Classic Eventing Nation

Astier Nicolas and Babylon de Gamma. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

It’s a lightning-fast update from us here at Military Boekelo this morning, where we’ve just seen over 70 horses present at the final trot-up and now we’re already just moments away from the start of showjumping. Speed-running a Sunday morning is one way to wake up, we suppose.

Another failsafe way to get slapped around the face by a Sunday morning is to watch the top ten of the competiton reshape itself before your eyes, and that’s exactly what happened here. Of the 79 finishers yesterday, we saw 75 come forward to trot up after overnight withdrawals from Hong Kong’s Yuxuan Su and Ventura, 49^th after a cross-country clear with 12 time penalties, New Zealand’s Sam Lissington and her Blenheim eight- and nine-year-old champion Quantas R, 17^th after a convincing clear inside the time, Switzerland’s Robin Godel and Dealer de la Bride, 78th, and Germany’s Christoph Wahler and D’Accord FRH, who had sat in seventh position overnight with their clear inside the time.

They’re not the only pair to take their leave from our overnight top ten. The ground jury of President Angela Tucker, Edith Schless-Störtenbecker, and Andrew Bennie sent five combinations to the holding box over the course of the inspection, and four of those went on to be accepted: they were Ireland’s Joseph Murphy and Barberstown Castle Rehy (66^th), compatriots Suzanne Hagan and OBOS Take One (62^nd), Italy’s Andrea Docimo and Tradewinds Alfredo (77^th), and 20-year-old Dutchman Tijn de Blaauw and The Joker, who hold the overnight lead in the Dutch National Championship and sit 51^st in the overall standings. But unsuccessful in their re-presentation were France’s Astier Nicolas and Babylon de Gamma, who were ninth with a clear inside the time.

This opens the door Ireland’s Susie Berry and John the Bull to move up to ninth ahead of showjumping, while Switzerland’s Nadja Minder and Top Job’s Jalisco now sit tenth.

Laura Collett remains in the lead with Count Onyx after a prolonged flag review yesterday, and the margins at the top couldn’t be much tighter: she’s just 0.2 penalties ahead of second-placed Jesse Campbell and Speedwell, so at this stage, she won’t even have a second of time in hand. Ireland’s Padraig McCarthy and MGH Zabaione aren’t far behind either – they’re 0.7 penalties behind Jesse and remain less than a penalty off the lead. A rail covers the top 14 at this stage.

Showjumping will begin shortly at 11.15 a.m. local time (10.15 a.m. BST/5.15 a.m. EST). The top 25 should be jumping from 14.30 local time (13.30 p.m. BST/8.30 a.m. EST).. As throughout the week, it’ll be broadcast on ClipMyHorse.TV if you want to follow the action as it happens. We’ll be back later with lots more from the exciting finale of this year’s FEI Nations Cup and the individual competition, too. Let’s Go Eventing!

EN is proud to welcome Horsepal onboard as the sponsor of our Military Boekelo coverage! Horsepal is a newly-launched heart rate monitor brought to you by Tom MacGuinness, founder of Horseware and an FEI eventer and endurance rider, who’s brought his decades of knowledge to practice in the design of Horsepal. You can now purchase Horsepal directly to the UK and Europe — learn more here.

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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 12^th 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 13^th with their clear inside the time, and tenth place is Caroline Harris, who added nothing with Cooley Mosstown to move up from 16^th.

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 31^st to 15^th, while Lucky Fortuna added just 0.8 time penalties to climb from 44^th to 21^st. 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 40^th to 52^nd. 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 70^th 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.

EN is proud to welcome Horsepal onboard as the sponsor of our Military Boekelo coverage! Horsepal is a newly-launched heart rate monitor brought to you by Tom MacGuinness, founder of Horseware and an FEI eventer and endurance rider, who’s brought his decades of knowledge to practice in the design of Horsepal. You can now purchase Horsepal directly to the UK and Europe — learn more here.

Military Boekelo: [Website] [Live Stream] [Entries] [Times and Scores] [EN’s Coverage] [Support Our Sponsor: Horsepal]

Laura Collett and Count Onyx. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

We’re used to seeing European Champion Laura Collett front up at Military Boekelo with the ineffably weird Dacapo, who’s a sure thing absolutely nowhere except here, at the event where everything is on whatever odd planet he’s from – but this year, after three years of placing achingly close to the win, it’s hard not to feel that he was slightly robbed of his chance to come back and get the job done. Boekelo doesn’t operate in quite the same way as a normal CCI4*-L: rather than just entering and showing up, riders apply to their national federation for either team selection or to take up an individual space, and with so many up-and-coming horses in need of the experience, Dacapo was left languishing at the bottom of a very long reserve list.

