William Fox-Pitt and Chilli Morning, winners at the end of day three.
Photo: ROLEX / Kit Houghton
Words by Christopher Hector / Lucinda Green & Photos supplied by Hanna Broms
Last year’s Badminton divided the eventing community. There were those who hailed Guiseppe Della Chiesa’s course as a long over-due return to the good old days, others felt that the challenge was way over the top, and that the sight of half the field falling by the wayside (including some of the world’s very best) and exhausted horses staggering to the finish line at 20 minute intervals would do nothing for the sport or its future.
It came as no surprise then, that this year, Mr Della Chiesa’s course was a great deal more civilized. Andrew Hoy, after his second walk, was of the opinion:
“I’m standing right in front of fence 27 at the moment. I walked it last night and this is my second time round. I think that, in general, it is very do-able, they are fair questions. It is Badminton obviously, but I think they are fair questions, and it is a four-star track for sure.”
But not a horror track like last year?
“No. It is definitely down a grade on last year, and where I believe it’s down a grade is that it is not putting the mental pressure on the horses. What it did last year is mentally fatigued the horses, and physically fatigued them, with questions coming very quickly. I believe there are now some very big jumping efforts, but mentally it is much nicer for the horses.”
Sadly not for Andrew, who parted company with both his horses on the cross-country. The event this year was dominated by two of the modern masters – Andrew Nicholson, riding Nereo, and William Fox-Pitt and Chilli Morning. Nicholson led the dressage despite starting on the first day, held it after the cross country, then a rare showjumping miss, and a second fence down saw him drop to sixth. Fox-Pitt cruised up from second to first with a showjumping clear, to be the first Badminton winner to ride a stallion.
Our Aussie team did not fair so well. The best placed was last year’s winner, Sam Griffith and his WEG ride, Paulank Brockhagh in 10th, with Paul Tapner filling 13th and 14th on Kilronan and Indian Mill. Bill Levett’s Shannondale Titan was18th and Chris Burton and TS Jamaimo, 27th.
Sam Griffiths and Paulank Brockagh
Let’s find out what six-times Badminton winner, Lucinda Green thought of this year’s course:
“The course proved to be exactly what everybody thought it would be, which is that it was way lighter, probably too light for a four-star. What I saw was that it was an extremely flowing course, the likes of which I haven’t seen at four-star for a very long time. The difficulty of making a four-star flowing and still not having twenty inside the time, is huge, and I don’t think the course designer has much to do to make it exactly where it needs to be.”
“Last year he had a proper Badminton course, the wind almost more than the rain, is what destroyed so many. Apparently a horse is really pushed – and probably we are too – to breath in when going into a sixty mile an hour wind, and it was ferocious last year. Plus the fact that the riders weren’t ready for it last year – the fascinating thing at the vetting this year, and I sat in exactly the same place as I sat last year, and looked and marked every single horse. Last year, Wendy Schaeffer’s horse and maybe one other, were the only ones that looked fit.”
Andrew Hoy and Lanfranco
“This time the horses were hard, they were lean, 90% plus were ready, and I think that had a huge impact. The fact that they were tired last year really got people thinking and back to where they should have been, twenty years ago when they last had to be really fit for Badminton. The mental taxation was enormous, and has been enormous, even in the last twenty years. We’ve had what I call Shotgun Alley, down Vicarage Ditch where you’ve got god knows how many efforts in sixty seconds or so. So it has been mentally taxing many times before, but you didn’t have to have the physical fitness, but now they have to be fit, and the fences are really big, which is really good, but there was not enough questions. How do you put questions in without losing the flow, we’ll be looking to see how he handles that next year.”
“Guiseppe’s feeling was that after last year, a lot of people had lost confidence and that this year he had to repair it. We are not just talking about riders here, we are talking about a lot of other factors, and his plan was that the course should ride really well. He had the best ground you could ever have, and the wind was minimal. When he was asked at the press conference if the course rode as he expected it? Had he got what he wanted? He answered with one word, yes.”
