What a view! The extraordinary façade of Burghley House will usher competitors home as they approach the eleventh hour — or fence 27, the Lion’s Bridge — on this year’s course. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
We’re driving across this year’s Defender Burghley Horse Trials course — myself and Lucy Elder of Horse and Hound in the back; Event Director Martyn Johnson at the wheel, joyfully, recklessly, but maintaining an air of serious professionalism — and all I can think is how this means of doing things really pulls into sharp focus the way that terrain is the main character at Burghley. When you’re walking the course, you do feel it: certainly, the way that I walk it, gaspingly, stopping at each peak to turn to whoever is walking it alongside me and say, “are you kidding me? Shall we stop for a fag and some water?” does force you to feel those hills and dales, even as, inevitably, Tom McEwen jogs past you while you’re hunched over, hands on your knees, and he just looks… fine. He looks fine. Spritely, even. I will never understand it. The hills are serious.
Anyway, in these blacked-out spy cars — the very Land Rover Defenders from which the event gets its new-look full name — you begin to feel some validation for all those arduous walks. These are serious all-terrain vehicles, and this is serious terrain, which becomes even more evident every time Martyn opts to park up on a nearly-vertical knoll, big, square, matte black nose to the sky, and every time he feels for the floor with his accelerator foot and we gently, tentatively go into orbit for a second before swinging back down to meet something like flat ground.
Meanwhile, we’ve got course designer Derek di Grazia, returning for his sophomore year here after taking the mantle from longtime designer Captain Mark Phillips in 2022, radioing us all in from the head of the convoy, pointing out landmarks along the way as though they’re mildly interesting blue-plaqued buildings of some minor historic significance, rather than the very questions that’ll have competitors looking both inward and outward, facing their greatest fears, challenges, and dreams in just a couple of short weeks.
That’s not to say, though, that di Grazia doesn’t understand the magnitude of what he’s been tasked with — and certainly, his track record of designing courses that riders robustly praise precedes him. In taking on Burghley, he knew he had an important task at hand: preserve what makes Burghley unique — the terrain, those achingly big jumps, the need for gallop and stamina above very nearly all else — while bringing his own unique spin on the challenge.
Derek di Grazia takes on the mantle of course designer at Burghley for the second year in 2023. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
“First of all, I think Burghley has quite a few iconic fences, and so they’re always going to probably work into the mix,” he says, explaining that his starting point for understanding how to build upon the Burghley estate begins simply by walking its loops and routes in every direction to get a feel for the little secrets the ground is hiding. “Obviously you have a track that’s pretty dedicated here. And actually, last year, I sort of went off of that and added a new loop, which we had to think about that and get done early. But beyond that, you sort of go and you design like you would design normally, because that’s what you’re here to do. Not every designer is the same; everybody has sort of their own flair. But it’s just a matter of trying to find ways to use the kind of the terrain and to use the park in a way that is going to produce something so that you’re giving a different look, year after year.”
Figuring out inventive ways to recycle a familiar bit of ground, and less-than-obvious ways to place fences on it, is the driving force behind di Grazia’s enthusiasm and motivation for the job, which has seen him design a number of top-level courses — most notably, the Land Rover Kentucky track, year in and year out.
But designing, he explains, isn’t just about being the most inventive person in the room at any given point on the track — it’s also about being cognisant of how each piece of terrain will fit together, and the cumulative effect that’ll have on horses as they wend their way through your course.
This year’s Trout Hatchery complex.
“I try to look at things from all different sides, and to see the best way that that it could work, because it’s like fitting all the pieces together and creating a flow throughout the course. — and then thinking about what the horses are going to be feeling at each section of the course, which sort of determines a little bit about what you’re going to place in that part of the course,” he says. “The way I look at it is that there are so many ways to use the ground differently, year after year, and because there are just so many lumps and bumps and the ground moves here like no other place. So I think you have to just see how you want to present it that year, and also the types of jumps that you’re going to put in different places. And really, it comes down to having to have a balance: a balance of jumps, and a balance of how you’ve used terrain in different places. That work is enjoyable; it makes it fun.”