But that’s hardly slowing Laura down. She’s still here, and still eyeing up that win chance, it’s just that this time, none of us really know her horse.

Count Onyx is working on changing that, though. The eleven-year-old has been part of Laura’s string for just a matter of months, having previously been produced to four-star by Aaron Millar. Laura had her first FEI run on him just four months ago, taking fifth in the CCI4*-S at Burgham, and he ran well at the same level at Scone Palace and Little Downham, too, delivering sub-30 scores and swift, clear cross-country rounds at each.

Today, he made good on the first part of that trend, putting a 26.6 – a personal best at four-star, and his second-best score at any level – on the board to take the lead.

“I was chuffed with him, because this last week everything has started to feel like it’s falling into place,” says Laura. “So I was delighted that he took that work into the arena, too. He’s actually felt like a quite an inward worrier in our other tests this year, but today felt like we understood each other, and he stayed super relaxed the whole way through.”

Laura Collett and Count Onyx. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Never one to shy away from a big personality, Laura tells us that Count Onyx is “a cheeky character – but I love that in a horse. He’s a real ‘me’ type of horse, so I’ve enjoyed building a partnership with him.”

Though they’ve started their week on a serious high, and may yet see it through, Laura has her eyes firmly on the future with the young horse.

 “I feel like we’ve been on a crash course this year, so the intensity of cross-country tomorrow will really test our partnership, but I’m hoping we’ll both learn lots about each other. I’m super excited about next year once we’ve had a winter’s work together.”

Jesse Campbell and Speedwell. Photo by Hoofprints Social Media.

Tuesday of this week would have been Georgie Campbell’s 38^th birthday, and so it feels fitting that her much-loved eleven-year-old, Speedwell, sits a hair’s breadth away from the lead with her husband, Jesse, in the irons. They scored a 27.1, their personal best as a partnership and the horse’s four-star personal best, to move decisively into second place this afternoon.

“He was just very cool,” says Jesse. “He’s a lovely horse, and he’s been trending the right way this season, so I’m delighted to have got what I thought was the best work he’s done all season. He’s a triple threat horse: he’s got a good trot, a good walk, and a good canter, and so to be able to put everything together and do a proper clear round was a really good feeling.”

Jesse’s first competition with the horse was in late July of last year, when they had a steady clear in the CCI3*-S at Burgham, and this year their fledgling relationship has moved up a gear, with a win on their last outing at Cornbury and placings in four-star classes at Hartpury, Thoresby, and Royal Jump. But more important than the results is the continuation of both legacy and love.

“He’s obviously Georgie’s horse, and he’s still very much Georgie’s horse,” says Jesse. “It’s a really beautiful thing for me to have, because this is probably one of the only physical connections I have to her. It’s pretty cool. He also now really trusts me, which is a lovely feeling.”

British dressage rider Gareth Hughes has played an instrumental part in helping Jesse and Speedwell build their partnership.

“I love the way he trains. It’s all about harmony, and getting the horse to follow you, and he’s really growing in confidence with it,” says Jesse. “It really has revolutionised our training because it really flows into the jumping, where you really want the horse to follow your lead to be able to understand where it’s going. Gareth would be really cross with me if I ever put him into a situation where he could fail, and that’s a lovely, lovely way to train.”

Padraig McCarthy and MGH Zabaione. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Ireland’s riders come into Boekelo on a competitive high from the European Championships, where they won the team silver medal, and they’re also the reigning champions in the Nations Cup competition here. So it was another welcome boost, particularly in the midst of more administrative dramas in the Irish High Performance system, for Padraig McCarthy to put forth a supremely competitive effort with last year’s Blenheim eight- and nine-year-old champion, MGH Zabaione. The pair posted a 27.4, the horse’s first four-star sub-30 and a score good enough for third place overnight in this tightly-packed leaderboard.

At just nine years old, Zabaione comes into this week’s event as one of the hottest contenders for the title – a title that, if he won it, would join previous accolades such as the CCI4*-L victory at Ballindenisk on his debut at the level this spring, a top ten placing in the Seven Year Old World Championship two seasons ago, and, of course, that Blenheim win. But even since that career-defining victory twelve months ago, Padraig says, the horse has come on leaps and bounds.

