Julia Krajewski and Nickel 21. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Me, me, me! It’s felt like the Me-Olympics this week, and I’m now so used to centring myself and my Big Bad Flu in the unfolding story of Boekelo that I don’t really know how I’ll cope when I’ve recovered and I have to go to Pau as a normal, functional human being. I’m considering becoming one of those Munchausen Syndrome weirdos who fabricates a new illness every week in order to feel interesting. Sorry my showjumping report is coming out at ten to midnight; it’s not because I got distracted by P. Diddy Conspiracy TikTok, it’s because I have… sudden onset facial blindness, and I’ve had to go around the lorry park interviewing every single rider until I found the five I needed in order to start writing. Sorry it took me 48 hours to turn around a trot-up gallery, I’ve got the galloping consumption. Oh, help, I’ve just discovered I’ve got a parasitic twin and their foot is sprouting out of my cleavage; I can’t come to work today, sorry, but I will still be invoicing for my time.
So, yes, I’m sorry for making myself the main character, and I’m very happy to hand over to the actual main character for a few moments before we return to me squarely inserting myself back into the narrative.
Julia Krajewski and Nickel 21. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
That actual, deserved main character is our Boekelo 2024 champion: one Julia Krajewski, who took the title today aboard her Aachen winner and Olympic partner, Nickel 21, after an influential showjumping phase and a tightly-packed post-cross-country leaderboard saw major changes occur even from just a scant rail or two.
When two-phase leaders Laura Collett and Dacapo had their customary Boekelo rail – “there’s no rhyme nor reason to him; he doesn’t really have rails anywhere else,” she laughs – the door was opened for Julia to take her second-ever win at the venue, provided she delivered the clear round.
If that sounds slightly odd – like perhaps she should already have jumped by the time the overnight leader came into the ring – please allow me to refer you back to this morning’s final horse inspection report, in which I tried to make sense of the faintly deranged order of go we saw this afternoon. In short, though, it all meant that Laura, riding for the win, was actually the fifth-to-last, rather than the last, rider to jump, and Julia was the fourth-to-last, and so once she’d done what she came in to do in fine style, we already knew our winner while watching the final few jump.
Julia Krajewski and Nickel 21. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
But hey, for all that, it was still a very good bit of competition, and in Julia, we’ve got a great winner – and it’s a fairly safe bet to imagine that her Nickel 21, who’s so accomplished at just ten years old and with only three seasons of eventing behind him, might follow in the footsteps of her previous Boekelo winner, Samourai du Thot. Sam, who won with Julia in 2018, was a five-star champion at Luhmühlen, an Olympian himself, and a horse whose FEI results list reads like a bit of binary code, if binary code was just 1s and no 0s. I guess what I’m saying is that it reads like a list of 1s, but that sounds kind of unjazzy, so please accept my tenuous analogy.
Anyway, Nickel: surely the next Sam, right? Or the next Amande de b’Neville. But not, crucially, the next Chipmunk, or fischerChipmunk FRH, as he’s now known – not because of any comparisons in talent or drive, but because Julia so painfully lost the ride on Chip, and, as she shared with us the other day, she was very recently spared the same fate with Nickel. This story gets to have a happy ending, and today, the 2024 chapter of it certainly did.
“I think he sort of understood that he had to jump clear today,” laughs Julia. “He’s had a bit of what we call four-faultitis when he’s had to jump on the last day, actually until Paris, where he jumped a super double clear. Today, I think I rode quite okay, but he really wanted to go clear.”
Julia Krajewski and Nickel 21. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
For her part, Julia says that the slightly odd order of go helped her get in the right headspace to perform.
“I knew I’d win if I went clear, and I have to say, I’m better in the showjumping under pressure. If I know I have to go clear to win, I often pull it off – I don’t know why that is! In the cross-country I prefer to go hacking, basically, but in showjumping, the pressure sort of helps me.”
So much of Nickel’s fledgling career has been about a lack of expectations: he was the yard’s ‘fun horse’ when Julia took him on from the student she’d sourced him for, and nobody expected him to make it to the top, but with every move up, he got better and better. But this year, midway through the summer, Julia finally found that she could take him seriously as a top-level campaigner rather than treating him like the prodigal young gun of her string.
“To be honest, I actually wasn’t sure if he was as good as he is until he won Aachen this year, and still with some time penalties,” she says. “There, and also here, we had time penalties but it wasn’t as though we gave everything. With cross-country, I like everything to be a bit comfortable – I’m not the person to take every last risk, and if you don’t have a Ferrari underneath you, that can sometimes mean you collect some seconds. But I do believe that in the next year or two he’ll learn to come inside the time easily, when he’s older and fitter and more experienced. I’m confident that he’s far from where he can be one day, but that he’s so good already.”
