Richard John Hanray MEADE

Richard Meade is Britain’s most successful Olympic equestrian competitor. He is the only British rider to have won an individual Olympic gold medal and his total of three gold medals is also the best by a Briton. Meade’s Olympic victories came in the three-day team event in 1968 and 1972 and in the individual event in 1972. He also competed in the 1964 and 1976 Olympics when he matched David Broome’s record of being the only British rider to compete in four Olympic Games. However, Broome reclaimed the record as his own in 1988 when he took part in his fifth Olympics. Apart from his Olympic successes, Meade was a member of the winning team at the 1967 European Championships and the 1970 World Championships and placed second individually in the 1967 and 1970 World Championships. He also won at Badminton in 1969, 1970, and 1982, and won the Burghley Horse Trials in 1964. Meade, whose parents were Joint-Masters of the Corre Hounds in Monmouthshire, was educated at Lancing and Magdalen College, Cambridge, where he took an engineering degree. After Cambridge he served in the 11th Hussars and later worked in the City.