Great Britain’s Carl Hester and Laura Bechtolsheimer got the host nation off to a great start as they ride into the top two places in the Grand Prix on the opening day of dressage at the London 2012 Olympic Games in Greenwich Park today. (View all the individual scores here and the current team standings here.)

But Bechtolsheimer wasn’t content with her score of 76.839 with Mistral Hojris which leaves her just under one percentage point behind her teammate as the second tranche of riders take on the Grand Prix challenge tomorrow.

"I’m pretty gutted for my team that the score didn’t reflect what we thought it would be," said the 27-year-old British rider who took three silver medals at the Alltech Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI) World Equestrian Games in Kentucky two years ago with the same horse. "It is by far the lowest percentage that I’ve had in a few years. I hope it is just because the marks are lower here."

And she might have reason to be concerned: The Germans, whose dominance of this sport at Olympic level includes 12 team and seven individual titles, sent out only one of their team members today. That was Dorothee Schneider who steered her young mare, Diva Royal, through a calm and tension-free test to post a score of 76.77 for third place at this halfway stage of the Grand Prix competition