Badminton in the Rearview: Oliver Townend Sets a Dazzling Dressage Record

This week, in lieu of hanging out in a field in Gloucestershire ourselves, we’re going to be sharing some of our favourite Badminton content of years gone by, as well as some new pieces to keep the nostalgia train going strong. In this flashback, we revisit last year’s competition, at which Oliver Townend broke the record for the best-ever dressage test. Here’s an excerpt from our reports that day, plus a video of the history-making test…

When the entry list for Badminton came out so many moons ago, there was a surprise on it: Oliver Townend had put forward four of his horses, and one of them was the rogue contender Cillnabradden Evo. Gary, as he’s known at home, is a horse whose career peaks and troughs, if diagrammed, would probably closely resemble his rider’s heart rate when he runs him across the country. On his day, Sally-Anne Egginton’s thirteen-year-old gelding (S. Creevagh Ferro x Willow Garden) is just about unbeatable. He’s earned himself a remarkable record in CCI4*-S (formerly CIC3*) competitions, partly because he’s so capable of delivering an eye-wateringly good dressage test. Then, he can back it up – usually – across the country, and he’s an out-and-out showjumper at short format. But in long format competitions, or at the five-star level? He’s a bit of an unknown quantity. His first long-format competition since 2016 came last season, when he made his five-star debut at Pau – after taking an easy lead in the first phase, he stormed around three quarters of the course before leaving a leg and, ultimately, leaving Oliver on the ground.

Oliver Townend celebrates with the crowd after setting a new standard at Badminton with Cillnabradden Evo. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.

So was it a surprise that Oliver brought him here? Sure – no one, after all, would have questioned Oliver’s judgment if he’d decided to keep the horse as a CCI4*-S specialist. But just as Cillnabradden Evo is an all-or-nothing horse, Oliver Townend is an all-or-nothing rider. He doesn’t come to play – he comes to win. This week, he’s willing to take his chances and rely on both his undeniable experience and the valuable information he picked up at Pau to make it happen.

What happens next is much less of a surprise. In this sport, we often talk about Thursday morning as being a bit of a tough slot – yes, it’s a bit quieter in the ring, which can be a bonus for an inexperienced or tense horse, but many consider the scoring in the first session to be a bit stuffier and a bit less generous than in the prime-time Friday afternoon slot. To lead here, you have to fire on all cylinders. And that’s just what Oliver Townend and Cillnabradden Evo did.

Cillnabradden Evo: forever inching his way towards a sub-10 dressage. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.

Their score of 19.7 isn’t just a five-star personal best for the horse. It isn’t just a five-star personal best for the rider. It is, in fact, the best dressage score ever recorded at Badminton, nearly a full mark ahead of the 20.5 delivered by Andrew Hoy and Darien Powers in 2000.

“We’ve had him a while, and so I know him inside-out,” said a typically stoic Oliver after the remarkable test. “Everyone has a lot to say about him, but so far, so good! I went to bed thinking 19 last night; it’s a lot of shit and hard work to get there, but now we just hope that he stays on his feet in the next bit.”

Despite having been out of the country for a week to win a certain competition in Kentucky, Oliver has quiet confidence in the way the horse has been managed and prepared for the biggest competition of his life. Ironically, he tells us with a laugh, “there’s been no prep at all – we’ve just been to the gallops a few times. He does it all himself.”

Time and time again, we’ve seen Oliver display his knack for creating champions out of the most unlikely of horses – in Gary he has, perhaps, the most stark duality between freakish ability and sporadic heartbreak. But if Badminton comes down to trying to win each moment, then he’s off to a flying start.

Oliver Townend and Cillnabradden Evo make history at Badminton. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.

But it’s not all records and glamour: “Normally I’m struggling away with a set of mirrors and the floodlights on, but that’s just what we do,” he explained. “I don’t actually have a dressage trainer, embarrassingly – I have the set of mirrors, and I have some DVDs, so you could say I’m pretty close with Carl Hester. That’s not me coming out, by the way!”

Oliver also relies on the help of his friend, manager, and business partner Karyn Schuter: “I trust her implicitly – you can see her speaking to me down a microphone, but you wouldn’t always want to hear what she’s saying! She’s my best mate and she always lets me know how the other riders are looking and whether we’re looking good.”

Although overnight leader Cillnabradden Evo is a bit of a riskier proposition across the country, Oliver is quick to acknowledge and own this fact. And, despite the horse failing to complete his debut five-star at Pau last year, Oliver considers the trip to France a positive one – it was, as he termed it, a ‘fact-finding mission’, and until the late wobble that ended their day, those discoveries certainly looked positive.

“The aim will be to get him home. I’ve been quite hungry for quite a long time to have him here, so it’d be nice if he put his best foot forward,” said Oliver. “[Ballaghmor Class] has been here, he’s been to Burghley twice, and so he’s battle-hardened, and he’s a lot stronger both physically, but especially mentally. We’d had no spring season last year [when he finished fifth], and we did a lot on the gallops at home, but nothing does it for them like a good event. This spring, he’s had a good run at Burnham Market, where he ran away with me up the hill [and won the CCI4*-S], and he’s feeling great. We’d have more hope for him this weekend.”

Oliver Townend and Ballaghmor Class keep the good times rolling. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.

The next day, Oliver would make history again – his dressage score of 21.1 with Ballaghmor Class would see him hold the top two positions going into cross-country, an unprecedented and enviable position to be in. 

“The night before last, I said to myself ’19, 19, 19′, and I just kept going over my test and drilling it. I didn’t think about it as much last night – maybe I should have,” he laughed. “I made one cock-up, which was a bit of a situation that he threw at me coming into the flying change, but we’re always happy to dream, and so far the dream’s coming true. If I went back in now, I could knock another three marks off, and he has the ability to come back and knock five off [in the future], but it’s all about keeping him relaxed so I can do a bit more and then a bit more. The thing about Badminton is that you have to do three clear rounds in three phases, but the more you push, the bigger the risk.”

“It’s a very good start, and I’m over the moon with both the horses – I have to keep myself under wraps because I get a quite emotional, and it’s not good for my image,” quipped Oliver. “People expect so much [from Ballaghmor Class], but they forget that he won Burghley [in 2017] as a novice. He’s beautiful to ride, and his work ethic fits into our system very well. There are plenty who don’t give you what these two have. Some people think of us as an eventing factory, but we know these horses inside out, more than anyone in the world – and the horses don’t lie.”

Cillnabradden Eva ultimately finished sixth after adding 12.4 time penalties across the country and dropping a pole on Sunday, while Ballaghmor Class finished in an achingly close second place after Oliver added a stride in the showjumping, costing him a fraction of a second and handing the victory to Piggy March, neé French, and Vanir Kamira.