Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics three equestrian disciplines that took place in Hong Kong. Zara Phillips, the reigning world eventing champion and granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, had been included in the squad until her horse, Toytown, sustained an injury, which meant she missed her second successive Olympics. Great Britain qualified three fencers for the fencing competition. Two of these came from the re-allocation of places by the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime (FIE), the governing body for Olympic fencing, after the withdrawal of other fencers. The Great Britain men's team qualified for the men's Olympic field hockey tournament after a must-win game against India in the
Domestication of the horse archaeological sites beyond their center of distribution in the Eurasian steppes and were seen in central Europe, the middle and lower Danube valley, and the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. Evidence of horses in these areas had been rare before, and as numbers increased, larger animals also began to appear in horse remains. This expansion in range was contemporary with the Botai culture, where there are indications that horses were corralled and ridden. This does not necessarily mean that horses were first domesticated in the steppes, but the horse-hunters of the steppes certainly pursued wild horses more than in any other