A Reward for Work Well Done: The Defender Burghley Friday Debrief

Defender Burghley has always felt like the event at which a horse who might not excel on the flat can triumph – so fiercely influential is the cross-country test, and so complete the stamina challenge, that sea changes are inevitable. That’s not to diminish, of course, the very good dressage that frequently happens here: the records set and broken (18.7 from Tim Price and Vitali back in 2023, in case you need a refresher); the season-long marginal and sometimes maximal gains made in training.

But this week’s field doesn’t necessarily have any of those dressage outlier types; there is no Lordships Graffalo; Ballaghmor Class is only here this week to retire in the main arena; Vitali is sitting this week out and letting his stablemates have a go in the spotlight instead. There are plenty of very capable, very competitive first-phase pairs, but nothing that would have leapt off the page as an out-and-out, barring-acts-of-god sort of leader type.

Which is why it’s actually really quite lovely, and ineffably heartening, to see two horses in the top spots who aren’t flashy; horses who haven’t, necessarily, historically found this phase the easiest; horses who, yesterday, cantered up the centre line and committed to giving the test everything they had. Riders, too, who put their faith in training, and in correct, accurate, sympathetic riding. The things that should win out, really.

After the second day of competition, our dressage leader is still Switzerland’s Nadja Minder and her former Young Rider mount, the nineteen-year-old Toblerone, who posted a 29.5 that proved impassable today. Just behind them on a score of 29.6 is Gemma Stevens, the only other rider to go sub-30, aboard the 2021 Bicton CCI5* winner Chilli Knight, himself a spritely sixteen years old.

“I’m genuinely in shock – like, really in shock,” laughs Gemma. “I feel really happy that the horse has been rewarded for being such a good boy, because he always tries really hard and it’s always been so hard to get any marks out of the judges. We’ve always been just outside the top ten, never really there or thereabouts, and this week I feel like his good training and his good brain has been rewarded.”

For Nadja, the feeling is much the same.

“He’s very special, but explaining dressage to him wasn’t always very easy. I saw his nostrils a couple of times when I started riding him, and he was cheeky, but he showed me the right way to train him and the right way to go. There were no shortcuts with him because he wouldn’t allow it and he could be quite naughty. I owe a lot to this horse, really.”

For our best-placed pair today, it’s also been something of a long game to get the best work, even if today’s score is a touch above their usual mid-to-high-20s results. Tim Price and his 2021 Pau winner Falco last did a test just over three weeks ago, at the FEI World Championships in Aachen, and on that occasion it slightly fell apart at the seams – today, though, despite the bluster, the sometimes mercurial seventeen-year-old was back on form.

“We had a couple of mistakes, which was frustrating, but I was very happy because in Germany he was basically unrideable,” says Tim, who sits third overnight on a score of 30.5. “He was so fresh and on his ear in the dressage, and I pledged not to make that mistake again.”

To burn through some of the excess energy, Tim gave the gelding a cross-country schooling session yesterday, rather than drilling the flatwork.

“It was just to alleviate a bit of energy, and so he was very rideable, and 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 better and cleaner, but other than that, he was really good.”

Though Falco has a wealth of five-star and championship experience, he’s never yet tackled a Burghley.

“I do believe in him a lot, but he’s been a long time in developing at the top level,” says Tim, who rides him for London Olympics course designer Sue Benson. “This year was his first Badminton [he was second]; prior to that, he’d done a Pau and a Maryland, and prior to that we made a lot of mistakes as we came up to Advanced. But he was always a good learner, and we’d go home and do our homework and we’d never make the same mistake again.”

It has been, he says, “a funny old journey, but he’s a super intelligent, overgrown-pony-type-mentality horse, and he’s impressed me at Maryland and Badminton. This is uncharted territory, really, but I want to go out of the start box and have him having fun, and then see if we can take the course on in its entirety.”

It’s not, perhaps, the most conventional approach to complete a World Championships and then come to a five-star just three weeks later, but Tim made the call to do so for several reasons.

“It’s not what we tend to do, but when you look at the plan with these horses over a five-year period, there’s often seasons when they don’t do anything in the spring and then just aim for a team commitment in the autumn,” he says. “So if you look at that bigger picture, he’s actually got very low mileage on his legs, and he’s very easy on his body – he does everything for enjoyment. He’s also seventeen now, and while it would be great if he was back next year, he does need to have some more teeth out, and that might be a reason for us to pull back on his top-level career, so we do just want to have some fun with him. All the stars need to align; he’s only 27% Thoroughbred, so if the ground was soft, I wouldn’t ask an exponent of jumping like him to do it out of that sort of ground for twelve minutes. But he’s in good form, the going is good for him, and often, the preparation for an event is where you put the most wear and tear on their bodies – in this situation, we’re using one preparation twice, especially as I didn’t go fast at Aachen.”

