Leaderboard Reshuffle After Dressage at Mars Badminton Horse Trials
There’s a reshuffle of the leaderboard after the completion of the dressage phase at the Mars Badminton Horse Trials, and a British top 10, to boot. Amy Powell reports on the action.
It was a steady day of dressage up to the afternoon coffee break, where only Ros Canter troubled the top three in the first session of the day posting a score of 25.3 with her Badminton 2023 winner and Paris Olympics team gold medalist, Lordships Graffalo. Like teammate Tom McEwen yesterday, she too struggled to produce a faultless test and ‘Walter’ showed some costly greenness in the flying changes, which marred the otherwise fluid and relaxed test. Still, the score was enough to put them into provisional second.
As the day drew on, it was down to the final section of competitors to produce the goods and keep the Badminton competition alive. First in was Oliver Townend on his second ride, the 11-year-old Cooley Rosalent, producing the faultless test that neither of his British compatriots could muster for a score of 21.1, an international career best for the Irish Sports Horse mare. “I was very happy with her, she went in [to the arena] and brightened up with the crowd, she’s still relatively babyish despite what she’s done”, he said referring to her Kentucky 5* 2024 win and four other 5* starts in her young career, “it was a big atmosphere and a big day for her, but she coped brilliantly.”
Having been unseated from the overnight top spot, Tom McEwen managed to maintain second place going into tomorrow’s cross country on board his Paris Olympic gold medal-winning mount, JL Dublin. But the top three hadn’t been cemented for long when Gemma Stevens entered the Iconic Badminton arena straight after Oliver and nipped into third place on Jalapeno, half sister to her first mount, Chilli Knight, scoring, 24.7, which was good enough to see them go into third place.
“It hasn’t been an easy preparation with her and she’s definitely been on edge, which is slightly new territory for me,” Gemma said of the 17-year-old British bred mare, “normally she’s very relaxed and almost lazy, but she’s been seriously hot to trot the last few days! So I had to ride her very slightly, tentatively, but she was still amazing and pulled off a serious test.”
Looking ahead to tomorrow’s cross country day, the action starts at 11:30, but we have to wait until 16:40 to see the dressage leader, Oliver, heading out on course. Gemma Stevens will leave the start box directly after and be sure to watch Tom McEwen at on course at 13:40, and Ros Canter, now in fourth place, at 14:24. Other notable ones to watch will be fifth placed Emily King and Valmy Biats at 13:52 and Britain’s Harry Meade on either of his rides, Superstition (11:56) or Cavalier Crystal (16:32), following his achievement of being the only rider to complete cross country under the optimum time at Kentucky (just two weeks ago), a feat he managed not only once, but twice!
Facing a fair and flowing but big and imposing track designed by Eric Winter with a lengthy optimum time of 11:40, it’s certainly going to be a tough but fascinating day of watching (just maybe through my fingers).
