The remarkable fall and rise of Britain’s golden rider Nick Skelton

Nick Skelton broke his neck in 2000 and was told by doctors that he would never be able to ride again.

Fast forward 16 years and the Warwickshire-born horse enthusiast is an Olympic champion in his own right, having earlier won a team gold in London 2012.

It’s not been an easy ride to the top.

Skelton first took to the saddle aged just 18 months on the back of a Welsh Mountain pony called Oxon. Riding became Skelton’s passion and he left school with few qualifications in order to work full-time for trainers Ted and Liz Edgar.

A temper problem has dogged Skelton’s career and the first public problems surfaced when he was just 21 years old at a dinner party in Geneva, where his uncompromising attitude resulted in him being knocked unconscious by veteran rider Harvey Smith.

There was more to come, with Skelton scrapping with his mentor Ted Edgar in a Gothenburg hotel. "I punched him twice, a left and a right,” Skelton explained years later. “We ended up brawling on the floor in reception and for good measure I gave him a kick while we were down. At that point the hotel staff threw me out."

Trouble and knuckle-raps from the riding authorities continued to follow Skelton, details of which can be found in his entertaining and brilliantly named autobiography: 'Only Falls and Horses'.

In 2000 Skelton fell off his ride at the Park Gate Horse Trials.

Skelton soon discovered that he had suffered a near-fatal break to his spine and doctors told him he could never ride a horse again, warning him that one more fall would result in death.

But, after a brief retirement and a quick recovery, Skelton made his comeback before the Athens Olympics and has cleaned up his act since.

Skelton required a hip replacement in 2011 but struck gold in the team jumping.

A gold medal in the team event in 2012 appeared to be his swansong, but four years later Skelton returned to Rio for his seventh Olympic Games.

Rio gold is a glorious high point of a sometimes troubled but often brilliant career, and Skelton can be forgiven for the moment he shed a tear on the podium as the national anthem played.