Falco’s good result today now gives Tim two strong competitive shouts tomorrow: he also sits sixth after dressage with the former Georgie Campbell ride Global Quest, who posted a 32.1 yesterday morning.

Great Britain’s Max Warburton and Deerpairc Revelry, third yesterday on their score of 31.2, now sit fourth at the end of the first phase, while Caroline Pamukcu slots into fourth on the eleven-year-old HSH Blake with a 32.

This gives her, too, two horses well in contention in her Burghley debut; her first ride, HSH Tolan King, who will be tomorrow’s pathfinder, sits 14^th on 34.4.

“He’s a lovely creature – he’s so professional,” says Caroline of Blake. “It doesn’t matter where in the world you go, he gives me 200%. I’m so proud to ride him and so lucky to ride him. Anything I wanted to do in the arena today, he was giving to me; if I wanted to go a little more forward here or a little more shoulders-in there, he was like, ‘okay, yes mom, no problem!’ I love that sort of feeling, and I couldn’t really have asked for more.”

This is a reroute for Blake, who Caroline rode at the Paris Olympics, after a shock early rider fall on cross-country at last month’s World Championships – and already, Caroline is working on blazing the pathway to redemption.

“It was heartbreaking for me,” she says. “I hate to let me country down, especially my teammates, and I put a lot of pressure on Boyd [Martin] and [Will] Coleman. I felt absolutely gutted. My job at the end of the day as second out was to do a good, consistent round and give them feedback, and so silly me to fall in minute five. Hopefully I’ll put that behind myself and make my country proud, and redeem myself in a way.”

Tom Jackson and his second ride, the exciting ten-year-old United 36, take eighth place overnight on a score of 33.1, behind Tim Price and Global Quest in sixth and Burghley debutant Yasmin Ingham and Goliath du Loir in seventh (32.7).

United 36 comes into the competition as one of the most hotly-tipped horses in the field after an excellent five-star debut at Badminton this spring saw him finish fourth in a strong line-up, and though Tom may have hoped to shave a mark or two off the score they received on that occasion, they’re not far off the pace of that competition’s 32.2.

“I thought the trot and canter work was some of the best he’s ever done,” says Tom, who also sits 13^th on 34.1 with Hawk Eye. “He can be quite a hot-headed horse, and he’s been quite feral this whole week, but he actually really stayed with me and focused on what I was asking.”

He is, continues Tom, “into everything – he notices if a leaf has fallen off a tree four miles away, so he’s been sort of swinging his head around all over the place for the past two days, but he’s knuckled down this morning. Luckily, when I got on to ride I thought, ‘oh, good, we’ve got there.’ He just takes a while; he loves doing his job and loves being at these places, and he just takes a little while to settle. But he’s no different at home, to be fair – he’s quite spooky, and I trot him every day in the arena and he’s spooking across the side and shying away from everything. It’s just who he is.”

With one five-star run – and its associated success – under his belt, United 36 has come into Burghley week very aware of the sort of occasion he’s entering into.

“He definitely turned up here on Tuesday and thought, ‘right, I know what we’re doing,’” laughs Tom. “It’s amazing how they know; they go to short formats and one-days all the time, but once they’ve done a bit more and a few of these big ones, they really do know when they turn up.”

A touch of inexperience in the flying changes was the only blot on the copybook of Will Coleman’s exciting mare Very Dignified, who earned a 33.2 for ninth place in her first five-star test today.

“She’s a greener horse at this sort of event and at this level, and I’m thrilled with her,” says Will, who took the ride on the now-eleven-year-old from Ireland’s Robbie Kearns last year. “I thought she tried her heart out for me in there, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Burghley isn’t every horse’s ideal first five-star, and Will admits that he “thought about submitting myself for a psychiatric evaluation upon arriving here,” but he also believes she’s a horse well-suited to this kind of track.

“She’s a horse that has five-star qualities and we felt like she’s ready to contest one,” he says. “This season it was either Burghley or Pau, and I think in some ways Burghley will suit her better. It’s a big ask and a big challenge, but we do feel like she at least is worthy of giving her a shot, and it’s my job to look after her out there tomorrow and make sure she leaves a better horse than she arrived. That’s maybe not so result-driven, but I want to give her the best ride I can and see how she copes, and we’ll learn a lot about each other in the process.”

