Caroline Powell and Greenacres Special Cavalier. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.
As we predicted in the lunch break report, this morning’s new leaders, 2023 Pau champions Ros Canter and Izilot DHI will be the leaders of the pack as we head into tomorrow’s cross-country – but our compact afternoon double of sessions still saw some changes at the business end of the MARS Badminton leaderboard, which ends the day with just six combinations having broken into the 20s.
Chief among those new additions was British-based Kiwi Caroline Powell, who put a 30 on the board and took first-phase seventh place with the eleven-year-old Greenacres Special Cavalier – a minuscule departure from the sub-30s scores the partnership has previously recorded at five-star, but a score that, in this harsh-marking environment, still represented a test to celebrate.
“I’m so, so pleased with her,” beams Caroline, who finished sixth at Maryland last year and fifth at Pau the year prior with ‘Cavvy’. “She just keeps getting better and better.”
Though Cavvy is still a very young five-star horse – young enough that you could feasibly think of her as being suitable for not just Paris, but also, very easily, Los Angeles – she’s already remarkably accomplished, and each outing that Caroline has given her has provided her with tools to understand how to eke the very best out of her horse. Among those? The knowledge that a buzz of excitement in the air helps to bring out the very best in her work.
Caroline has two horses here – she also rides debutant CBI Aldo, who sits in equal 33rd overnight on a 35.6 – which gave her a 50/50 chance that she’d get the draw she wanted to allow Cavvy, her competitive, rather than foundational ride, to really show what she could do.
“I really wanted to ride her in the afternoon dressage so that she could get in with the atmosphere — and it’s a great atmosphere in there,” she says. “I was chuffed to bits with her — she didn’t really miss a beat, and she was brilliant.”
Caroline Powell and Greenacres Special Cavalier. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.
Knowing your horse this well does sometimes mean taking the flip side with a smile, though: “When she’s in the boards, she does [focus in an atmospher]; outside, the atmosphere sort of gets to her a bit and she’s a wee bit wild,” Caroline laughs. “It’s quite entertaining — but then she goes into the arena and she knows she’s got to perform. She loves crowds, so it’s nice to be able to get her to the stage where we can put her into that situation and push the buttons in the right way. She’s only, hopefully, going to get better and better.”
This will be a second crack at Badminton for Cavvy, who completed here last year in the memorably tough conditions but had an educational run, rather than a competitive one: she picked up 40 penalties on course in a rare green moment, but Caroline opted to continue on and allow her to gain the experience and the fitness that comes with a completion. That tactic looked to have paid dividends when the pair ran at Maryland in the autumn, and now, former Burghley champion Caroline is looking forward to getting out there again with a year’s worth of physical and mental growth to work with.
“I think it’s a nice course,” she says. “I think there’s a lot to jump at the end, a lot that can go wrong. There’s no one piece in particular that I’m sort of thinking ‘oh, that’s a bit unjumpable’, but, you know, there’s so much happening, and we’ve also got the ground, which is going to be a wee bit undecided how it’s going to ride. It’s drying out all the time. I think the course is a good course — as good a course as I’ve seen for a while, and I think everything’s there in front of you to jump, you’ve just got to give it a good ride. Hopefully we do.”
Gemma Stevens and Chilli Knight. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.
Gemma Stevens and her 2021 Bicton pop-up CCI5* winner Chilli Knight will sit in equal tenth place, tied with Max Warburton and Monbeg Exclusive, going into cross-country as the gelding makes his long-awaited comeback from an injury he picked up on that victorious run – and Gemma, for her part, rode out of the ring beaming from ear to ear. Whether that’s because of her horse’s return, his excellent performance, which earned them a 31.7, or because it’s finally stopped raining in the UK, we’re not sure – but either way, we can confirm she’s very definitely delighted to be here, even if the scores this week at Badminton are a little, well, lacklustre.
“I mean, my God, they’re grumpy judges aren’t they?” she laughs. “But honestly, that little horse, he was exactly the same in the ring as he is out here [in the warm-up]. He goes in 100% with me, every step of the way — apart from one jog in the walk! He couldn’t have done any more than what he did today.”
These first-phase successes mean even more, she explains, because the son of 2015 winner Chilli Morning isn’t a natural dressage horse.
“He is what he is. He’s not Valegro; he’s not London 52; he’s not a big mover, but he is so well trained and he’s so obedient, so I was chuffed to bits,” she says.
Even sweeter is the reward after nearly three years waiting and working for it.
“It’s been a really long, like, massive long road to here,” she says. “We actually got him in from the field from having a whole year off this time last year, with this in mind. He’s literally worked a long, slow process from then to now, doing all sorts of different things to get him fit in a really long and slow and thorough way, to have him as strong in his body but as fit and lean as possible. It’s no stone unturned.”
Gemma Stevens and Chilli Knight. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.
But, Gemma explains, there’s plenty of ways to very nearly throw a spanner in the works: “When I fell out of the lorry door on Tuesday when I got here, I was like ‘I’ve managed to get the horse here in one piece, and now I’ve fallen!’ Like, please don’t break yourself now, it’s been a whole year!”
Gemma, who’s previously finished on the podium here with the late Arctic Soul, will have a long day ahead of her tomorrow: she’s one of the last batch of riders to go, and will have to wait until 3.34 p.m. to start her campaign on Eric Winter’s track.
“[Being able to see how it’s riding] is a benefit of going near the end, although it’s a long day, and it’s terrible for the nerves,” she says. “But actually, it is nice to learn a bit about the course. It’s really tough going out first round these five-stars when you’re just not sure how they’re going to jump it, and it’s a tough track. At fence five you know you’re at Badminton, and it means it.”
