Katherine Erickson, of the Grey Brook Eventing Blog that we often link to on EN, has kindly sent us a report from her experience at Bramham over the weekend–her second straight week with a report on EN after Tattersalls last week. Thanks for writing this Kate and thank you for reading.
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Wow, what a difference a week makes! Between Tattersalls last weekend and Bramham just concluding today, we enjoyed similarly cool temperatures, big and competitive fields, and impressive Ian Stark-designed tracks. And yet, between the open ditch country of County Meath and the hilly Yorkshire parkland of Bramham, Stark designed two very different courses with two vastly different results.
When I walked the course on Friday, after watching a great day of dressage where Pippa Funnell proved that she’s still one of the best event dressage riders out there, I privately thought that the track looked easier than the CCI*** at Tattersalls. There were certainly no monster-sized rider frighteners here as there had been in Ireland–though the giant trakehner on the edge of a slide at 22 came close. In general it seemed like the jumps were slightly smaller and more technical, with the rolling terrain adding an x-factor that Tattersalls didn’t have.
Well, the results clearly show that I should stick to spectating and leave the predictions to someone else! The course ended up causing a good fair share of problems, notably resulting in the elimination of the top three riders in the senior section, who all fell at different parts of the track. Julian Stiller, the only American in the competition, suffered one of the most dramatic falls of the weekend, when Enjoy Me totally misjudged the hanging log at the ‘b’ element of the first water. She looked a bit shocked, soggy, and banged up as a result, but was otherwise fine. Julian has two horses entered at the Luhmuhlen CCI**** in a few weeks, where she’ll join fellow Americans Jennie Brannigan, Tiana Coudray, and Will Faudree, and I’m sure she’ll be out on a recovery mission there.
If the senior CCI*** was a display of controlled mayhem at times, with the entire course being cleared of competitors on at least two occasions, it was doubly impressive to watch how relatively simple many of the Under-25 competitors made it look. People always talk about the incredible young talent and depth of the British program and this competition was certainly a showcase of it. These up and coming riders in general made a course that proved even William Fox-Pitt to be mortal look like a canter in the park, with many of them still still well in their young rider days. I especially love the way Georgie Spence–a girl famous for being the first teenager to produce clear rounds at Badminton and Burghley in almost a decade–rides cross-country, but she was just one excellent rider among many.
I was, I think with everyone else, a huge personal fan of the eventual runner up in the Under-25 section: Portersize Just a Jiff, ridden by Camilla Speirs. A part Connemara standing at only 15.2hh, Portersize Just a Jiff was the smallest horse in the competition and very arguably the cutest. He’d put in a great test at Badminton earlier this spring only to have a crashing fall at the Lake. It was great, then, to see them going so well here, even if a heartbreaking rail at the sixth fence cost them the win.
As at Tattersalls, I had to leave before the conclusion of the senior show jumping, but I did get to watch eventual winner Kai Ruder walk his course. He spent a very long time inspecting Fence 11, a brightly-colored green vertical with very light rails and spooky flower cut outs, and looked a little worried as he tested the rails in their cups. He obviously didn’t need to worry however, as he jumped a solid clear for the win. His horse was one of my favorites to watch on cross country day, and made the influential first double of corners look easy. As a German winner, perhaps he was reminding the Britons that they will contest the next major CCI****, and the next European championship, on his home turf!
