I looked at Vassily de Lassos’s FEI record, because about 6 months ago I wondered if he was even being aimed at Paris. Not only are his results spottier than they were prior to Tokyo, he’s also avoided competing at the big competitions. If his website is up to date, he is based in the UK (Leicestershire).
In 2023, at FEI level he only did show jumping in in Italy in April, a 3*-S in Britain in April, and didn’t complete a 3*-L at Millstreet in June, Withdrawn 2nd horse inspection. From that, I assume Vassily was lame and missed the remainder of the season.
His 2024 campaign was:
- 3*-S and 4*-S in April, both at Strzegom in Poland, followed by
- Marbach 4*-L in May, which he won on a 31.0 - but there were only 9 competitors.
- He then retired on XC at a 4*-S in Switzerland in June, and
- his last competition was another 4*-S at Strzegom.
I’m 100% sure Andrew knew exactly what he was doing, and what risk he was taking. Maybe his horse is not very sound (understandable for a 15 year old who’s been going Advanced since he was 8) and he was doing the best he could to check the qualification boxes and picking venues with good footing that the horse liked. Maybe he purposely didn’t want to go head to head with the other Australians, making the selectors have to compare results rather than have black and white “who beat who”. There were a lot of question marks - after all, Andrew and Vassily won the bronze medal at Tokyo 2021; Chris Burton was also taking a chance with his comeback campaign; and so was Shane Rose with his injury and comeback.