And once she’s out on course?
“I’m going to let the handbrake off,” she grins. “He’s had the handbrake come since he’s been back, and he’ll be very happy about that coming off!”
Pippa Funnell and MCS Maverick. Photo by Nico Morgan Media.
Though she didn’t quite break into the top ten, Pippa Funnell was delighted with her 2023 Bramham winner MCS Maverick, who’s still a relatively new ride and an inexperienced, tricky, young horse. After the disappointment of her test with the much more experienced Majas Hope yesterday, which saw her score a 40.8 for first-phase 63rd, it was a welcome tonic to post a much more positive 31.9 for overnight twelfth.
“I mean, I have to be delighted because I tell you what, we’ve had a real, real difficult time trying to get him out of the stables and up here, and I think that the vet inspection really [set him off],” she says, referring back to Wednesday’s horse inspection, in which the gelding spooked and reared so spectacularly that he nearly went over.
Today, to ease his mind and give him some extra support, she enlisted the help of hunt horse Albert and rider Zoe, who escorted Pippa and Maverick from the stables, to the warm-up, and then into the arena, and back out and back to the stables again afterwards.
“I think people underestimate – it’s very easy for the public just to see the horses here [at the ring], but really there’s one thing that makes Badminton very different from any other event,” says Pippa. “That’s that the stables, behind those arches into the main courtyard, are absolutely ‘backstage’, and it’s really quite relaxed for the horses. But when they come into the park through that gate, it’s like walking onto the main stage every time. He got quite anxious in the trot-up; I think he was just surprised, because he came under the arch and clocked all these people, and he’s not used to it. You can’t prepare for Badminton; until you get here, you never know what they’re going to do — and they are very, very fit. The main thing is, in a little bit of nervousness, is try and hold their hand and figure out the best way through. You have to stay with them, you know, and keep them on side, and he was really onside in the arena.”
“It’s no secret that he’s tricky in that phase,” she continues, reflecting on the test. “He’s just a horse who’s pumped with adrenaline, and so I was very pleased. Obviously there was a blip in the shoulder-in, and after the rein back he struck off wrong, but otherwise, I was really delighted.”
There were a couple of other horses who might feasibly have been expected to have cracked the top ten, including Tom Jackson‘s 2022 Burghley runner-up Capels Hollow Drift — but he, like so many other horses today, took fright in the ring at a new camera, which has been placed close to A, bafflingly over-shrouded in dressing, and serves no purpose other than to provide livestream viewers with a wide angle, ground-level shot of each horse’s backside reversing at speed towards it while performing the reinback. A view that, if we’re totally honest, reminds wholly and completely of Bridget Jones sliding down a fireman’s pole, directly onto her cameraman – and so, in short, probably a shot that’s not worth giving poor Tom Jackson a 34.4 and 22nd place overnight, nor frightening countless other horses through the two days of dressage. Nor, indeed, pissing off sweet, jolly, perennially optimistic Alex Bragg, who pointed out how tricky it made several of the test’s bigger asks for the horses: “There’s a little camera in the corner – don’t put one there again, guys! Whoever organised the media team, it was a terrible, terrible decision with horses. It’s so awkward walking towards that, and also having your first canter towards it.”
The people have spoken: no more strange, fun-house style bum-shots for 2025, maybe.
Now, we’re looking ahead to tomorrow’s cross-country challenge, which will begin at 11.30 a.m. with Tom Jackson pathfinding aboard Farndon, who’s 17th overnight on a 33. There’s been a lot of chat about how the ground might look tomorrow: at the start of the week, it was soft and wet, and as William Fox-Pitt put it, ‘pudding all the way down’ even if it were to harden, because of six months of nearly non-stop rainfall in the UK. Since then, it’s been hot with a light breeze, which is swiftly cooking the top layer of the mud, at least – but what that means for tomorrow is anyone’s guess. It’s very likely we’ll see variation across the course, with some sloppier areas, some quicker areas, and quite a lot of sticky, holding ground – but it’s also very likely that with tomorrow’s hot forecast, we’ll also see it change throughout the day. While early horses will benefit from virgin ground, which will be a great boon if it does get holding or churned up later on, some ground analytics done onsite by Mark Lucey also suggest that the conditions could improve as the day unfolds, with faster going later in the afternoon. In short? The quality of the going is as up in the air as the entire competition currently appears to be, with 20 penalties covering the top 64 riders, out of a total of 65 currently set to start tomorrow.
The eagle-eyed among you will note that that number has diminished somewhat – and it’s thanks to a couple of key withdrawals. Harry Meade won’t be the first rider since the early ’70s to ride three horses around Badminton’s cross-country in one year, following the withdrawal before dressage of his third ride, Red Kite, and of his first ride, Cavalier Crystal, who was sitting in 44th place on a 36.7. We’ve also seen the withdrawal of many people’s favourite for the win this week, David Doel and Galileo Nieuwmoed, who were 19th on a 33.9. David spoke to Horse&Hound, sharing the news that Galileo is fine, but not quite himself this week.
Keep it locked on EN, as we’ll be bringing you the riders’ thoughts on, and reactions to, Eric Winter’s seriously tough track – and in the meantime, you can relive all of today’s action through Cheg’s live updates, and give the course a walk with our in-depth preview. We’ll be back soon with plenty more from Badminton – until then, Go Eventing!
The top ten at the close of dressage at the 2024 MARS Badminton Horse Trials.
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