It was one of those dressage tests a competitor would just as soon forget: Off to a good start, the horse lost it toward the end of the ride, and there went the score. The test in question might have been forgettable, except for three things: The horse is green at Grand Prix (he only debuted at this level in January); the venue was the 2012 London Olympic Games; and the horse is blind in his left eye 

His name is Santana, and he’s a black 11-year-old Hanoverian stallion owned and ridden by Minna Telde, 39, of Sweden. Telde, the mother of a 14-month-old boy, entrusted her active toddler to her own mother for a few minutes so she could tell The Horse about Santana’s journey to the Olympics.

Telde, a veteran of the 2004 Athens Olympics, has been training Santana since he was three and bought him outright as a 5-year-old. She has brought him up the levels and got him approved as a breeding stallion.

Then "three years ago, he had an accident in the box (stall) overnight," Telde said. "We don’t know what happened. It’s the same box he’s stayed in for years. He had a big scratch on the surface of the eye. It was really swelling and running. We called the vet, of course, and we took him to the hospital