt and although they're both very experienced in the sport. I think they'll do a great job helping the team to top honours. Zara Phillips' replacement will be announced in around a week's time.

For the show jumpers, I was really pleased to see on the list. He's the nicest man in the sport and has saved his wonderful mare (above, with Tim) for this, his big Olympic dream.

Tim qualified for the this year with Corlato, which was a huge achievement, but he decided to pull her out because he wanted to make sure she was perfect for Hong Kong. He actually told me later that it wasn't a difficult decision because riding at the Olympics is his dream, and he wants to do everything possible to make that happen.

Regarding Ben Maher, I'd heard from a few in the know last week that he might be picked for the team, but I was still a bit surprised to see . He's been doing really well recently with his top ride Rolette and , but still most people outside the sport won't have heard of him. This will be Ben's first Olympics and undoubtedly the biggest event of his career so far.

That just leaves the Whitaker brothers, and . With a collective age of 101 they're absolute legends in the sport. Collectively they've won just about everything there is to win in show jumping, but I know adding an Olympic gold to their collection would be the icing on the cake.

Now to the tough job of predictions... I actually think the show jumping competition is harder to win than the three-day event - there are probably more top combinations capable of winning the show jumping and there's less room for error.

The American-born German team rider would be my favourite for the Individual gold with her amazing ride Shutterfly. The pair won this year's Rolex World Cup final and the horse is one of the best the sport's ever known.

With that in mind Germany will probably win the team gold, too, so I think Team GB will be left battling it out with the USA for silver.

If I had to choose the Brit to win an individual medal it would be John Whitaker on Peppermill but I'd love Tim to bag one too.

On to dressage, and there seems to be more positivity around British dressage.

Many of our riders are regularly getting in the top ten at major international shows now and, as such, I think if all goes well we could sneak team bronze. It would be our first ever Olympic dressage medal which would give the sport a fantastic boost.

Out of the three combinations going I would predict (right) has our best chance of a medal with her fantastic horse, Mistral Hojris. It's her first Olympics but the pair have done a lot together and "Alf", as she calls him, is a class act.

Laura's dad, Dr Wilfried Bechtolsheimer, represented Britain at dressage in the 1950s, so top class sport is obviously in the genes - and one of Laura's brothers, Felix, is .

The other riders are , who's based in Germany, and . I predict Holland's to win the individual gold and Germany to win the team competition.

Finally the para-dressage team has a great mix of youth and experience. It would be easy to be over-confident given their previous success - Team GB's para riders have won every international honour there is. So arguably the likes of and have the most pressure on them out of all the equestrian riders in Hong Kong.

They've been so successful in the past, can they keep up the good work? The answer is hopefully yes. Other nations have been catching up a bit recently, but I still think our team will bag the majority of the golds once again. Good luck to everyone!