“He’s a very different horse now, and again since Aachen this summer. He did a nice test there, but I thought today’s was much more secure. Every test he’s done, he’s got a bit better, but he’s always been on the same sort of marks, and I’ve been thinking that at some point there would suddenly be a big change [in how he scores]. Today, he was really amazing: he’s just starting to get a lot stronger, suddenly, and even so, I told myself, ‘look, he’s just nine, just go in and ride him like you’re training at home, and enjoy it, because he’s a very special horse.’”

Zabaione is an expressive, charismatic horse on the flat, but that’s one of the traits that’s meant his first-phase performances have been something of a slower burn.

“I think any horse that’s got so much movement like him, it’s often hard to channel it,” says Padraig. “So you can get very punished for small mistakes because of the exuberance, and to add to it, he’s unbelievably supple and elastic, so that can add a bit of difficulty.”

But, he says, “he’s very trainable, so it’s all been about building strength. We put a water treadmill in at the yard a couple of years ago, and I think that’s made a significant different to his core strength. We also keep his work very varied; he does a lot of work on Dartmoor and the hills.”

With Zabaione, he continues, “we’ve always, from the very beginning, been thinking about the bigger picture. I have a lot of help at home from great people; [British Grand Prix dressage rider] Anna Ross comes and rides him when I’m away at shows and Tracey Robinson is a great help at the competitions, so it’s a team effort, and the horse is amazing – without a doubt, one of the best I’ve ever sat on.”

The gelding has also been a welcome labour of love for Padraig’s longtime owners Di Brunsden and Pete Cattell.

“At home, he’s not a horse I’d leave for just anybody to hack out – he knows how to find somebody out. But at competitions, he’s always been very, very good. I remember taking him to one of his very early competitions as a five-year-old and ringing them up to say, ‘look, he’ll win, or he’ll be eliminated, but he won’t be second!’ And then he won, and he’s kind of continued in that fashion ever since. It’s brilliant for them, and they have another eight-year-old at home that I think will be a very good one for the future, too. You couldn’t wish for better supporters, so I’m delighted they have this horse.”

Alexis Goury and Coloree de Poteau Z. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Thursday’s leaders, German individuals Pia Leuwer and Jard, now sit fourth going into cross-country – and they’re joined in that spot by France’s Alexis Goury and the nine-year-old Coloree de Poteau Z, who also posted a 28 today. This is a new ride for the 30-year-old Frenchman, who was part of the bronze medal-winning team at last month’s European Championships, and evidently has plenty of exciting depth to his string of horses.

“I’m really lucky to ride this horse,” he enthuses. “It’s a really, really amazing horse – just unbelievable. He does really nice tests, really nice cross-country, and really nice showjumping – he’s just a really good boy, and a serious horse who loves the sport.”

This will be a debut CCI4*-L for the Zangersheide, who moved from Mathieu Lemoine’s string to Alexis’ just over a year ago. In their five FEI starts together so far, they’ve already picked up two wins, including at the CCI4*-S level at Vittel in June, and two further placings, and an eleventh – and even more excitingly, they’ve only accrued a grand total of 3.6 time penalties across those runs.

Though he’s certainly a horse who could well be incredibly competitive here this weekend – and a horse we reckon you should be keeping a close eye on as his career develops — Alexis is also keen simply to further his education, as well as the partnership they’ve been so successfully building thus far.

“He’s a special horse, because he’s actually really spooky about the environment and people, like if someone moves really fast,” he says. “He’s a really good boy, but he needs to be given big confidence and big trust by his rider. But then, on cross-country, he’s just straight and amazing and cool. This will be a really good experience for him.”

Lara de Liedekerke-Meier and Kiarado d’Arville. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Belgium’s Lara de Liedekerke-Meier is double-handed with Nooney Blue babies in this class – the same great mare who produced her five-star winner, Hooney d’Arville – and the best-placed of the two puts her firmly into the top ten.

Nine-year-old Kiarado d’Arville has always been a consistent horse on the flat, so his 28.4 today, which puts the pair into overnight sixth place, doesn’t come as an enormous surprise. But, Lara tells us, the back half of this season has been a major rebuilding process for the young talent, who won Baborowko CCI4*-L earlier in the summer and then headed to Aachen, where he was overwhelmed by the enormous atmosphere and lost some of his mojo, scoring an uncharacteristic 36.9 on the flat.

“It wasn’t my first choice to take him to Aachen, and he got a bit overwhelmed with everything – maybe he wasn’t ready for such an atmosphere,” she muses. “But I thought it might be a good idea [to prepare him for the World Championships] next year.”

