Oliver Townend and Ballaghmor Class storm into First Place at Badminton
The penultimate rider of the day, Great Britain’s Oliver Townend, stormed into first place riding Ballaghmor Class to finish an exciting two days of dressage at Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials.
Finishing on the best-recorded Badminton dressage score in 18 years of 20.8, Townend talked of how he felt going into the arena and to whether he thought the horse was up for a good test “We think he’s capable, we’ve seen glimpses of it a home but not full time. He worked disappointingly this morning but fantastically yesterday. He’s still a young horse, not yet fully established but he felt very much onside the minute I got on him tonight, he felt better.”
Going into tomorrow’s cross country, he shared his thoughts on how he see’s the day going “It’s going to be a slog, the ground will be testing, a real stamina test with all sorts of angled hedges and offline bends, I think you could have an easy mistake without having a bad round.”
Mark Todd spoke of his best dressage test in 10 years ” it’s nice to know I’m still improving” joked New Zealand’s Todd “I’m very happy with him, it’s his second 4 star, he went to Pau last year he’s got a brilliant temperament, I wasn’t particularly worried about him going in there with the crowds nothing seems to bother him. He’s a big moving horse, quite striking and he’s very nice to train and I felt probably in the last month to 6 weeks he’s really coming into his own.”
Rosalind Canter managed to hold the lead of 23.9 until the final 10 riders entered the arena. Todd’s and Townend’s test meant the Lincolnshire based rider and her horse, Allstar B, finished in third place ahead of tomorrow’s cross country.
On her game plan for tomorrow, Rosalind said “My plan is to go out and mean it, try to jump through the flags and go as fast as I can. I’m not known for being the fastest, however, I’m on a pretty quick, he’s over 17 hands and quite stocky.”
William Fox-Pitt, who got the call up to ride after unexpectedly being placed on the wait list earlier in the year, today rode Fernhill Pimms for the first time at Badminton. After a wrong turn at Burghley and a period of lameness for the horse, a safe test led to a modest finish in 19th position on 27.1.
Last into the arena was GBR rider Tom McEwen on the steel grey, Strike Smartly who were the only combination to received marks of 10, out of all the riders across the two days. Sadly though, due to lower marks in other areas of the test they were unable to ride to victory finishing the day in 15th position.
For an interactive map of tomorrow’s cross country course click here. The first combination out of the day is NZL Caroline Powell riding Up Up and Away at 11.30am.
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