“He Loves the Nitty-Gritty”: Alice Casburn and Topspin Rocket to Under-25 World Championships Cross-Country Lead

Hey EN, a quick note before the cross-country report:

On Saturday, July 18, two statements from British Eventing were posted informing us that two serious incidents had taken place at competitions — one at Swalcliffe in Oxfordshire and one at Penrith in Cumbria. Both events were abandoned for the remainder of the weekend, and live scores were removed from the scoring platform out of respect for those affected. The full statement released by British Eventing can be found here.

Following other losses in our sport, EN has undertaken the following protocol:

These incidents represent incredibly dark days within our sport. We understand that the news cycle is cruel, particularly in cases like this. To help keep the cycle from perpetuating in the light of such loss, EN will continue to publish stories and news on an as-needed/timely basis, but we will refrain from sharing these updates on our social media platforms for the next few days. We feel as powerless as anyone in these situations and feel that the least we can do is not move on lightly. We will also not speculate on the circumstances of the incidents, nor will we allow this to take place in the comments sections.

We also know that there’s a World Championship (two of them — one this weekend at Millstreet for U25 riders and one next month at Aachen for Seniors) right at our doorstep. We’ll be covering these events to honor our commitment to our sponsors as well as to continue to provide coverage of the sport’s key competitions. However, we hope you’ll understand that we don’t feel it appropriate to approach these with our usual happy hype. Our content will be quality, but out of respect to all of those we have lost, we hope to offer this as a time of reflection.

Our thoughts are with all of those affected by these losses and we work for a safe sport in everything we do. We thank you for your understanding.

Anyone affected is encouraged to seek support through the British Eventing Support Trust Helpline, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on 07780 008877.

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More so, perhaps, than Mike Etherington-Smith’s big, tough track and its accompanying tight time, it was the extraordinarily tight margins on the leaderboard that loomed most heavily over cross-country day at the FEI Under-25 World Championships at Millstreet. At the culmination of dressage, just 15.6 penalties covered the entirety of the 39-strong class; a meagre 6.2 spanned the top twenty. Many riders found themselves within a fraction of a penalty of several of their competitors. It was that – plus the knowledge that the 6:30 optimum time was wheeling as nearly impossible to catch – that lent a grave air of uncertainty to everything that was to come over the course of this afternoon’s competition.

If everything was expected to change, though, then there were hardly any surprises: not a single horse and rider remain in the same place they began the day in, and many early-stage competitors found themselves falling nearly to the bottom of the leaderboard before slowly regaining ground.

That was partly due to the fact that the first rotation of team riders largely aimed for conservative pathfinding clear rounds: the ordinarily efficient Jennifer Kuehnle of Ireland and her five-star partner Sammy Davis Junior, who had been second after dressage, added 45 seconds on the clock to pick up 18 time penalties, while overnight leaders Calvin Böckmann and Altair de la Cense were 31 seconds overtime for 12.4 penalties. That opened the door for 25 riders to potentially finish ahead of him, and as one of the first starters of the day, he had a long few hours to wait and see how that might stack up for him.

Once the class got into the second rotation of team riders, though, things began to move themselves along – there were fewer of the sort of teething problems that plagued first-rotation riders, such as the USA’s Quidley Kellerman, who fell from Blakeneys Cruise at fence 20B, an angled brush in the final water complex, or France’s Faustin Forreau, who suffered a run-out at fence 9C, a wide brush oxer coming out of the sunken road.

The first of this second rotation of riders was the one that everyone intended to use as a barometer of whether the time – so far, so comprehensively eclipsed – would even be catchable. Great Britain’s Alice Casburn and her eighteen-year-old homebred Topspin come into this competition as the most experienced partnership in the field; to their credit so far is individual bronze at the 2022 Young Rider European Championships, victory in Bramham’s Under-25 British Championship last month, and no fewer than ten CCI5* starts, which have yielded them five top ten placings, most recently a fifth-place finish at Burghley last year. They’re seldom more than a few seconds beyond the optimum time at the top level; at CCI4*-S, they have frequently caught it.

Even they couldn’t best Mike Etherington-Smith’s fiendish wheeling. But in trying, they gave us our closest attempt, adding just 2.8 time penalties to their first-phase score of 33.3 to climb from sixteenth place to the overnight lead.

“I am beyond delighted with him – he’s such a professional,” says Alice. “I said that on Thursday after his dressage, but today is definitely where he shines. I certainly wasn’t perfect in quite a few places, but he just picked up his line for me and said, ‘I’ve got this; don’t worry about it.’ My biggest worry was actually the first fence and the waterfall [at 16]. I was like, ‘oh, god, the first fence is spooky, great.’ But actually, I think it was good for me, because it made me really ride forward into that first fence, and he tried so hard for me today and just answered everything for me. I feel like one very lucky girl.”

