Bramham: the biggest, boldest of four-stars. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Though cross country day at Bramham started out inauspiciously – the first four competitors out of the start box came home clear and with negligible or no time penalties — it quickly gained in intensity, with problems presenting themselves far and wide throughout the 5,885m CCI4*-L track. Of the 45 starters, 33 would go on to complete — a fair completion rate of 73%. 27 of those completing did so sans jumping penalties; five did so without jumping or time penalties. These are, all things considered, very good numbers for a competition that’s widely considered the world’s toughest four-star; in comparison, 2019 saw a clear rate of just 33% – nearly half today’s 60% – and considerably more safety device activations in that iteration, too. Just one device was activated in today’s senior CCI4*-L: Aimee Penny and PSH Encore triggered a MIMclip at fence 8ABC, the rail-ditch-rail combination.
Part of that positive upward trend towards completions may well be attributed to a change in qualifications enacted by the FEI at the tail end of last season. Now, athlete categorisations are based on results over a four-year, rather than eight-year, period, though each grade has also had its required number of qualifying results lessened in tandem with this change. Also newly brought in is a rule regarding horses returning to competition after time off: those who haven’t contested an FEI competition in 13 months or more must log a qualifying result at the preceding level. All this serves to tidy up the entry lists at the top end competitions this spring, though they’re not changes that have been met with universal praise.
Whatever the case, though, Ian Stark’s typically big, bold tracks here still exerted plenty of influence, even with this more positive spin on the numbers. Never was that felt more than when firm favourite — and first-phase leaders — Ros Canter and Izilot DHI took to the course late in the day. With wins at two-, three-, and four-star level to his name already, smart-but-sharp ‘Isaac’ was hotly tipped coming into this event, but the ten-year-old quite quickly made it plainly evident that even the most talented of athletes is still far from a machine when he nipped out the side door at fence 3b, a relatively straightforward left-handed log-to-skinny question.
Pippa Funnell and MCS Maverick take over the top spot at Bramham. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
That opened the door for a number of potential pretenders to the throne — and although the previous two days’ relentlessly tough judging had been frustrating for everyone at the time, it did mean that much of the field was closely bunched, and so a few seconds in either direction could make a huge impact. Ultimately, though, it would be Pippa Funnell, second-placed after dressage, who would step into the top spot with the ten-year-old CCI4*-L debutant MCS Maverick, who added just 1.2 time penalties and never looked to come off the boil on course despite being held for several minutes just before fence 14.
“If ever I’ve had one that gives you the feeling that it’s going to run around Burghley or Badminton, he’s one, and that’s why probably I quietly took him on, but he is a project,” says Pippa. “He’s not there yet, and he’s got a lot of sort of maturing and strengthening to do.”
So far, he’s ticked all the boxes in the two phases he’s completed — but the first phase, Pippa explains, is where he can be particularly tough, and so as she’s gotten to know him, she’s devised a way to keep him in a positive mental place.
“I was absolutely delighted with the dressage, but it is proper, proper mind games, because he’s not strong enough in his body just to say, ‘I’m going to do so much work that I’m going to wear him out’, because you won’t wear the horse out. He’s got that much blood you won’t wear him out physically, and I was really aware with the dressage that I couldn’t make him body sore, so he did lots of hacking, lots of cantering off his back, loose lunging, just stuff that really relaxes his brain. Tomorrow, too, will be all about learning.”
This is just Pippa’s third international on the gelding, who she took on from fellow five-star rider and Billy Stud stable jockey Helen Wilson.
“Helen, who rides for us, has ridden the horse and Sarah Ross, the owner, always had the horse at home. She bought the horse as a three or four year old, and Helen’s always ridden the horse,” says Pippa. “I saw it, actually, as a young horse — I think it was either four or five — the first time they ever took it cross country schooling and I said then, ‘Gosh, what a lovely quality horse’. And so I always followed it, because Helen was in the area, and then Helen was working for us and things, and so I did sit on him for the first time a couple of years ago for Helen, just out of interest. I really liked him, but he’s just quite hot.”
