Olympic hopeful lays down the Gauntlett at Chatsworth

NICK Gauntlett will be keeping his fingers crossed the British selectors were paying attention after a superb dressage performance at the International Horse Trials in Chatsworth gave him the overnight lead.

Gauntlett, currently ranked 19th in the world, accrued 41.7 points riding Chilli Morning to give him a 1.2 point lead over Australia's Olympic team silver medallist Clayton Fredericks, who is riding Bendigo III.

Sam Griffiths and Kitty King currently share third place after both collecting 43.8 points on Happy Times and Boondoggle respectively.

But in was Gauntlett, 21st at Badminton two weeks ago, who turned out the performance of the day and believes he has taken one step closer to his London 2012 Olympic dream.

"Coming here I was hoping to do quite well," he said. "Chilli Morning is a lovely horse and I've had him since he's a five-year-old. We have been trying to bring him on and work him towards to the London Olympics.

"We knew we had to put in some good performances to try and get some more attention and hopefully increase our profile sufficiently in time for the Olympics.

"He's a lovely horse and he goes really well so I see no reason why he can't continue like this tomorrow."