Though Alice and Spin have so much experience as individual competitors, riding on a team presents a whole different kind of pressure – and coming in as one of the favourites for the win, too, meant that Alice couldn’t be complacent for a moment.

“I definitely felt the heat; I think a lot of people look at him and think ‘I’d quite like to take him cross-country!’ So there’s a lot of pressure, because I know that if it goes wrong it’s on my shoulders, not his.”

But, she says, the powers-that-be of the British team, helmed by David Sheerin and Tina Cook, wanted to ensure she stuck to the system that had served her and Spin so well for so long.

“I was told to try and do my thing, and I think that’s the beauty of having had him for so long: I know what makes him tick and how to ride him, and luckily he’s a horse that likes being chased a bit and going for the time,” says Alice. “At the point where a lot of horses go, ‘oh, this is actually getting a bit tough,’ he’s like, ‘this is brilliant.’ He loves that nitty-gritty, getting stuck in. But I definitely felt the heat this morning, and I wanted to produce a solid result for the team. Tom [Bird, British pathfinder] did that as first to go, which made me feel so much better – he rode an absolutely class round, and then I just wanted to come back having done the same, and take the pressure off everyone else. I knew if I messed up, it would put so much pressure on the later riders.”

There is one little thing, though, that Alice admits she ramped up for today’s competition.

“I’ve always come back and he’s recovered so well, and mum’s been like, ‘you know, you could have pushed a bit,’ so today I really wanted to go for it. I’m just delighted to have brought home a clear for the team, and my horse had a smashing time.”

Alice’s round helped to secure the lead for Great Britain, too, in this inaugural World Championships: they now head into tomorrow’s finale with just 4.7 penalties, or a rail and change, in hand over second-placed Ireland.

The Irish team, for their part, surprised everyone by leading the way after the dressage phase – a novel place for a nation that’s so often had to climb in the jumping phases.

“This is where we want to be – we don’t want to be climbing,” says 19-year-old Tom Nestor, who sits second overnight after adding 4.4 time penalties with Cooley Diamond Dancer to move up from first-phase 13^th. “The dream is to start in gold and stay in gold. You don’t want to be hoping someone else makes a mistake. So actually, I like these positions, and I think it’s nearly less pressure in a sense because all you can do is worry about your own performance – you don’t have to think about, ‘oh, I hope she has time penalties,’ or whatever, you’re doing your own thing.”

The Irish line-up here at Millstreet, which sees Tom joined by Godfrey Gibbons, experienced Senior campaigner Jenny Kuehnle, and team newcomer Isny O’Donnell is, Tom admits, “pretty level-headed – the four of us don’t really think too much into things like the leaderboard. We’ve all had enough days in the saddle to know that day one isn’t normally the final result in these competitions. Like, the British went from fifth to first today – it goes to show.”

It’s a very cool and calm attitude for a teenager to have after a barnstorming round catapulted him onto the provisional podium, and no doubt that aversion to panic is what saved the day when Tom and his horse jumped through the hugely influential final water. The broad left-handed brush corner at C had changed the fortunes of plenty of riders throughout the day, and for a millisecond it looked as though it might do so for Tom, too, but in a sort of unruffled-but-agricultural manner, they scrambled their way to the other side sans penalties.

“He got a bit keen coming home, and at the corner we definitely had to make things happen, but he also used to be tricky across country – he wasn’t the straightest horse in the world,” says Tom. “So for him to do whatever it took to get over it was awesome, and he gave me a really good feel. He’s a horse who travels in such a way that he can look tired or slow from the get-go, but you kind of just ride him like and niggle him along a bit and actually he’s so fast.”

Although Tom went in the third rider rotation of the day, he hadn’t had a chance to watch the quicker riders on course, and instead trusted in the walks he’d undertaken with Irish team trainer Sam Griffiths and five-star rider Ian Cassells.

“I watched the first few, and I thought Tom Bird would be a good man to watch, but he gave me a fright because I thought he was going fast and then he was thirty seconds over,” laughs Tom. “I thought then that it might not be possible to make the time, and I didn’t really watch much more – just the first-line riders, and a few that I thought might be similar to me. But I didn’t want to overwatch, because I can overthink sometimes, so I just kind of do my own thing. It’s a credit to Ian and Sam, because they’re so detailed in how they walk the course, and they really think of the little things, and then I could just stick to what I knew would work for us. I knew, though, that he’s a fast horse – he was second fastest at Ballindenisk, and only beaten by a horse who’d made the time at Badminton, so I believed in that sense that he could be one of the fastest today. My instructions in the start box were clear: just jump clear, number one, and go as fast as you can, number two. That gave me a bit of confidence when he said that to me.”

