Scarcely an hour into the seven-hour day of cross-country at Military Boekelo, we had both a colossal plot twist and a new leader for the day.
Dressage leaders Laura Collett and new ride Count Onyx were just the third combination out of the start box in this morning’s team line-up, and though they made a largely very established-looking picture around the track — and crossed the finish line comfortably inside the time — they were initially deemed to have a flag penalty at fence 12B, a wide left-handed corner midway around the course. Some twenty minutes later, the annotation for a flag under review was changed on the live scoring to an outright elimination.
In the meantime, overnight runners-up Jesse Campbell and Speedwell had executed a smooth, classy clear round, finishing inside the ten minute optimum time by one second. That would push them into the top spot, but with something of a question mark overhead: Laura’s elimination seemed completely groundless, and the uncertainty around that decision also called into question the initial flag penalty. The scoreboard, it appeared, could change again at any moment.
And then it did just that — her elimination was reversed, but her flag penalty remained firm, pushing her well down the order in a day where clear rounds were prevalent (56 of the 89 starters went clear), the time was gettable (21 caught it), and 79 completed, making every penalty work overtime. For the rest of the long day of competition, Jesse was able to celebrate with his team while spectators on site and afar, too, knew the score and the lay of the land on the leaderboard. The competition wrapped up; the livestream ended; the news circulated that Jesse would lead heading into the final day, closely followed by Padraig McCarthy and MGH Zabaione in second and Alexis Goury and Coloree de Poteau in third.
But an hour or so after cross-country wrapped, the riders were brought up for the press conference – and then left waiting. Nearly another hour passed while news spread that the flag penalty awarded to Laura was under review, and nothing could proceed until the overnight leader was confirmed.
What felt like an interminable waiting game finally concluded with the news that that expensive 15 penalties had indeed been taken off her scoresheet. Alexis was sent back to the stables, no longer needed after displaying the patience of a saint for so long; Padraig was moved down to third place, Jesse to second, and Laura Collett was rushed up from the lorry park to sit in the hot seat of the press conference.
Which is all to say, really, that it was an odd and anticlimactic end to what had been a very successful day of sport for our frontrunning combinations, who mostly just looked deflated and tired by the time they were handed microphones.
The rub?
“They categorically said that they weren’t going to review anything properly or do the appeals until the end of cross-country, even with the course breaks,” says Laura. “To be honest, it kind of felt like we were fighting a losing battle, because it had been, like, seven hours since I crossed the finish line.”
Laura Collett and Count Onyx. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
In all that time, she remained firm in her conviction that eleven-year-old Count Onyx, who is a new ride in her string this year, had jumped the fence.
“I came through the finish very much without a doubt in my mind that I was clear and inside the time, and I was delighted with the horse,” she says. “Then I was told there was a 15, but it was under review, and I thought, ‘well, that’s part of the sport.’ I knew I’d hit a flag there, but in my head there was no doubt.”
Then, she says, “I walked back into the barn and someone stopped me and said, ‘you’ve been eliminated.’ I was like, ‘ha, how funny’ – I literally thought it was a joke. And they were like, ‘no, I swear to god you’ve been eliminated!’ My first thought was, ‘oh my god, have I missed a jump? Have I just cantered past a jump somewhere?’ It never crossed my mind that I’d be eliminated for jumping the jump that I jumped. It was a real shock.”
Still, she says, “I spent the whole day chuffed with the horse. It’s a new partnership, and I can’t complain about the season I’ve had and how the horse has performed, but I was gutted for the owner if the 15 penalties was going to be the result. But [chef d’equipe] Philip Surl said, ‘we’re not settling. I’m going to give them the chance – it’s been a busy day with flags going left, right, and centre.’ It felt like a really, really long day.”
Like many horses, Count Onyx skewed in slightly in the air while jumping 12B, a left-handed corner which comes on a slight right-handed turn from the A element. Though his shoulders neatly made it through the flags, it was a midair twist from his hindend that raised questions.
“He has an awkward jump, and I think there was one hind leg which was sticking out or something, because he twists – but that’s not the rule,” says Laura. “From my point of view, the majority of the horse had gone between the flags and he very much jumped the height of the fence – I’m not doubting that he twisted, because I was on a bit of a short stride, but this isn’t the aim of the game for cross-country.”