Julia Krajewski and Nickel 21. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
That Aachen win, she continues, “was serious – to win it just like that! He’s always been such a good boy, so it was never a question of if he had a good enough head or wanted to do the thing. It was just, can I get him strong enough? I really think he started to build this year, and how he felt in Paris, and how he’s come out of Paris, is a million miles away from what I felt last year.”
Last year’s trip here saw them lead the dressage but fall in the main water, which should provide some welcome comfort to any of those talented pairs who ran into trouble on yesterday’s influential cross-country course. And now, with a year of additional experience, a wealth of confidence, and his future secured with Julia, it’s onwards: to next year’s European Championships, perhaps, once their own future is secured, and probably, Julia hopes, to a five-star.
“It’s been too long since I’ve done one – I haven’t been to a five-star since I won Luhmühlen in 2017,” muses Julia. “I don’t think he’s a Badminton or a Burghley horse, but going back to the level would be very nice.”
Laura Collett and Dacapo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
For Laura Collett, bridesmaid with Dacapo after holding the lead for two phases, there’s a mix of emotions at play: an aching frustration, of course, at so nearly taking the win but losing it on a rail, not for the first time with this horse – but also an enormous joy and pride in such a sparkling result with a horse who’s so decidedly odd that nothing is ever guaranteed.
“It’s frustrating being so close, but if someone had said to me before we started that we’d be second, I’d have taken that,” she says. “Especially as I didn’t think we’d go two minutes on cross-country in that mud! So I think coming second’s quite good. It’s a nice way to finish the year.”
Dacapo has now finished third here, in 2022, and second here on this occasion – admittedly split up by a non-podium but still excellent sixth place finish last year – which forces us to draw the conclusion that he’ll win it in 2026 after finishing… um… fourth next year. There you go, that’s our prediction locked in.
Hallie Coon and Cute Girl. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
The last time I saw Aryn Coon, older sister of team USA’s Hallie Coon, we were – the three of us – windswept and exhausted, having driven from the UK to Sweden, via stops in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, to view fifty or so horses over a handful of days in the bitter cold of January 2022 and in the admittedly rather lacking square footage of a Peugeot 208. Slowly, the car filled up with the smell of riding boots, the sound of early-2000s aural throwbacks (we pulled into one yard loudly blaring The Bloodhound Gang’s The Bad Touch, which is certainly one way of making an entrance), and, occasionally, an eery silence from the back seat.
“I got sick of listening to the two of you talking sometimes,” Aryn told me with a grin earlier, “so I put my noise-cancelling headphones on. I didn’t even have anything playing, I just couldn’t hear you guys, and I could read my book in peace.”
Hallie and Aryn Coon (sans noise-cancelling headphones). Photo by Tilly Berendt.
We covered a lot of miles, and a lot of bonding time, and looked at a lot of seriously nice horses on that trip, but in the back of our minds, we all knew that it was going to be impossible to top one of the first horses we’d tried: Cute Girl, a spritely, spicy little Holsteiner mare; the closest to home of the horses on the list I’d pulled together and one who’d so obviously been a match made in heaven for Hallie when the two first met in a frosty arena a few days prior.
And so it felt so good to be reunited with Aryn and bring our triad of road trip madness back together in this, the week of Hallie and Cute Girl’s biggest success yet. Magic, you have to understand, isn’t enough to create major results – it’s got to be magic plus hard work, magic plus patience, magic plus resilience, magic plus, crucially, compromise, especially when you’re working with a mare who wouldn’t be everyone’s ride. There was a season of getting-to-know-you mistakes, when it wasn’t always abundantly clear that Gypsy, as she’s called at home, would have the grit to match her talent. And then there were the glimpses of what could be, a system change to tap into those moments, and finally, over time, enough trust built up to convert it into courage, which then became a foundation of guts and gumption. And now, in the 2024 season, Gypsy has proven that she’s a little warrior of a horse, one who’ll fight for the person who’s put in the work to show that they deserve it, and look, I’m not going to settle for unbiased journalism here, because I’d rather make it very clear just how much goes into making these days, and these weeks, happen, for every single rider who gets the job done.
Hallie Coon and Cute Girl. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
One year ago, Hallie and Gypsy came to Boekelo, went into cross-country in second place – behind Julia and Nickel, no less – and then had arguably their best-ever feeling across the country to that point, but lost out on a competitive placing because of a fair, green mistake by the young mare in her debut at the level. This year, they began their week in 23rd place on a 30.4, which was so deeply, and understandably, frustrating after the performance of the year prior. But on yesterday’s cross-country course, they continued their total rewrite of the 2023 story, this time sailing home clear and brimming with confidence, seven seconds inside the optimum time and the first pair of the day to beat the clock in the tricky conditions.