Inspiration can come from all sides. Di Grazia, like other designers, spends plenty of time studying others’ work — but he also trains riders, and in the process of doing so, often stumbles upon interesting new ways to set them challenges, oftentimes working those discoveries into his tracks. After all, it can be argued that if a top-level course designer has one responsibility, it’s this: to set questions that riders then have to train for, effectively filling in holes in their education that have become trends across an industry and, in turn, keeping everyone that bit safer in the long run.
When riders begin to analyse and break down the questions he’s asking and prove that they have the capacity for adaptability in any given combination, that’s when he knows he’s going in the right direction — and that’s when an athlete can truly consider themselves a five-star rider.
“When you have a piece of interesting ground, and you set a question up on it, you can go ‘well, this is set up as X number of strides’ — but that, to me, isn’t the way to look at it,” he says. “Instead, you have to think, ‘what does the ground allow me to do?’ Then, the riders, as they do, will want to go through that and have a stride pattern between everything, and to me, that’s not really how it’s going to work. It may walk as X strides, but on the day, it could ride completely differently. The riders have to be good enough to understand that and be able to react to that. That’s what makes a course interesting, and that’s sort of the whole thing about when you have courses that are on terrain. You can’t totally predict what each horse is going to do, because they’re all going to do something a little bit different. That’s the challenge for the riders.”
Derek di Grazia points out the line through Defender Valley on this year’s Burghley course. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
This philosophy carries us out onto the course proper, which we’ll give you a fence-by-fence rundown of in the week of the event itself. Instead, today, we focus our walk on the overall feel; a couple of the major combinations; and whether or not, exactly, di Grazia is managing to build a ‘proper Burghley’. (Spoiler alert: he is. It’s massive, as it always has been, but it’s also smart, and in front of you, and though the places where a rider can get it wrong and exist out the side door are numerous, nothing we see on our first glimpse looks unfair. Plus, the ground feels great right now, which isn’t something we’ve said often this year.)
Though the final distance and wheeling hasn’t happened yet, we’re looking at a course that’s roughly 6400m, and with a predicted optimum time of 11:11 (make a wish — that’s the same as in 2019). As always, the course will begin over a couple of simple single fences, including the familiar face of Lambert’s Sofa at two, and a seriously beefy table with a 1.90m top spread at three that’ll “really get horses up in the air”. The first combination of sorts will come in the main arena at 4AB, which is a pair of open rails set on a long enough distance that there’s wiggle room for different stride patterns, and really just serves as a set-up for the first significant combination at 5ABCD.
A view through Defender Valley, with the A element on the right and that final corner on the left.
That first significant combination is the first pass through Defender Valley, which begins with a tall upright rail, goes on to a ditch, and then down to a wide corner. There’s an alternative route here that’s going to add plenty of time early on, so it’s more likely to be used as a back-up for those who pick up an early issue here than as a real ‘plan A’.
“This is the first real question on the course,” says di Grazia. “They’ll come down the hill, which is actually part of the problem, because when they come down the hill, they’re really going to have to make sure they get the horses in the right canter and the right balance before they come to the rails here. Leading into the combination, the rails are on a MIM clip, so it’s another situation that the riders don’t want to have a clip broken here so early in the course. They really want to make sure they ride those rails correctly; jump in, as they jump in, the horses may just back off the ditch a little bit, but they want to really ride across the ditch up the slope and then be able to keep on moving to the corner at the top. That’s the straight way; there are a couple of different alternatives, but to me, I expect them all to go straight this early in the course. They’re not going to want to be wasting a lot of time taking alternatives.”