Those five-star qualities? She is, he says, “an aggressive fighter mentality; sort of an alpha female with a lot of spirit and a lot of blood. I’m hoping she brings that to the course tomorrow. She’s going to have to – it’s a big track and 11:20 over the toughest terrain in the world.”

Will was part of the bronze medal-winning US team at last month’s FEI World Championships, which has meant his preparation with Very Dignified hasn’t been as straightforward as he’d have otherwise hoped.

“It’s been less than ideal. I have a good team at home, led by my wife and a good couple riders at home that have helped me keep her going. Morgan Booth, Meg Pellegrini, to name a couple, and they’ve helped us kind of keep the whole yard going while I’ve been gone. But it’s been difficult. It’s hard to be away from your horses. I do everything with them, really. But in her case, we trained really hard all summer. She was on the long list for WEG, so she was kind of going through all the same sort of galloping and training that my other two horses were going through. I was basically gone from her for about ten days, and in some ways, I think that was maybe a good thing, just for her to kind of get a chance to take a breath and relax, and sort of settle her brain a little bit before she made the trip over here. I don’t know how the preparation is going to turn out – we’re going to find out at the end of the weekend. But I think she’s in good condition, and she’s as ready as I could make her, given everything that’s been going on, and sometimes that just has to be good enough.”

Great Britain’s Sarah Bullimore and her homebred Corimiro – another stable star out of her former championship ride, Lilly Corinne – came into this week’s competition as EquiRatings’ favourites in the wide open field, and for the first half of their dressage test, it looked as though they might be about to put themselves a country mile ahead of the rest of the class. Certainly, the ten-year-old gelding looked a cut above the rest in his warm-up work, and in that trot section, which saw him trending in the mid-20s.

But a touch of tension – a whisper, really – crept into the walk work, and he broke into a jog for a step or two in its final seconds, and that little bit of hindend tension never quite dissipated through the subsequent canter tour, slipping them down occasionally to mid-table marks.

Still, their final score of 33.6, while not quite what Sarah might have been aiming for today, is competitive enough to keep them in a close tenth place – and, to broaden the context, is just a mark and a half higher than the 32.1 they scored at Badminton this season en route to tenth place. (They did, on that occasion and on the gelding’s debut at the level at Pau last year, romp home inside the time on Saturday, which is an enviable run of form to bring into the weekend.)

“I’m chuffed with him – he stayed with me and rideable and he did everything in the right places, but things can always be a little bit better,” says Sarah. “His changes were good, but the first one wasn’t quite as good as the others, but it wasn’t a bad change or anything. For a young horse, though, he doesn’t give a monkey’s about the atmosphere, and the way he walks out of the arena on a loose rein and just chills… he’s just a fabulous horse, even if the judging was a little bit mean.”

He is, she says with a smile, “my baby, basically, and so sometimes I’m maybe a bit soft on him and don’t ask for as much – I have to remember to actually keep going. And the trouble is, on him it feels so beautiful regardless, so you have to still say, ‘there’s more, there’s more!’ But it’s so special having bred him, even if it does make you a little bit soft.”

British-based US rider Tiana Coudray and D’Artagnan earned the only 10 of the week, an honour bestowed upon them by Ground Jury President Xavier le Sauce for their mid-test halt. That was one of many good marks that offset a few lower ones in the final changes and helped them to earn a smart 33.8 and overnight eleventh place.

“I’m thrilled,” beams Tiana. “He’s been really tricky. He’s such a good boy, but he has an incredible vigour for life, and to get up here, you have to ride through the middle of the Leaf Pit and the middle of Discovery Valley, and that’s game over because he is just like a spaniel on speed at that point. And so trying to get a dressage test out of him was not looking promising. I didn’t have high hopes; we just sort of thought we’re going to have to get through this. But he was such a good boy in there. If anything, he was maybe a little bit too quiet, which meant he missed some changes, which on another day he wouldn’t have. But look, we will take it! He was obedient. He was listening. He’s just perfect.”

Tiana had a unique coterie of supporters on her way up to the warm-up: she was flanked on either side by helpers, who each had a lead rope on D’Artagnan and a fistful of Polo mints to keep his attention off those en-route obstacles.