Bill Levett and Shannondale Titan
“I think you’ll hear plenty of oh it wasn’t up to it and it wasn’t, but there needed to be a half way step and it wasn’t far off. The course will be going around the other way next year, and people say going that way is not so easy, although when I was riding around it, I never noticed either way was particularly easy. He has a year to think about that, and I think we should have a cracker next year.”
Andrew Nicholson and Nereo
William Fox-Pitt is some kind of genius…
“That would be the word I would apply to Michael Jung, and it would be the word that I’d apply to William… the likes of which I don’t know when I’ve seen before. The trouble is when we were young we all thought Bill Roycroft, and Richard Mead and the like, were geniuses and they were in their own time, our time has moved on, 40, 50 years, and the technicians now…! When I look at the videos of my generation in the 70’s, which was really shocking, in the 80’s we were getting a little bit better but we were still looking a bit like Reiner Klimke in the 84 Olympics, you watch him doing his passage / piaffe, and you think he wouldn’t even have got into the finals now, and yet he was the magician of his generation and we all still admire and adhere to his teachings, as does his daughter.”
Christopher Burton and TS Jamaimo
“It is rather fascinating, I look at William and think, how do you get that pretty ordinary stallion around, and he was pretty ordinary but William has made him into an extraordinary horse, the horse tries his heart out for him. In the showjumping, when you’ve gone four and a half miles at Badminton, you are not altogether jumping carefully, and what happened with the last 20 was if they had one rail down, they had the next three or four down, it was extraordinary how the pattern kept repeating itself. Chilli Morning was just amazing, he tried his heart out, he touched the second last fence with the belly part of his girth, that’s how hard he was trying to keep his legs out of the way, there were two or three moments where different bits of him touched the fence but he was just trying so hard – jumping beautifully and making a lovely shape. They were big fences, big square oxers, it was a big course, I’m not used to seeing anything quite so difficult at Badminton.”
Jock Paget and Clifton Lush
“William was magical, he was unbelievable at Rolex two weeks earlier, where he came fourth on the horse that had won the year before, and took him round the cross country course on ground that horse really doesn’t relish, just soggy, took him in a really lovely rhythm, but didn’t chase the backside out of him, got a few time faults which dropped him from first to fourth, and then in the showjumping, did an even more fantastic round than he did last year, and I thought, you are such a master, you ride the horse that is under you for the conditions. He knows what he is doing, he is a master, and we should all learn from him.”
Paul Tapner and Kilronan
“The showjumping was really thrilling. For a while I thought Toddy was going to come up and take away my record of six wins, he’s only got to do two more, he was about ninth or tenth and he crept up because he was clear with a masterful round. That horse, Leonidas, is a very good horse in the coming, my tip for next year. Nobody could get clear, nobody could get clear, I thought, he’s going to bloody win it – anyway Ingrid saved my bacon. Hale Bob is what I’d call a classic girl’s horse, not too big or rangy, not throwing its legs all over the place because it moves so marvelously, it doesn’t really actually move at all. When I saw it at Aachen, I thought why has she got this? She must have collected this off someone else who hadn’t succeeded with it, because it was trotting not like a sewing machine, not special, not even as good as Abraxxas who was nothing special. She told me yesterday that she’d had him since he was five. Why did you buy him when he is such an ordinary mover? She said everybody asks me that, he just has such a wonderful jump, and such a wonderful wanting to do it. Every phase, he wants to do it. And look what happened! She would have won Badminton if it had been a bit more difficult because she can go so fast on him. She says, he doesn’t really sit down in the canter, probably can’t get a lot better than it is now, but he is incredibly fast because he’s got this little canter.”
Ingrid Klimke and Horseware Hale Bob
“Anyway she is the most wonderful girl and deserves her success. Chris Bartle said, I just don’t know what it is about Badminton, we just can’t quite get it. Back when Jock Paget won with Promise, Michael Jung had the very last fence down for Jock to beat him. I said, Chris do us a favour – leave us Badminton, you’ve got everything else.”
Originally published in The Horse Magazine, June 2015