Hallie Coon and Cute Girl. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
And today? It’s hard to put any energy into stressing about these two over the poles, and they certainly didn’t offer up any reason to today. They added nothing to their two-phase score, finishing on their dressage score, clinching third place, and leading the US team to silver position on the final podium, too.
“It’s a little exciting coming from where we were last year to this time, and God, she’s just right there with me,” says a beaming Hallie. “She’s been giving me her all — she’s been picking up my slack; I made a mistake or two yesterday, and she was just right there with me. So today, I don’t think I made any mistakes — I made it up to her! I’m just so proud of her, and I’m so lucky to ride her.”
Those mistakes yesterday, she continues, came largely from her still expecting to have to protect the mare, who merrily proved that she no longer needs her hand held in that phase.
“I expected the ground to take more away from her than it did, and I expected to have to hold for some distances that I couldn’t hold for,” she laughs. “And she said, ‘Hang on, we’re going!’ She’s just really coming into herself and is so confident now, and it’s just so wonderful. She’s loving it now, which I never felt when I first got her. It’s really rewarding.”
The end of the 2024 season closes out a year in which Hallie and Cute Girl have won two CCI4*-S classes as well as finishing so well here: “redemption is so sweet,” grins Hallie, “and it’s just a huge sigh of relief that I’m not crazy!”
Now, with winter approaching, Gypsy will enjoy a holiday – “she’ll go out for a month and be Queen of the Hill and not be touched at all, and she’ll be the happiest she’s ever been!” – before heading stateside for a winter learning and competing in Wellington, Florida, in preparation for a trip around Kentucky’s CCI4*-S in the spring, after which Hallie and her small string will return to the UK for the summer season. Then, if all goes to plan, it’ll be a return trip to CHIO Aachen and, late next year, a five-star debut at Pau.
Tim Price and Global Quest. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Fourth place was claimed by a very new partnership in Tim Price and Global Quest, who began their week in 17th place on a 29.8 and climbed up to seventh yesterday after romping home just two seconds over the optimum time. Today, they delivered a foot-perfect clear showjumping round that made them look like old friends, not a partnership in just its second international outing.
Tim took this horse on over the summer after the tragic passing of the horse’s former rider, Georgie Campbell, and I knew I desperately wanted to catch up with him to find out how he was getting on with the process of taking on an established horse – something I’ve seldom known him to do, unless we count the horse-swapping that often goes on between him and Jonelle.
But such is the nature of Boekelo’s final day that 95% of the people you want to interview will slip between your fingers: there’s no press conference, and only brief gaps during bits and pieces of the multiple prizegivings, and my chance to chat to Tim looked like it was vanishing after he cantered out of the ring on an individual lap of honour for the top ten ahead of the final prizegiving.
And so I sent my non-horsey partner, who last spoke to Tim at the Tuesday night party when he abortively tried to hoist the Olympian into a crowdsurf, to do it for me.
“Wait, what? What do you want me to ask him?!” he said, looking panicked.
“Um, I don’t know, just ask him what it’s like taking on a horse who’s already at the upper levels,” I said, knowing that more than one instruction might cause spontaneous combustion, and hoping against hope that Tim might take pity on his party pal – and me – and just, like, talk well. Anyway, I’m writing this report as I listen to the recorded audio for the first time, so let’s just enjoy this together, shall we?
“Basically, I don’t know what I’m doing,” says Alex, audibly out of breath. He has, it appears, actually chasedTim and his horse down the chute.
Tim laughs. I suspect this is the only kind of interview he actually wants to do.
“Basically [heavy breathing], Tilly wanted me to ask [bit more heavy breathing], what’s it like [two big sweaty breaths] taking on a horse [he’s actually panting now] that’s so [oh my god, is my fiancé asthmatic and this is how I’m finding out?] experienced?”
“Yep,” Tim says, sympathetically. “Yep.”
“If you could talk a bit about that,” wheezes Alex, “aaaaand… anything else you want to say, that would be… great.”
[This bit’s actually serious now, so I’ll stop bullying my betrothed on the internet. Stand by for more at some point soon, probably.]
“It wasn’t something I took lightly, being asked to ride a horse that’s been involved in an accident of a really good friend, but I knew how much Georgie loved this horse,” says Tim. “We’d talked about him a lot over the years. He was so fond of him, and he’s given her a lot of really fun experiences, and I thought it was something to do in her honour and her memory. But definitely, it’s a bit strange, and in all the competitions leading into this, it’s a little bit mind over matter every time. I won’t lie – yesterday was a relief to get done, and he’s given me a great ride in all three phases.”
