Jacky Green: Cross-Country Day at Badminton

Jacky Green works for her own Jacky Green Equestrian Media company and operates out of Maizey Manor Farm in the UK, and she is a regular Eventing Nation contributor. Today Jacky has kindly sent us her thoughts from cross-country day.  As always, thanks for writing this Jacky and thank you for reading.
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Photo by Jenni Autry

From Jacky:

Jenni has been doing such a fantastic job I hardly need to update on anything from Badminton as you have it all already!  But a few things you might like to know…

Moving the XC start time to 12pm from the normal 11am makes it a very long morning for spectators; if you drive in you need to be on the grounds by 8.30am at the latest if you don’t want to spend 2 or 3 hours sitting in traffic.  The traffic control is excellent but the problem lies in the fact that Badminton is a little country village with narrow country lanes that approach it from the major roads in all directions. And do not ever leave and try and return. The traffic control swaps to the outbound traffic around at about 3pm and one year Wiggy Channer (partner of Andrew Nicholson) had to leave and return before the end of XC day and found it literally impossible to get back in as all the incoming lanes were cordoned off!

As for activities on XC day, if you are a fan of shopping in a crushing crowd you could do that but as I am sure you have gathered by now that is not my idea of fun.  The other option is to hit The Outside Chance which is the on-site-by-the-lake bar and restaurant at Badminton.  Run by Howard Spooner who owns clubs in London along with Guy Pelly such as Public, this brings a touch of class with sofas and screens inside and an outside seating area with a view to die for.  This does not come cheap however, a glass of Pimms will set you back £5 and a small ( and I mean tiny) glass of wine £4.50.  This seemed not to deter many who appeared to spend the entire day there not least a bunch of Kiwis who are going to have to rely on Eventing Nation tomorrow to catch up on the action they missed today!

Course chat….. Sir Mark Todd made his thoughts quite clear when he said in public that he thought “it was a 3 star course with a few 4 star fences thrown in.”  The word in the lorry park after the first walk was that the track was “boring”, “plain”, “unimaginative” and “soft.”  The stats today seemed to rather bear that out as the leaderboard did not see any dramatic changes and, although there was the odd drama, it seemed that Toddy was right.  No one wants to see horses falling or overfaced but as Sir Mark said, we used to walk Badminton and be actually scared!  So much history has been lost, no Tom Smiths Walls, no real Vicarage V, no Luckington Lane, no massive ditches like the Cottesmore Leap at Burghley, and yet Badminton has no budget problems and really could and should lift its game if it wants to be considered one of the best in the World.  The legendary course builder Tommy Brennan mapped out the 1991 European Champs in Punchestown on beer mats so legend says, and we walked a track that used all of Ireland’s history as feature fences.  One of the most popular choices is for Ian Stark, aka the Flying Scot, to course build there although those that propose him say they will retire before he does!  It just seems a slightly sad day for Badminton when the most exciting phase is the showjumping. Tomorrow will be really close but today should have made more of a difference than it did. And that is not to take away anything from those who jumped fabulous rounds today, it just means that they should have moved up more than they did by such an exemplary display of riding than they have.

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