In the sport of eventing, the reward for giving absolutely everything is to be asked to do just a little bit more. That is what makes the final day of the Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials one of horrific tension, and in the end, ungovernable emotion. It is on this last day that the horses who have already given their all, and riders that have already given their all, come back to see if it was worth it.

After the beauties and intricacies of dressage comes the single most dangerous sporting pursuit on the planet: that of riding horses across four miles of country and 29 fences designed to test agility, speed and courage to the very bottom. And as always, the cross-country day drew its dole of tears.

Horses have it in them to humiliate the greatest. Crashing to the ground in front of massive numbers of people - and this is one of the best-attended sporting events in the world - is the most dreadful thing. Every fall brings an end to hope and to months, and years, of work, and every expression of sympathy makes it worse.

And so such great names from the sport as Pippa Funnell and Andrew Hoy were sent flying at the same fence in quick succession, and it was a fence you would expect them to take in their sleep. William Fox-Pitt had a run-out - that is to say, a refusal - when he looked all over the winner. But these courses are designed to detect the smallest flaw: Badminton looks almost absurdly easy, provided that horse and rider get absolutely everything right. Alas, it instantly becomes very difficult indeed once you have made the tiniest error.

This year's course was particularly searching, and the leaders after the dressage soon found themselves swept away. This was a competition to be won by a jumper. And after the dramas of cross country, we got to the last phase: the niggly, nit-picky discipline of showjumping, with its precision, its related distances and poles that go a-tumbling if you should happen to breathe on them.

And a winding, difficult course it was, asking question after question, and clear rounds were the devil to come by: there were only four in the entire day. But imagine you are a horse that has faced all the speed and thrill and devil of cross-country, and now you must turn into somebody else. You must become a little sobersides, an equine geek, and count every step and every inch. You can't go quick because you'll knock the fences, you must sit back on your hocks, tuck your front paws under your belly and jump as if the poles were red hot, and you are emotionally and physically shattered after the demands of the previous three days. What's more, so is your rider.

They jump in reverse order, just to crank up the drama. The last four were covered by a single fence. Nobody could afford to knock a fence down, and yet they all did. Each one came in and tried to tiptoe around the course; each one almost a parody of concentration, each one playing the big hand for the big pot, the prize of a lifetime.

Fox-Pitt, on his second horse, hit a fence and knew he could still win. Polly Stockton hit three and knew she couldn't. Off went Lucy Wiegersma, last but one, and clonked the second fence. But she made the other 11 without error and kissed Shaabrak first, her mother and father second, as is only right. So that left Nicolas Touzaint, of France.

He could hit a fence and still win, but mon Dieu, he hit it good and early.

What must it be like, do you think, to have glory within your grasp, knowing that the smallest slip could see it go, that a jump containing an error of half an inch could cause a pole to shift, and the shallow cups that hold it would refuse to cling on to it, leaving you cantering on with the death-rattle of colliding pole behind you? There is a Centre Court silence across the show-ring at these times, a pin-drop hush (save for the universal sigh and the rattle of poles) that lasts a minute and more, so that you can hear the proud hooves in the receiving earth.

And then the finish: and Touzaint was home. He turned at once into the Three Musketeers, all of them at once, and gave us a wild and glorious galloping series of laps of honour, jumped off, buried his face in his horse's fine and sweating neck and sobbed his Gallic heart out. It has been a perfect three days of sport, whether you look for beauty, skill, courage, or mere drama. You get the lot at Badminton.

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