"I have originally planned to go to Tokyo, but at the beginning of this year, I had the opportunity to getting back to racing again. When this opportunity came up, as soon as that happened, Eventing did not have the same appeal."

Since retiring, he has been focused on training his 10 racehorses. He gets up at six every day, and starts to work with the first horse at seven.

"Hopefully I can get all those work finished by midday. And then there are always other things to do. Sometimes I still do some teaching for Eventing. It seems I never have enough time. In the afternoon, all the horses come back again and I need to make sure they are OK."

Todd is back in New Zealand for the second biennial EQUITANA Auckland, where his illustrious career was celebrated with a 'this is your life' evening on Thursday.

"It always amazed me how well people received me here," he said. "I haven't spent time in New Zealand in the last 40 years. But I am still a New Zealander. We like our sport heroes. "

He said EQUITANA Auckland, which is mainly focused on education, is great for his country.

"We don't have a huge history and industry around horses. In Europe they have a long history of breeding sport horses. We don't have that here. So I think the idea is great to create education to try to encourage more people to do it better."

Todd, who also won four Badminton titles and five Burghley crowns, has always been inspirational for Chinese eventer Alex Hua Tian, who became the youngest rider in history to compete in the Olympic Games when he was 18 in 2008.

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