On Saturday evening at the Agria FEI Eventing European Championships at Blenheim, the Swiss team were in bronze – on the brink of winning their first eventing medal since 1981 – and Andrew Nicholson, their cross-country coach and a vital cog in their march towards the top end of the sport, was a happy man.
It didn’t quite work out for them on Sunday: a medal slipped out of their grasp and they finished in that ultimately annoying position – where you have to pretend to be delighted but are actually gutted – fourth. But Andrew was still happy; he is proud of the Swiss and the progress they have made, and thoroughly enjoys being part of the red-coated support squad.
Andrew knows Blenheim very well, of course. He won the second-ever running of the CCI4*-L here in 1991 on Park Grove, took the 2012 eight- and nine-year-old CCI4*-S on Quimbo, has ridden dozens of horses round the track here over the years, and even announced his (partial) retirement during the event in 2021. There’s no one better to appraise Mark Phillips’ cross-country course and how it rode:
Nadja Minder and Toblerone. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
“I thought he had done a very good job when I walked it,” Andrew began. “I liked the way he got you into a good, quick rhythm straight off. The first two minutes were fast, but there were enough twists and turns that they weren’t just galloping and jumping. Then suddenly they got to the Dew Pond and had to take the speed off, have the suppleness, a bit of finesse, to jump the pinned fences down to the water.
And then from then on, for two minutes, it was intense. I thought what Mark did in the main arena – a big box, then five good, big strides to two angled fences, gave riders good preparation for the fences in front of the palace – the two big corners. They were the ones that everyone was talking about beforehand; in total there was something like seven jumping efforts in a minute, but people made a very good job of them.
And then, after so many jumps in a short space of time, you were going to be down on the clock. Do you then speed up a bit? Quite a few riders were on time going into the first main water crossing, but that makes me think that they had had to make some time up. It’s 60, 70m across the water – there, and on the way back. There’s no way you can make up time from then on. Then, coming out of the water for the first time, they had to push up the big hill, which makes the combinations on the other side of the water difficult. It’s just when the horses are starting to tire.
I think that’s probably why the corner in the water [20abc] caused so much trouble, and the oxer to the corner [22ab].
For me, the only thing I would think Mark didn’t get right was the coffin [25abc] – the long route was too easy. Someone told me a couple of people did the direct route, and I can’t understand why you’d even try. I thought the long route was much easier. It seemed to be incredibly smooth and pretty much risk-free.
If you could get to there, as long as you used your head, you’d get home.”
Andrew thought it was an exciting day’s cross-country [yes indeed…] and “all credit to Mark, and to the riders, who rode it positively and well.”
You can view a guide to the course below or here on CrossCountry App:
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“It was a great day for the sport, I think. When you see Laura and Michi, two of the best riders in the world, going cross-country on two of the best horses, and they are working [hard]… I thought Michi would have been inside the time. I couldn’t believe when he was down on the clock at six minutes. He looked to be cutting the corners, turning up tight, everything smooth. And Chipmunk might be getting older, but he can gallop. It was good cross-country. It doesn’t matter at all that no one got the time. The horses weren’t finishing really tired, they looked good. I thought it was very well done.”
Switzerland’s Robin Godel and Global DHI. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Indeed, it was a course that may have given off an innocuous vibe, but as is the case with most smartly-designed courses, the devil lies in the details. A course that can play influence both on the clock and in the form of scattered problems, rather than one standout “bogey” fence, has done its tricks well.
While some questions — the first combination at 6, the Suregrow Dew Pond, (which Tilly Berendt described as “dimensionally diminutive pair of skinny triple-bars with a little pond between them, but crucially, the first element was set on top of a short, sharp mound, and because there had been nothing earlier on in the track to force riders to finetune their horses’ adjustability, many found that their mounts came up the mound and then ground to a halt, startled to find a speedbump suddenly in front of them”) and fence 22, the FEI Mounds, were two particularly influential questions, but in reality a few fences caused trouble for multiple pairs. In all, 52% of the starters on cross-country jumped clear.
For Andrew, the future for the Swiss is bright, and weekends like this, while the result may not have been the ideal, are demonstrative of this.
Melody Johner and Erin, whom Andrew rode up to three-star level, produced one of the best and fastest rounds of the day, and Andrew was delighted with both Melody and Nadja Minder, who was the pathfinder for the whole competition on Toblerone.
“Melody talks away to Erin,” he grins, “and he likes it. Both girls did an unbelievable job. I was disappointed for Robin [Godel, who had 20 penalties on Global DHI], but they all rode very well and they are getting more experience all the time at these big events.”
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