DESPITE slipping from the bronze medal position to sixth place, the Great Britain dressage team were celebrating their best performance at a World Championships yesterday.

Germany, the favourites, won the gold and the Netherlands took the silver, but Britain finished only seven points behind the United States, the bronze medal-winners. “It shows that Britain is now capable of taking on the best in the sport,” Ferdi Eilberg, the team trainer, said.

While the newcomer to the team, Laura Bechtolsheimer, on Douglas Dorsey, and the second rider, Wayne Channon, on Lorenzo, made an excellent start to the competition on Tuesday, it was Emma Hindle, on Lancet 2, the former Netherlands team horse, who boosted Britain’s score with an outstanding test on Wednesday, which earned a score of 70.45 per cent.

Hindle, 31, a former top junior rider based in Dreieich, Germany, was ecstatic. “When you achieve what you set out to achieve at a championship like this, it is every athlete’s dream,” she said. Since the 2004 Athens Olympic Games - where she underperformed on Wie Weltmeyer, her former top horse - she has been trained by Richard White and has, like many of the Britain riders here, received help from a sports psychologist.

”I’m more secure as a person now - I’m in my focus place,” she said after her test, in which she managed to “blank out” the thousands of noisy spectators lining the imposing main arena. Lancet, a majestic Hannoverian stallion bought two years ago, showed off his light, rhythmic paces throughout an impressive test.

With a solid performance from the last team member, Sandy Phillips, on Lara, all four riders have qualified for the grand-prix special on Friday. Eilberg attributed the team’s improvement (they were tenth at the previous World Championships) partly to more quality horses and partly to the selectors’ policy of sending riders to more international shows, which has raised standards overall.

The Britain three-day event team have long been capable of taking on the best in the sport and set out on Thursday in pursuit of their fifth World Championship team gold medal. William Fox-Pitt and Tamarillo, his 2004 Badminton winner, head the team, which includes Zara Phillips and Toytown, the European champions, Mary King with Call Again Cavalier, on which she was fourth at Burghley last year, and Daisy Dick, making her senior team debut, with Spring Along, on which she was eighth at Badminton.

The course they have to tackle on Saturday, designed by Rudiger Schwarz, is “a true championship course”, in the words of Yogi Breisner, the team manager, and includes three water complexes.

Fox-Pitt, a leading contender for an individual medal, described it as “a tight track” - the 31 fences being in a confined area with lots of turn-backs - but is confident that Tamarillo, an athletic horse, can operate as well here as over Badminton’s more galloping course.

Phillips, who is also capable of winning individual honours, described the course as “big and technical and complicated near the end”. King, who goes first in the team - as she did in 1994, the most recent time the team won the world gold - had mixed feelings after walking the course. “Two-thirds round I thought it was all very jumpable, but the last quarter is a proper championship test,” she said.

Their main rivals are likely to be Germany - determined to avenge the memory of the Athens Olympic Games where a rules infringement by Bettina Hoy cost both the team and individual gold medals. Hoy, who again rides Ringwood Cockatoo, her Olympic horse, heads the team.

Australia, led by Andrew Hoy on Master Monarch, his Kentucky winner, France and New Zealand are leading medal contenders.

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