It’s the Plot Twist Olympics: Tim Price and Vitali Lead After Tough Aachen Showjumping

Tim Price and Vitali. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

When we last caught up with you, a scant few hours ago, we’d finished the dressage at the CHIO Aachen CCIO4*-S with a duo of leaders: Tim Price and Vitali found themselves head to head with 27-year-old German talent Jérôme Robiné and Black Ice after both men — and both little black horses — put a 27.3 on the board. But we knew a seriously influential showjumping course was to come this evening in the CHIO’s sprawling main stadium, and we knew the penalty margins were so tight that even a whisper of time could send competitors tailspinning down the leaderboard. We knew there’d be change. We knew there’d be poles. We knew there’d be heartbreaks and triumphs. We knew one of our leaders — sweet, frustrating Vitali — is prone to a succession of rails when the pressure (or the prize money) creeps upwards. So what would it be?

It would be, ultimately, Vitali’s gotcha moment. As the penultimate horse and rider in the ring, he and Tim followed 43 prior rounds, in which 33 rails had fallen down, sending the leaderboard into turmoil. But here, as Vitali has so often at much less atmospheric CCI4*-S competitions, he pricked his ears, lifted his toes, and made the whole exercise look like he was born to do it. Gratifying? Absolutely — for once, Tim will get to tackle the final phase of a major competition knowing that he’s in the lead and preparing to tackle the gelding’s strongest suit. But baffling? Totally — even, or perhaps especially, for Tim himself, who has spent years trying to figure out what exactly it is that makes showjumping such an uphill battle with the quirky little horse.

“He’s an athlete, and I know he’s a good jumper, and I don’t know what — I still haven’t worked out what it is at those big ones,” says a pleased but undeniably confused Tim. “This was, I thought, his biggest short format challenge to date, because of the atmosphere. I’ve always been concerned about the atmosphere at the big five-stars, but really, now, I have to maybe reconfigure it a little bit and really think about what it means to him: the way he tries around the big cross countries, and what it means to his body and everything for the next day. Because he’s a very sound horse, and he comes out feeling really good on a Sunday. But anyway, he jumped great today!”

Tim Price and Vitali. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

“I’ll work until the dying day of either of us, because he’s such a talented horse, and he’s a pleasure, and he can be so special. So I will happily — not happily — but I’ll go and try and try and try and try with him,” he continues.

Perhaps one of the game changers today has been a shift in the pair’s training for this phase: recently, they’ve been training with British-based Irish jumper Shane Breen, a previous winner of the Hickstead Derby among his many accolades.

“I think that the method of training, I’ve been improving and adapting it as time’s gone on. I’ve had a really useful bit of help over the years, but just recently with Shane Breen, who also we’re lucky enough to have him on the ground here. He’s a master at what he does. He kept me away from jumping too many fences today — he literally has a number, like eight fences [that I’m allowed to jump], and so we don’t use a single one that’s not required. There’s a plan every time and he just breathes some really good, nutritious stuff into me. It gives me the confidence to go and stick to the plan.”

Like any good athlete, Tim has also been interrogating whether he’s bringing something to the table that’s causing a hitch in the plan. But with so many successful showjumping rounds, both in eventing and pure showjumping under his belt, he’s certainly not short on valuable mileage.

“I’ve got a lot of good jumpers, but then you go through sort of ebbs and flows of all these different aspects of a horse and the talent and everything,” he says. “And so I think having good jumpers and going through the motions has got me in a really good place where I don’t focus on the wrong things. I know that I’m going to see a distance to number one. I’m not out here fretting; I just go around the corner and jump number one and ride on the line. That’s all through jumping lots and lots of rounds over the last eight years down in Sunshine Tour and everything else. It’s just time and experience.”

Tim Price and Vitali. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Today’s course, he explains, was built to challenge even the most capable horses and riders.

“It had quite a bit of variation in its height, which is maybe a little misleading to walk, because it can put you in a slight casual mindset, a little bit,” he explains. “But for the horse, it actually, I think, makes it more difficult in a way. Number four was quite small, but then the next one’s uphill, a decent oxer, and they have to try — and around the corner’s an even chunkier oxer to a short enough two strides, to a vertical that’s just sort of out of nowhere. A double to a double is very rare [for us]. We rolled down eight or nine strides downhill to another double that was this much longer. I don’t think I’ve done that before in the ring, and a few others have said that too. And then just a demanding last couple of lines. That big red oxer did jump well, but Shane was saying it’s caused quite a lot of problems in the other classes it’s been used in. It took a bit of leg, followed by a rail that’s three inches wide. And then the last line was the last line, it’s just a physically demanding last line. They’ve got to use themselves and try hard through there. The time, I thought, maybe could have been two seconds faster, even though I was only a second inside, but I knew I was flirting with that.”

