Catherine Austen

3 days ago | eventingnation.com | Catherine Austen

By on - There’s something rather cool about completing your first Badminton when you’re the youngest rider in the field. Tom Bird, 23, has two Burghleys under his belt before this week, but now he’s done the “double B”. Cowling Hot Gossip, on whom Tom jumped clear across country with 26.8 time-faults, was the first horse Tom backed, when the horse was five and Tom was 15. Three show jumps down today for 39th place did little to dim the glow of achievement.

3 days ago | eventingnation.com | Catherine Austen

By on - Badminton’s Glentrool Trophy, awarded to “the horse and rider who have made the greatest improvement on their dressage placing” – in other words, the pair who have shot the furthest up the leaderboard, has a distinguished history. It was given to Badminton in 1992 by top British rider Lorna Clarke when she retired from eventing, in memory of her brilliant cross-country horse Glentrool, who, in 1985, rose 59 places from 72nd after dressage to finish 13th.

4 days ago | eventingnation.com | Catherine Austen

As the vast Badminton crowd, sunburnt and star-struck, dispersed at the end of a marathon cross country day, EN sat down course-designer Eric Winter. This was Eric’s sixth Badminton track, and the unflappable, garrulous Welshman was rightly pretty chipper about the day.

5 days ago | eventingnation.com | Catherine Austen

There is some sort of a joke about famous Belgians. I can’t actually remember what it is, except that the point is that there aren’t any. Excepting Agatha Christie’s moustachioed maestro, Hercule Poirot, of course. In eventing, however, there have been several at-least-quite famous Belgians, primarily Karin Donckers and now Lara de Liedekerke-Meier.

6 days ago | eventingnation.com | Catherine Austen

Nearly everyone who competes at Badminton puts in very long hours, riding horses at dawn and dusk. Only one of them, this year at least, spent the intervening hours – between sunrise and sunset – telling people politely to “open wide” (in German, natürlich) and peering at their gnashers. Austria’s Harald Ambros, who scored 34.9 in the morning dressage session on Vitorio Du Montet, works full-time as a dentist. “Since February, it’s been hard,” he concedes.