Though flag rule controversies are hardly a brand new issue – the rule, and the penalties it’s worth, has been tweaked and revised a number of times over a number of years – it’s becoming increasingly evident that a system change is needed. There’s plenty of grey area to muddle through, of course: the need for safer fences, where issues are more likely to look like runouts than horse falls, arguably necessitates the use of more technical, less dimensionally imposing fences, but it’s those technical questions with their limited margin for error that end up being the centre of flag controversies.
Eventing’s ongoing battle to make ends meet suggests that employing more exacting, objective systems to consistently and transparently judge flag rule contraventions is little more than a pipe dream – though tennis’s hawk-eye technology or football’s VAR prove that objectivity can be kept to a minimum when appropriate resources are available. Without them, perhaps it’s simply not functional to let so much hang in the balance: while picking up 15 penalties is hardly the worst thing that can happen in a day’s cross-country, questionable calls can be a damning situation for riders and owners, and as far as eventing’s viability as a spectator sport for broadcast purposes is concerned, a conclusion that’s only reached hours after the feed is turned off is an unreasonable gamble for any network, or any casual viewer, to take on.
“At the majority of the big events since they changed the flag rules, it seems to be more and more controversy over it,” says Laura. “That’s where we are, and unfortunately, it seems like that’s the sport, which I don’t think it should be. If you have a look at the fences, the gaps between the flags are getting smaller and smaller – it’s a very narrow space. He’s twisted while trying to clear the jump and hit the flag with a hind leg, but would I rather he’d dragged his back legs through the jump and fallen? No.”
Of the delay, ground jury President Angela Tucker says, “in fairness, we had to look at several different situations and make sure that in all respects, we complied with the rules. We’ve had a few things under consideration, which has taken a bit of time to make sure we come to the right result. We always try to err on the side of the rider if there’s an unclear decision, which is always the case – you have to follow those rules. But every situation is a little bit difficult, and a little bit different, and hopefully we’ve taken the time to come up with the right decision.”
It is, at the end of the day, a happy, if exhausting, outcome for Laura, owner Alex Van Tuyll, the British team, who moved back into the lead after the removal of the penalty, and for Count Onyx, who “skipped around and never had any idea of what was going on with the leaderboard!”
Jesse Campbell and Speedwell. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
But for second-placed Jesse Campbell, it’s been a bit of a day of peaks and troughs, though his admiration for eleven-year-old Speedwell, who he inherited from late wife Georgie, remains sky-high. With that burgeoning partnership at the forefront of his mind, the rest is something he can be pragmatic about.
“At the end of the day, all I can control is what I can control,” he says. “My horse is fantastic, and he’s finished well, and that’s all I can do. If I want to kick myself, maybe I should have done a better halt at the end of the test yesterday. But no, I’m really happy, and really proud.”
But he, too, expressed some concerns about the current state of the sport’s flag situation.
“There are slightly different processes at different events, and I definitely think that just needs to be slightly tidied up, otherwise each team is going to be employing a team of lawyers to fight these penalties, and I don’t think that’s what the sport is about,” he says.
What the sport is about, fundamentally, is partnership – and today, Jesse felt that the one he’s been developing with Speedwell came together better than ever.
“It was quite cool, because he was a little… not tense at the start, but he was just sort of not letting down in his gallop as much as I’d like, and I was a little down on my minute markers,” he continues. “Probably in the past, I might have panicked a little bit there, like ‘I’ve got to get up on time,’ but today I just let him build into the round. And I was really proud of that, of the way I managed that. Once he let go and started to really travel, I was like, ‘okay, we’ve got a chance here.’ He’s funny; you look at his little eyebrows – he really worries and really tries hard, but now he’s sort of figuring out that he’s actually pretty cool, and he’s really revelling in thinking, ‘I’m a good horse!’ That’s a cool feeling as a rider to be sat on top of.”
Padraig McCarthy and MGH Zabaione. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
While Laura and Jesse alike are both in different stages of developing partnerships with their horses, Ireland’s Padraig McCarthy has a much longer-standing foundation with the nine-year-old MGH Zabaione. He bred the horse and has produced him throughout his career, and along the way, has always rated him as one who could do big things.
Today, their clear round was a nearly faultless one – they crossed the finish line just one second over the optimum time to add 0.4 penalties to their first-phase score of 27.4, the horse’s first sub-30 at four-star.
