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 38th 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 31st 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 44th. 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 40th. Team EN’s own Aussie-merican Ema Klugman threw down a workmanlike test with Chiraz for 37.1 and 74th 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.
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