For the first time in history, a Swiss rider tops the CCI5* Defender Burghley Horse Trials dressage leaderboard as the first phase of the competition comes to an end.
Nadja Minder and Toblerone chose the perfect moment to produce their five-star personal best in the dressage, posting one of only two sub-30 scores to take an overnight lead on 29.5 penalties.
“Dressage doesn’t come naturally for him and I saw his nostrils a couple of times when I first started riding,” Nadja said with a wry smile of the 19-year-old Swiss warmblood, whom she has competed at international level for eight years. “But this was the clear-round dressage we all try to get out of our equine partners, so to do that at Burghley and get rewarded like this, and to put Switzerland up there [on the leaderboard], is pretty cool.”
An FEI World Championship year will always produce a more open field for Defender Burghley, with many of the world’s best equine athletes MIA as a result of their jaunt around Aachen, but Minder & Toblerone are not stranger to 5-star tracks having five previous starts at the level. Nevertheless, the 30-year-old athlete was not expecting to be sat atop the leaderboard after two days of dressage.
“Of course the entries are probably not what they usually are this year, but there are some incredible pairs and to be in this position here now, is very cool and quite unexpected. But I hope it won’t be in the future!”
Sitting closely behind Nadja, just a fraction of a penalty behind the leaders is Great Britain’s Gemma Stevens, riding her Bicton 5-star winner Chilli Knight, with a score of 29.6.
“I’m genuinely in shock,” Gemma laughed, when asked about her result. “I just feel really happy that we’ve been, or actually the horse has been, rewarded because he always tries really hard, and yet it’s always been so hard to get any marks out of the judges.” She said of the 16-year-old British Sport Horse’s performance.
“We’ve usually always been just outside the top 10 or there about, and today I feel like his good training and good brain has been rewarded, which is really nice.”
As the only rider to break into the top three from Friday’s competitors, Tim Price of New Zealand sits in third place overnight with his long-term campaigner, Falco.
“Falco was good, we had a couple of mistakes but I was happy. He was very rideable, therefore it was just down to me to do as good a job as possible, which I didn’t do to the right degree really. A couple of flying changes could have been cleaner, but other than that, it was really good,” Tim said of his result with the 17-year-old Hanoverian.
Producing a score of 30.5 to sit in third place ahead of the cross country, the pair will certainly be the ones to watch tomorrow as the Defender Burghley stalwart is renowned for his swift riding across the famously hilly terrain of Burghley.
“I don’t really know if the cross country course is going to suit him, but I believe in him a lot,” Tim said of the gelding’s first visit to Defender Burghley. “He’s been a long time developing at the top level, and that’s why this year is his first Burghley. At Badminton, he loved the job, so I’m hoping we’ll have a similar experience here, but it’s unchartered territory really.”
Rounding off the top five after dressage are Great Britain’s Max Warburton and Deerpairc Revelry who were nudged out of their Thursday night third place with a score of 31.2 penalties to sit in overnight fourth, and Defender Burghley first timers, Caroline Pamukcu and HSH Blake sit in fifth on a score of 32 penalties.
Tomorrow’s cross country gets underway at 11:30am with 48 combinations tackling Derek di Grazia’s true 5-star track. Featuring 23 fences across 6445 metres of undulating hills, the Defender Burghley 2026 title is most certainly still to play for.
Photo credits DBHT / Peter Nixon