It was Helen who eventually suggested that owner Sarah place the horse with Pippa: “Helen had a good run at Houghton last year and and then, you know, had ups and downs and found it, I think, fairly difficult because the horse was kept at the owner’s and so she couldn’t ride it really regularly. Between them, they mutually decided to see if I would just give it a go. I made it very clear I would, but if I was not happy with him jumping and cross country wise, then I wasn’t prepared to put in the work. But Helen always said he was a machine in the way he galloped, and she’s right about that.”
Piggy March and Brookfield Cavalier Cruise. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Piggy March now finds herself in second place overnight after delivering the first clear round inside the time as just the second out of the startbox with another ten-year-old in Brookfield Cavalier Cruise. Though this is the gelding’s first CCI4*-L, he came to Bramham off the back of a win in Thoresby’s secondary CCI4*-S section, and a fourteenth-place finish at the same level at Bicton last month. Now, the former ride of Tom McEwen and Harry Meade, who Piggy describes as “a horse who’s won with every rider”, stands on the precipice of potential victory once again — he’s just 0.3 penalties behind the overnight leader, giving Pippa and MCS Maverick nothing in hand going into tomorrow’s showjumping.
Jesse Campbell and Gambesie. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Though his two time penalties allowed Piggy to squeeze in ahead, New Zealand’s Jesse Campbell retained his third-placed spot on the leaderboard with the twelve-year-old Dutch-bred debutant Gambesie, a former mount of Irish Olympian Jonty Evans. After battling some recurrent hoof issues, Jesse and his team have clearly hit upon a winning formula for the talented gelding, who rose to the occasion at the tail end of the class.
Harry Meade and Red Kite sail through the final element of the Roundhouse complex. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Harry Meade enjoyed a very good day in the office indeed: both his horses now sit in the top ten going into showjumping, with Red Kite stepping into fourth after adding neither time nor jumping penalties — and stepping into a space vacated by day one leaders Izzy Taylor and Happy Days, who picked up jumping penalties at the B element of fence 19, a skinny on a downhill approach — and the exciting Cavalier Crystal moving to seventh with a scant 1.2 time penalties.
Harry Mutch and HD Bronze at the Roundhouse. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Much as at Thoresby earlier this year, that double of good results sees him in close quarters with Harry Mutch, who piloted his longtime partner HD Bronze to an enormously classy clear with just 3.2 time penalties in the rider’s first year out of the under-25s. They retain their post-dressage fifth-place spot.
Tom McEwen and Luna Mist. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Less than a rail covers the entirety of the top five as we go into tomorrow’s finale, and Pippa will have just a rail and a time penalty in hand over sixth-placed Tom McEwen and Luna Mist.
The top ten going into tomorrow’s final horse inspection and showjumping in the Bramham CCI4*-L.
The under-25 CCI4*-L ran over the same course, and with the same 10:20 optimum time, but as is often the case, the relative inexperience of its small field of entries meant that the rate of attrition was considerably higher in this class. Just seven of our original 11 competitors will go on to tomorrow morning’s final horse inspection; pathfinder Richard Coney was the first to go by the wayside when he fell with third-placed Mermus R Diamonds at the main water complex at 18ABCDE. He wasn’t the only rider to take a tumble: overnight leaders Morgane Euriat and Baccarat d’Argonne, who were cross-country leaders here last year, also ended their weekend early when Morgane fell at fence six, the Roundhouse complex, which was made up of a trakehner, a skinny, and an angled ditch and brush, and Imo Brook, too, had a horse fall at the Womble Bond Dickinson Pond at 18ABCDE, necessitating a hold on course.