Dressage leaders Calvin Böckmann and Altair de la Cense may have dropped down 25 or so places in the moments after their 12.4-time-penalty round, but they didn’t stay that low – as more and more riders dropped below them, they ultimately settled into overnight third place, just 3.9 penalties behind Alice and Topspin.

Though many competitors might rue those time penalties and that movement on the leaderboard, from early on in the track, Calvin knew that what his mare needed was a little bit of time to pick her way around the course. If that was what she wanted, Calvin resolved that that would be the ride he’d give her.

“Of course I could just think about success or think, ‘oh, I’m giving away my lead going into showjumping,’” says Calvin. “I’m sure that’s something people think about. But to me, it’s about taking it jump by jump with her, and if I ever feel like she’s out of her comfort zone, I just want to give her back the confidence, even if it means taking another two seconds and adding another stride to help her jump. Today I had to be a bit encouraging, because it’s a really tough track and she’s not a horse who loves a hill, but she really outdid herself and gave 110% out there.”

She is, he continues, “a really careful horse, and I unfortunately gave her a distance early on in the round where she really had to try to get a bit out of her comfort zone. I’m just happy that she then gained confidence again.”

“I know she’s not the scopiest horse, but she means the absolute world to me — we bought her as a six-year-old, as a Junior horse, and so she’s the most special horse to my family. It means so much to have her here. We’ve been through ups and downs through the past ten years, but moments like that show that no matter what she just wants to go between the flags. My god, I couldn’t be prouder of her.”

The 2024 Young Rider European Champions Jasmine Underwood and Indian Girl G secured Team GB’s top spot with a workmanlike anchor round that added 11.2 time penalties to their score card, dropping them just one spot on the leaderboard to overnight fourth place.

“She’s just amazing. She gives me absolutely everything, and I don’t think I could ask for a better partner cross-country. She absolutely adores it,” says Jasmine of the thirteen-year-old mare, with whom she’s come up the ranks from BE100 [US Training] to four-star.

Along the way, they’ve amassed no shortage of team experience: there was, of course that Europeans in 2024 when they won individual gold and team gold; there was last year’s Europeans, too, where they took team bronze and individual fifth; there were two stints at Junior Europeans, in 2022 and 2023, where they finished just outside the top ten individually and won team medals on each occasion.

Still, though, she says, “the added pressure of competing for your country is a lot – but I think I’ve got really good at managing my nerves and using them to my advantage so I can perform the best I can. It was quite nerve-wracking today, and  I wanted to put in a good performance because everybody else had, but equally, because they’d all gone well it took the pressure off a bit. I could go for it and not worry, because we had three good results in the bag.”

Her plan of action was simple, and her elation when she crossed the finish line was palpable.

“I went as fast as I could while still jumping all the fences – she’s not a natural galloper, but she gives her all and she’s just the most amazing mare, and jumps incredibly.”

The top five is rounded out by Ireland’s anchor rider Godfrey Gibbons, who added 11.6 time penalties with Ballyvillane OBOS to also drop a placing.

“The horse was unreal,” he says. “From the get-go he was 100% on it. Everything I asked of him he delivered without batting an eyelid. It’s been a long day of waiting around for it, and with the way things have gone today, there was always a bit of pressure there, but it was great to get out there and he gave me some feeling. I’ve never enjoyed a round so much – I wasn’t even really thinking about the team or the placings or anything, I was just enjoying that feeling.”

“You can see now why I keep going even with our dressage scores,” grins Germany’s Ann-Catrin Bierlein, after delivering the second-fastest round of the day to add just 3.2 time penalties with the eighteen-year-old Sir Scotty. (That, for what it’s worth, means that the two fastest horses of the day were also in the highest age bracket in the field, and that’s on great management.) That incredibly efficient round propelled the pair from overnight 34^th place, after putting a 40 on the board in the first phase, to sixth going into tomorrow’s finale.

“It’s crazy – the only horse faster than him has run fast around Badmintons and Burghleys,” says Annca. “I was already happy after dressage because I was expecting this [climb], and I know that this day is for this horse. This is always his strongest discipline, I would say, so I’m really happy and relieved.”

Scotty has been the horse that has taken Annca to the top levels, after a bit of a gamble of a start: “We managed to get him because he wasn’t good at the dressage, and like the arrogant German I am, I thought I would be able to improve that,” she laughs. “It’s a shame that I haven’t, but he means the world to me and he’s an amazing cross-country horse.”