Bubby Upton and Cannavaro. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

The pair will stay on their first-phase score of 27.3 going into tomorrow morning’s tight, twisty, technical cross-country course, on which the time is always achingly tight — but now, they’re not sharing that top spot with anybody. Jérôme and Black Ice, last in the ring, just tipped one rail in an otherwise impressive round, which drops them to fourth individually, below now-second-placed debutant Bubby Upton and Cannavaro, who jumped a stylish clear as pathfinders, and Tom McEwen and Brookfield Quality, who also added nothing to their scorecard. Previously third-placed Monica Spencer and Artist of New Zealand slid down to nineteenth after two expensive rails, further widening Tim’s leading margin to 1.8 penalties, or 4 seconds in hand tomorrow.

Tom McEwen and Brookfield Quality. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

The shift around on the leaderboard also changes the state of play for the eight teams in the Nations Cup competition. Great Britain now leads the way by a margin of 3.2 penalties, thanks to those excellent rounds from Bubby and Tom, plus clears inside the time for Laura Collett and Dacapo, now fifth up from first-phase sixth, and Gemma Stevens and Flash Cooley, who stepped up to ninth from thirteenth.

“Obviously, we’ve come here to be competitive,” says Laura of the British contingent. “All of us as individual riders are very competitive riders, and put us together on a team, and it makes us even more competitive. So we’re all here to try and get the job done, to be honest. We’re on quite experienced horses, and most of us have been here as riders before, so we kind of know what to expect, and that it’s not going to be a nice, easy, comfortable ride tomorrow. It’s going to have to feel a bit like a bit of a helter skelter, but hopefully we can stay where we currently are. Every time you come here, it feels like a bit of a mini Championship in itself; it’s super competitive. Apart from the Olympics, and Europeans and stuff, we don’t have an atmosphere as big as in that arena, and just everything that’s going on here and the size of the arena and everything that goes with it just makes it feel extra special.”

Boyd Martin and Commando 3. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

The New Zealand team is now in second place, having swapped places with the Brits, while the Germans sit third. Team USA are waiting in the wings in fourth place, helmed by Boyd Martin and Commando, who moved up to tenth from fifteenth after adding nothing to their score of 33.8.

“I’m just so lucky that Peter [Wylde] is here as my coach and mentor in the show jumping phase,” says Boyd. “And he’s brilliant — he’s ridden in this ring for so many years, and he knows exactly the warm up procedure and when to get up the gate and how the ring rides and what studs to use. He was very kind to me to come over a little bit early to Belgium and help me jump the horse a couple days ago. Connor is a fantastic jumper, and I wasn’t sure how he’d react to a big, spooky ring, but he was fantastic. I feel like [after] the run at Kentucky five-star, he’s really grown up and come on, like he’s a man now. He was like a little teenager up until this year and this year, now he’s a champ.”

The US is very much fronting an A-team here at Aachen, with Boyd joined by 2021 champions Will Coleman and Off The Record, who moved up from 24th to 16th with their faultless round, Phillip Dutton and Possante, who dropped from 16th to 26th with a solitary rail, and Caroline Pamukcu and HSH Blake, who had an expensive two rails to move from 11th to 32nd.

“I don’t think we’ve got a team strategy,” says Boyd. “It’s my first time here, and you know, I’ve never ridden this track before, and I’m on a good horse, though, and I’ll go as fast as I can without risking an injury. I don’t think I can win it, but I’ll go quick and give it a good shot and hopefully finish in the top group.”

Tomorrow’s cross-country finale gets underway at 9.55 a.m. local time (8.55 a.m. BST/3.55 a.m. EST), and will now run in a new and, if we’re honest, reasonably baffling order of go, which will see Caroline Pamukcu and HSH Blake act as the pathfinders for the day. From the top twelve onwards, we’ll be running in reverse order of merit — you can check out the times in full here, and you’ll be able to follow all the action via the livestream on ClipMyHorse.TV, and right here on EN, where we’ll be running live updates throughout. We’ve also got an in-depth look at tomorrow’s course, newly designed by 2022 World Championships designer Giuseppe della Chiesa, right here. Dig in, get comfortable, and let’s go eventing!