The Leaf Pit is early on again this year, and appears at 7ABCD. First, they’ll pop down the enormous, famous drop, then they’ll pop a double brush before picking one of two angled brushes, either a left-handed one, or a right-handed one. Something that’s notable is the composition of the brush itself — while it’s long been common to use tough, rigid black birch atop fences in the UK, di Grazia has spearheaded a real push for softer, younger green birch, which comes at a greater cost and must be installed at the very last minute, but which is kinder to horses, with less chance of lacerations as they push through it.
Event Director Martyn Johnson, Derek di Grazia, and the first of a double of cabins on a bounce distance at the Trout Hatchery. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
The Trout Hatchery water will come up at 10ABC and 11AB. First, competitors will jump a kayak store at the top of the hill on dry land, before cruising down to the first of the two ponds, running through it, and then popping a bounce of houses at 10BC. That’ll take them into the second pond, which they’ll cross, jump up a step at 11A, and then over a narrow, brush-topped cabin at 11B, though with long route options peppered throughout — a boon to those riders who may feel they’ve done enough bounces into water this year and found them less than fun.
The Maltings complex, home of some of the widest white corners and most sprawling white oxers we ever seen in the sport, is no less intimidating this year. It begins with a rather sweet carved wooden hare, though dimensionally, ‘sweet’ and ‘adorable’ aren’t the first descriptive words you’d go for. After popping that, the straight route goes over a right-handed corner to a left-handed corner on a fiendishly tricky line — though once again, di Grazia hasn’t just set alternative routes, he’s also kindly lettered the complex so that riders can change their mind and go long at any point within their route.
The Maltings combination at 14ABC. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
That sympathetic bent towards giving horses and riders options continues through the bulk of the course. There’s an option everywhere you look — even at the truly iconic, unfathomably fearsome Cottesmore Leap, which comes after the 400m or so of slow uphill pull that is Winners’ Avenue.
“They’ll hit the eight-minute mark just before they get to the Cottesmore Leap,” explains di Grazia, while Martyn Johnson points out the kind, sloping profiles of the fences in this chunk of the course: “he’s been conscious, here, that horses will be starting to take a bit of a blow,” he says, “so he’s giving them a bit of a breather with the profiles.”
There’s no messing around at the Dairy Mound.
20ABC is the Defender at the Dairy Mound question, and though it’s relatively late on the course, it’s arguably one of the most serious questions on it. First, there’s a sharp upward slope to tackle en route to the first element, an enormous oxer — though, di Grazia explains, “that’s helpful, because it’ll keep them coming and give them the power for what they want to do”. Then, they’ll ride three strides on to an eye-wateringly narrow triple bar, down the slope, and left-handed to another narrow triple bar on ‘whatever they get’. As usual, there’s a long route, but di Grazia is conscious here that any addition time spent moving between fences will ask extra effort of an already tired horse, and so expects many to try to go straight — or have saved enough in the tank to allow for some wiggle room for a greener mount.
Sometimes, you need a person in there for scale and some sense of how enormous the fences — in this case, the narrow triple bars at the Dairy Mound — are. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
In all, the course gives the impression of extraordinary toughness — but also conscientious fairness. We won’t share all its secrets just yet — instead, we’ll be bringing you a fence-by-fence analysis in the week of the event, and before then, you can get a seriously in-depth view of what’s to come by signing up for the highly-praised Burghley TV, which, at £20 per annum, gives you access to the only place you can see all the live-stream action, but also provides you with behind-the-scenes and round-up programming, access to decades of highlights programmes, and much, much more besides.
This year’s Defender Burghley Horse Trials will take place from August 31 – September 3, and as always, you’ll be able to follow along with every bit of the action via EN. Stay tuned for lots more content from us in the lead-up to this year’s event, and until next time, Go Eventing!
EN’s coverage of Burghley is presented by Kentucky Performance Products. Click here to learn all about their full line of science-backed nutritional support products, including Neigh-Lox Advanced for digestive support.
Defender Burghley Horse Trials Links: Website | Live Stream | Entries | EN’s Coverage