“I didn’t think, coming to Boekelo, that we’d be quite so high, because his dressage has been slow to crack that 30 barrier, so I said to myself before I got on yesterday that I just wanted to ride him like it’s another training day and take what came,” says Padraig. “He was amazing on Friday, and so I said the same thing to myself today: ‘he’s a nine-year-old, so go and ride him like he is.’”
He is, he continues, “a very, very genuine horse. He had a couple of blips in Aachen this year, but I think I maybe wasn’t the best prepared, and Aachen can catch horses out, we know that. But today, he was really fantastic.”
In a funny sort of way, the pair’s blips at Aachen – a surprise after their victory last year in Blenheim’s eight- and nine-year-old class – might well have ultimately added value to the gelding’s education.
“I think it was an important moment, because he’s been so good all his life that I probably went in a little underprepared,” says Padraig. “I hadn’t done any technical cross-country stuff before I went, or cross-country schooled, and so it was probably a wake-up call for me as much as anything.”
Padraig often limits the amount of cross-country schooling his horses do: “If you follow social media,” he says, “you see many people who do it all the time, and that’s something I’ve never really done – and maybe that’s a fault of my own. But some horses just do it naturally. We have a little bit of cross-country at home, and generally, I’d play around a bit with them over very small stuff, but I focus more on, for example, polework and showjumping and being very, very strict that I always ride them over the centre of the pole when I do that. That way they know where they’re going. Sometimes you can watch amateur riders and see them take off and land in two different places, but I’m very strict with myself that there’s one path to and away from a fence. I think the horses, once they understand where they’re going and your hand and leg aids, they follow it.”
But after Aachen he conceded that perhaps it was time to ramp up that part of his training regime.
“When we got home I rebuilt the line that we’d had a mistake at, and once he understood it, he was great. We did a bit more training, I took him cross-country schooling once, and he’s been fantastic. Once he gets something, he’s got it – he’s really clever. Perhaps we were both just victims of how good he is – I maybe fell into a false sense of security, but it was a good wake-up call, and he’s been fantastic here.”
Alexis Goury and Coloree de Poteau. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
France’s Alexis Goury retains fourth place overnight on the nine-year-old Coloree de Poteau Z, who came home one second inside the time in his debut CCI4*-L run, while Germany’s Pia Leuwer and Jard, who led the first day of dressage, also came home inside the time to stay on the same overnight score as Alexis, though as they were five seconds faster than the French pair, they lose out on the tiebreak and move to fifth place.
Lara de Liedekerke-Meier and Kiarado d’Arville. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Sixth place remains the domain of Belgium’s Lara de Liedekerke-Meier, who came home two seconds inside the time with Kiarado d’Arville, who is also firmly back on an upward trajectory after a tricky Aachen, and our first genuine shift on the leaderboard comes in seventh place, which is now held by Christoph Wahler of Germany and D’Accord, with whom he’s rerouted from Burghley, and with whom he returned home with eight seconds to spare today.
Eighth place goes the way of Izzy Taylor with the former Six-Year-Old World Champion Barrington Alice, who added nothing to her score card and climbed from 12th to eclipse her stablemate SBH Big Wall, who was seventh after dressage but was eliminated late on course today. Ninth place is held by France’s Astier Nicolas and Babylon de Gamma, who climbed up from 13th with their clear inside the time, and tenth place is Caroline Harris, who added nothing with Cooley Mosstown to move up from 16th.
Hallie Coon and Kapriccio. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Hallie Coon led the way for the small but exciting US contingent this week, adding nothing to her sheet with first ride, Kapriccio, to move from 31st to 15th, while Lucky Fortuna added just 0.8 time penalties to climb from 44th to 21st. Chris Talley and FE Marco Polo deployed a very jolly clear round, though Chris opted to take his time in some places on course and prioritise educating the nine-year-old in this huge atmosphere, and so they added 20 time penalties to shift from 40th to 52nd. Our own Ema Klugman and Chiraz had an early green moment at the first water at 6B but rallied to complete with 20 jumping penalties and 23.6 time penalties, putting them in 70th place overnight.
Chris Talley and FE Marco Polo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
We’ll be back in just a few short hours with news from tomorrow morning’s final horse inspection, which sees 79 horses – surely a record of some sort – convene in front of the ground jury and probably a badly-parked lorry at 8.30 a.m. local time (7.30 a.m. BST/2.30 a.m. EST). Then, it’s onward to the showjumping finale and, we hope, a slightly more straightforward conclusion to the week’s sport.
Until then, Go Eventing!
Ema Klugman and Chiraz. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
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