Bubby Upton and Magic Roundabout IV jump into the first water at Bramham. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
There was no such trouble, though, for Bubby Upton, who had led the first phase on a 26.5 — a score so impressive that it would have led any of the three classes in this week’s competition. She and Magic Roundabout IV, who she sourced through Piggy March, added nothing to it with their decisive, mature round — a marker, undoubtedly, of the considerable experience Bubby has picked up around top-level courses — to retain their lead.
“It was a big ask for him — people think he’s a lot more experienced than he is, but he’s only ran twice since May last year,” says Bubby, who won the under-25 title two years ago with Cannavaro, when this class was temporarily rerouted to Devon’s Bicton under Covid measures. “So with the spring we’ve had he really lacked prep runs, so I had a lot of confidence in him, but obviously at the same time I was kind of a little bit uncertain of how he’d cope round this track.”
She needn’t have worried. Though neither horse nor rider has ever tackled the tough Yorkshire track before, Bubby took the ride on Magic Roundabout with Piggy’s assurance that he was a horse best suited for Bramham and Burghley types of courses — big, bold, galloping, and stacked with terrain. And though a freak field accident last year put off his debut, he’s more than stepped up now that he’s here. Once again, the pair would easily be in the lead had they been taking part in the senior CCI4*-L.
“He was just phenomenal,” says Bubby. “He ate up the track and made it feel like a lot of fun, to be honest. It was a real joy to ride; it was going really great, but I had to keep just like, regaining my focus because he was making it feel so smooth, I had to just keep putting myself in check almost before the combinations coming up, but he just kept responding. There wasn’t a single moment really where he gave me anything to worry about. He just responded to everything I asked for and was full of running.”
Because of Magic Roundabout’s easy rhythm, Bubby found herself bang on her first and second minute markers, and then up on the clock thereafter — which meant that when she got to the tops of the venue’s famous hills, “I could give him five, six strides to breathe because the time was no pressure,” she explains. “And then the bounce into the water and the coffin, I just really took my time to make sure I didn’t make a stupid mistake.”
Part of the key to Bubby’s success today was a last-minute change of plan in her route at the first water at 11AB.
“I didn’t change anything in my plan as a result of watching, but I did change my plan in that first water after walking it with [trainer] Caroline Moore,” she says. “She told me to stay a lot more left jumping into that log actually into the water; I was aiming more right of centre, and thank God I did [what she recommended] because then it gave me that really nice curve to the corner. If you jumped the corner heading even slightly left you were then in real trouble for the last corner. So that was the only slight change I made. And I watched [CCI4*-L pathefinder] Aaron Millar go through that and he was pure class, so I watched that and I thought, that’s enough. You can overwatch, so you have to be so careful of who you watch in relation to what your horse is like versus their horse, and my horse has got an enormous stride. so I knew that he can make that distance as long as I didn’t jump in too big into the water and I landed in control.”
Tom Bird and Rebel Rhyme. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Bubby now leads this class by an extraordinary margin: she’ll go into the final day of competition with 13.3 penalties — or three rails and three second — in hand over second-placed Tom Bird and Rebel Rhyme, who climbed from seventh after dressage to the podium after delivering the first clear of this class.
Sasha Hargreaves and Woodlands Be Daring. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Sasha Hargreaves, too, delivered an early clear — albeit with 10.8 time penalties — to move from outside the top five to overnight third with Woodlands Be Daring. She has 5.2 penalties in hand over fourth-placed Felicity Collins and Shadow Minnie Moon, who also added 10.8 time penalties.
Tomorrow sees the final horse inspections take place in front of Bramham House from 9.00 a.m., followed by the under-25 CCI4*-L showjumping from 11.00 a.m. and the main CCI4*-L showjumping from 12.15 p.m. Though there’s no more live-streaming tomorrow, keep it locked on to EN, and we’ll bring you reports from both the inspections and the exciting finale of these two important classes. Plus, stay tuned for a full report from the finale of the packed CCI4*-S, too!
The leaderboard as it stands going into the final day of the under-25 CCI4*-L.
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