Because the partnership is so new – the pair have just two Intermediates and a steady CCI4*-S run at Lignières under their belts – every step of this week has been a fact-finding mission and another incremental movement down the path to really knowing one another. Georgie’s characteristic no-stone-left-unturned production of the horse has no doubt helped in that process, but along the way, Tim has also been delighted to find some great natural attributes within him.
“Today I thought he tried really hard – he’s not an out-and-out showjumper, but he tried really hard, and that’s a great quality for a horse, when they’ve done the cross-country the day before but they’ll still come out and try. That was a nice surprise, not knowing him in and out. That was really cool, and I’m looking forward to next year with him.”
Sarah Bullimore and Corimiro. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
The top five was rounded out by day one leaders Sarah Bullimore and the eight-year-old homebred Corimiro, who tipped one late rail to miss out on a chance at the win, but for whom the future looks extraordinarily bright.
“That was always going to be a difficult line for him, but I thought we had it,” says Sarah. “Bless him, though,he jumped amazingly — any horse can have a rail, and I know he’s a good show jumper. We came here to get experience, and get a four-star long under our his belt. He can practice the show jumping anywhere; he can go anywhere and jump around that, but what he what he can’t do is go and jump around a cross country course like yesterday’s, anywhere. Yesterday he was amazing, he will have learned from that, and what a bright future he has!”
Sarah’s favourite thing about the horse is something that she says is characteristic of every horse she’s bred from her former team ride, Lily Corinne: they all just really want to get out there and do it.
“He just comes out and he says, ‘yep, what’s next?’ and, ‘let’s go again!’ He just wants to do a job. And to be fair, that’s one of Lily’s things she seems to pass on. They all want to get on with it and do a job. But he’s fantastic in the atmosphere — he loves it. So the crowd didn’t faze him. He’s like, ‘oh, yeah, you’re here to watch me. That’s fine, here I am, just watch me go!’”
Susie Berry and Clever Trick. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
The victorious Irish team. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Sixth place went to the only other combination to finish on their dressage score other than Hallie and Cute Girl: that was Ireland’s Susie Berry and Clever Trick, who completed their climb from first-phase 33rd and helmed the Irish team, who were victorious in the Nations Cup for the first time in nearly a decade. Her effort was joined by that of Padraig McCarthy and Pomp and Circumstance, tenth, Aoife Clark and Sportsfield Freelance, 12th, and Austin O’Connor and Isazsa, 63rd, and saw the team win by a margin of three rails and change.
Team USA, helmed by ‘Roberto’ Costello, per the announcer. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Second place in the team competition went to the US contingent, led by Hallie, who was joined by teammates Mary Bess Davis and Imperio Magic, 19th after a faultless round, Philip Dutton and Possante, who finished 20th after taking two rails, and Cassie Sanger and Redfield Fyre, who knocked three to finish 31st. The German team of Julia Krajewski, Anna Siemer, Emma Brüssau and Malin Hansen-Hotopp took third place. The US contingent beyond the team line-up enjoyed success in the ring, too: Cosby Green and Cooley Seeing Magic added just 0.8 time penalties to move up to 45th place, while Lauren Nicholson and I’ll Have Another had a green couple of rails to finish up an educational weekend for the up-and-coming talent, who took 33rd place.
Calvin Böckmann and Altair de la Cense. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Germany’s Calvin Böckmann and Altair de la Cense finished in eighth place and took the Boekelo Under-25 Rookie prize for the best first-timer, while France enjoyed celebrating their success in the Nations Cup 2024 series standings, which they held on such a broad margin coming into this week that they couldn’t be beaten.
Janneke Boonzaaijer retains her title as National Champion. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
And finally, Janneke Boonzaaijer and I’m Special N.O.P. took the Dutch National Championship for the second year running. Here’s a closer look at all three of those leaderboards:
The individual top ten at Boekelo.
The final team rankings.
The Dutch National Championship leaderboard.
And that, for now, is me clocking out of Boekelo, and maybe going to see a doctor or something, I don’t know. Alex just gave me a hug and it made me gag onto his shoulder, so if that’s not a normal thing, I guess I ought to get it checked out. Maybe. In any case: thanks for coming along for the ride with me this week, even if it has been the literary equivalent of that one Gator full of tipsy guys stuck in the swamp on cross-country day. I love you, and I love Boekelo, and I love horses. Go Eventing!
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