Annca was the second team rider to take to the course, and even with her early position, the course had already shown how influential it would be – even in the German camp, in which individual competitor Konstantin Harting and Botswana 4 had retired after early issues for the inexperienced mare.

“Our national coach came up to me after Calvin’s round and said, ‘okay, I think you know it’s not going to be a walk in the park, and it can be a bit of a fight. So really fight, and don’t ever stop fighting until the end,’” she says. “So that was the plan. When we first walked it we were like, ‘okay, this is a proper championship course.’ So we knew that, but that final moment of being told to really take this seriously helped quite a lot, because usually I don’t like to fight – like, attacking riding. But that’s something I have to learn to do and you have to be able to do it on a championship course. The time was so tight that I couldn’t ever afford to think ‘oh, I won’t make it anyway’ – I had to keep going, and he’s so fit that he really kept running until the end. I’m just so privileged to sit on a horse like him.”

Germany’s mixed bag of a day now sees them in bronze medal position, down from silver after dressage: they now count Annca’s score, which had previously been the drop score, and retain Calvin’s score and Linus Weiss and Astrello’s steady clear, but lose that of Nicholas Goldbeck and Chintano 7, who were the last pair out on course and sat ninth after dressage, but took a non-injurious tumble just before the Irish Bank.

British third-round rider Cerys Macaulay steps up from 12^th to seventh place with eighteen-year-old Kananaskis, who previously finished in the same position here in the Junior European Championships nine years ago with Cerys’s partner, Richard Coney, in the irons. It was abundantly clear as the little gelding popped around the track that he remembered exactly what Millstreet is all about, and the pair added just 12 time penalties to their first-phase score of 32.5 to put them well in the hunt going into the final day.

Just seven tenths of a point behind them are the best of the US contingent, individual competitors Molly Duda and Disco Traveller, who put down a solid round early in the day to add just 9.6 time penalties. That pushes them up from 24^th to overnight eighth and offers much for the US camp to celebrate after a day of mixed fortunes: the team now sits in fifth place without hope of climbing in the final phase after both pathfinders Quidley Kellerman and Blakeneys Cruise and anchors Cassie Sanger and Fernhill Zoro failed to complete, the latter having fallen together at a wide table at 19, just before the final water.

But team members Olivia Dutton and Jewelent and Meg Pellegrini and Dondante shone in this phase, adding 12 and 15.6 time penalties, respectively, to move up from 26^th to 12^th place and 16^th to 13^th place.

Individual competitor Jack Curtis moves up from 22^nd to 14^th with Luska Candy Clover, another horse returning to the site of former glories – he previously won here as a four-year-old under Kelly Hutchinson. A little north of the border, German-based Canadian Kyle Morton produced a steady clear with Shannondale Gambit to add 40 time penalties, and will sit in 30^th place overnight.

France’s Clara Cazeneuve and Dolce Gabana step up one spot from tenth to ninth place, with 13.6 time penalties, despite the pair’s relative inexperience in this line-up: “it’s just our second four-star, but it was an easy course for her because she’s a really good jumper,” says Clara. “I was so nervous to be here, with the atmosphere and the course and everything, but my horse is so good that it’s my job to be calm for her. That was what I wanted to do today.”

The top ten going into tomorrow’s final horse inspection is rounded out by Irish pathfinders Jenny Kuehnle and Sammy Davis Junior, who added 18 time penalties to drop from second in a bid to fact-find for their team.

At the close of the first-ever Under-25 World Championships cross-country day, British Olympian and u25 team trainer Tina Cook is delighted at the precedent the day of sport will set for the future.

“This is a great thing for the sport, and for the riders of the future. They come out of the under-21s and they’re still kids, even if they wouldn’t like me saying it. This age group will be the making of them, and the experience they get from this, even if they haven’t had the perfect day, they’ll learn so much from it and go away and keep training.”

It was, she says, “a brilliant course, and when we walked it, we had a massive amount of respect for it. Mike Etherington-Smith has got it exactly right – there were some very big fences out there, even the single fences. The combinations were tricky, and it was three strides for a lot of the combinations, so if the horses had a little mistake, the riders had to be so quick to recover, so there was plenty of action out there.”

Tomorrow’s finale begins with the final horse inspection, starting around 8.30 a.m. local time (3.30 a.m. EST), with 33 of our original 39 starters left to come forward before the ground jury. Then, we’ll head into showjumping from 1.00 p.m. (8.00 a.m. EST), after which we’ll crown the first-ever Under-25 World Champion. Join us then, and Go Eventing.

FEI Under-25 World Championships at Millstreet, presented by Connolly’s Red Mills: Website | Live Stream | Entries & Scoring | EN’s Coverage