After Aachen, she says, “I really struggled to have him on side again. The whole year, I had the aim of bringing him to Boekelo again, and I thought, ‘I won’t manage it.’ Then, you start to put yourself a bit under pressure, and you start to question it a little bit.”

But, she says, the meticulous system that she and her team have in place helped to bolster Kiarado’s joie de vivre again.

“I have such a super team around me, and Betty [Cardinael, head groom] manages him to perfection. My dressage trainer and I also have worked together for a very long time, and he knows me inside out, so I think that really helps.”

In the months since Aachen, Lara and her team have given Kiarado plenty of opportunities to work on the flat in different venues, without the pressure of actually competing.

“The last time he went to a show, he went on the truck, went to the show, schooled a bit, and then went home again – that was at the European Championships,” says Lara, who brought him along to accompany Hooney. “So this week, I think until he was plaited he thought it was the same kind of thing. He was feeling excited and getting better and better, and then we went into the familiarisation this morning and he was like, ‘oh, maybe we do still have to do it!’ In some ways, he’s still a little kid – he might be a four-star winner, but he still has some growing up to do.”

The result of all that patient work (and the accompanying growing up)? An overall picture that looked packed with quiet confidence. The broad grins on Team Arville’s faces when they finished the test said it all, really: Kiarado is definitely back.

Great Britain’s Izzy Taylor and SBH Big Wall will slot into seventh place on their score of 28.5, the same score as Switzerland’s Robin Godel and his Olympic partner Grandeur de Lully CH, who will occupy eighth place as their percentage mark was incrementally lower. China’s Alex Hua Tian now sits ninth overnight on the former Sam Ecroyd mount Chapel House on 29.3.

Germany’s Christoph Wahler and D’Accord FRH round out the dressage top ten with a score of 29.4, once again demonstrating the uptick in power and purpose that the lanky thirteen-year-old now possesses in this phase. They’ll head into tomorrow’s cross-country as German team anchors, a crucial role that they’re well-equipped for, despite a shock rider fall at Burghley in the middle of a superb round. That blip came when the gelding pecked slightly on landing from a single fence – an extraordinary disappointment for the Olympian, but one that will have done neither horse nor rider any harm.

Hallie Coon and Lucky Fortuna. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Hallie Coon’s Thursday ride, Kapriccio, will go into cross-country in 31^st place on his score of 31, while her second ride, Lucky Fortuna, delivered a very sweet test to post a respectable 32.6 in a phase he hasn’t always found the easiest. That’ll pop him into 44^th. Splitting the difference is Chris Talley and the charismatic FE Marco Polo, who did a sunrise dressage test as first to go today to score a 31.9 for provisional 40^th. Team EN’s own Aussie-merican Ema Klugman threw down a workmanlike test with Chiraz for 37.1 and 74^th place overnight on a leaderboard that sees just over 15 penalties cover all 89 competitors.

Chris Talley and FE Marco Polo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Great Britain holds the lead in the Nations Cup overnight, but by the slimmest margin: they’re just six-tenths of a penalty ahead of reigning titleholders Ireland, who come into the week on a high thanks to a decisive silver medal finish at last month’s European Championships. 1.2 penalties behind them is New Zealand, while Belgium is also a whisper away in fourth. Then it’s Germany in fifth, France in sixth, Australia in seventh, and the Netherlands in eighth, with relatively tight margins all the way down – so expect plenty of reshuffles as tomorrow morning gets underway.

Ema Klugman and Chiraz. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

89 horses and riders are set to leave the startbox tomorrow morning from 9.30 a.m. local time (8.30 a.m. BST/3.30 a.m. EST), starting with our team rider rotations and then moving on to the plethora of individual competitors from a projected time of 11.58 a.m. (10.58 a.m. BST/5.58 a.m. EST). Once they do, they’ll meet a technical but starkly terrainless track designed by Aidrian Ditcham, and many tens of thousands of Dutch partygoers at the fifty or so bars and hospitality stops scattered around the course. Success will require laser focus, reliable manoeuvrability, and probably at least some innate desire to swiftly join the party.

We’ll be bringing you a full report of the day’s action tomorrow, and you can also follow along with every moment via the livestream on ClipMyHorse.TV. Go Eventing!

The top ten at Boekelo after dressage.

EN is proud to welcome Horsepal onboard as the sponsor of our Military Boekelo coverage! Horsepal is a newly-launched heart rate monitor brought to you by Tom MacGuinness, founder of Horseware and an FEI eventer and endurance rider, who’s brought his decades of knowledge to practice in the design of Horsepal. You can now purchase Horsepal directly to the UK and Europe — learn more here.

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