“We had a bit of a disaster getting up here yesterday,” she laughs. “And I thought ‘this is it, our weekend’s over.’ After he walked past those jumps I was three strides up the hill and into the warm-up at about 700 metres a minute. I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ So we thought, ‘right, we should put a fly mask on,’ and we thought that might slightly block out the noise, and we led him each side, and we’re just like, force-feeding him Polos, like, ‘look here, look here, look here!’ and every time he’d start to look — Polos! I will try anything. And actually, to be fair, it did work!”

Jennie Brannigan sits 17^th on a score of 36 with the sixteen-year-old FE Lifestyle, with whom she’s twice jumped clear around Burghley and has nine five-star completions, including two fifth place finishes at Maryland and one at Kentucky.

As for many partnerships, today’s potent combination of tricky conditions and tight-lipped scoring meant that they hovered around the higher end of their five-star average in this first phase.

“It’s kind of a windy, blustery day, and I’ve been working on keeping the lid on in the canter, so I think maybe the trot work lacked some brilliance – but he was the best behaved he’s ever been in the canter,” says Jennie.

FE Lifestyle, though, is a consummate cross-country horse, and it’s tomorrow’s fierce battle that Jennie has come here for, rerouting from her role as travelling reserve for the US team at last month’s World Championships.

“Derek [di Grazia] was my Young Rider coach, and he’s such a great designer. I’ve ridden a lot of his courses; he does a great job,” she says. “I’ve never run Burghley in this direction, though, so that’s new for me, and we’ll see how it goes. It’s my third trip here, so it’s pretty awesome, and I couldn’t be on a better cross-country horse. So I’m looking forward to it.”

US-based Australian representative Ema Klugman made the long trip over for 13-year-old Chiraz’s sophomore five-star, after an educational trip around Kentucky this spring saw them finish in 23^rd.

It’s not the first trip abroad for the pair, who go into tomorrow’s cross-country in 33^rd place on a 38.5, and who came to this side of the Atlantic a year ago to tackle the CCIO4*-L at Boekelo.

“We’d done the travel overseas once already, which actually made this trip seem a lot less daunting just because we’ve gone through the motions of the flight before,” says Ema. “But it’s a little more complex getting to Europe and then having to ship over to the UK. My wife and I actually rented a lorry ourselves and drove him, and went on the ferry and the whole nine yards. So we felt pretty crazy that day in particular, just because it was a very long trip!”

Being at Burghley, she says, is “better, in some ways, than I expected. I’ve watched it on TV for a long time, but [when you’re here] it’s an event that feels very friendly, which is nice. The stables are laid-back and peaceful, which is great because they’re a ways away from the arena, and everyone’s been really friendly, from the stewards to the staff to the other riders. It’s been a great experience, and I haven’t even done that much at the event yet, but I already know I’d love to come back.”

The substantial US contingent here this year has also been a normaliser in an event that’s anything but normal.

“We have a great almost team atmosphere here,” she says. “I was warming up and starting to freak out a bit, and then I looked over and Jennie Brannigan was there and I was like, ‘well, I ride next to her all the time at events at home, so it’s just normal.’ I’ve known them all for many years, and I know their grooms, and we’re all helping each other out and giving each other braiding bands and advice on studs and all that kind of stuff. It’s been great – hopefully they don’t worry too much that I’m not actually running for their country!”

There are 47 left in the hunt as we look ahead to tomorrow’s cross-country, which starts at 11.30 BST (6.30 a.m. EST), following the post-dressage withdrawal of New Zealand’s Tayla Mason and Centennial, who had sat in 20^th at the end of the first phase. It’s hard to imagine a more tightly-packed field, either: with just two in the 20s and 11 in the 40s, the room for movement is colossal, and just 16.3 penalties cover the entire field.

The incredibly influential bluster and gustiness of today – certainly a factor, thanks to the malleable roof and tarpaulin-ed cameras, in the higher-than-expected scores across the board – is set to give way to a sensible amount of sunshine on arguably the best going we’ve seen on this side of the pond this season. That, plus a suitably tough Derek di Grazia course and a typically tight time, mean much could change – climbs, no doubt, for Harry Meade from 31^st and 35^th into the business end; an open door for the field’s selection of Thoroughbreds; and all the surprises and plot twists we look forward to over a Burghley weekend.

We’ll be bringing you wall-to-wall coverage all day, thanks to Cheg Darlington and her excellent live updates blog, as well as a full report at the end of the day from Gemma Redrup, who will be taking over the mantel as lead reporter for the day while I escape to a really badly-timed but undoubtedly lovely wedding. From me, it’s goodbye until Sunday morning; from EN, we’ll see you bright and early tomorrow for one of the very best days of the year. Go Eventing!

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