Ballaghmor Class and Oliver Townend. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
We knew we’d be looking at a true 5* test after hearing the riders react to Ian Stark’s final cross country design here at the MARS Maryland 5 Star, presented by Brown Advisory. As we waited in the viewing tent at the finish, we watched Harry Meade and Away Cruising going out of the box as the first on course (original trailblazer Jessica Phoenix withdrew Fluorescent Adolescent ahead of cross country this morning), figuring we’d be watching a deceptively easy first trip around. But then Harry reached the top of the hill to the MARS Sustainability Bay, jumped the long route bounce, and then pulled up. His horse was lame, and quickly the tone of the day changed.
First, a quick update as I know we’re all concerned about Away Cruising, and I’m happy report that while he did lose a shoe and seems to have some bruising on his foot, radiographs came back clean and he will be ok to fight another day.
We then welcomed Lillian Heard Wood and the ageless LCC Barnaby home after delivering a solid round with one missed flag penalty and time, and the ship began to feel somewhat righted for the rest of the field yet to come. It was riding tough, but was still early, and our first rider to interview predicted the time would be achievable.
We were certainly wrong.
Oliver Townend and Ballaghmor Class. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
A few horses later, we waited with trepidation as overnight leaders Tamie Smith and Mai Baum headed out of the startbox. After jumping the first half of the course in classic Mai Baum style, the German gelding began to tire up the huge pull to the highest point of the course, and just before the most intense parts of the track. Tamie made the decision to pull him up before the influential Sawmill Slices, therefore ending her bid for a second 5* win in the 18-year-old gelding’s final event at the level.
In the end, we would see just eight finishers out of the original 22 starters, which would later drop by one when Boyd Martin withdrew Tsetserleg after falling with Commando 3 at fence 3. This makes for a 38% completion rate, just over 50% less than the 64% completion rate we saw in 2023 over a very similar course.
So this leaves Oliver Townend and Ballaghmor Class atop the podium and poised for a fourth 5* victory after delivering a clear round with 12 seconds of time, sitting on a two-day score of 31.3.
Before we get too deep into the leaderboard, let’s talk about, well, what everyone’s talking about: the course and the numbers.
First, it’s easy to look at this completion rate and think “wow, that was carnage” — and certainly in many ways, it was. It’s also easy to look at the numbers and wonder if the course was unfair or dangerous.
Putting my opinion hat on for a moment, I don’t believe it was a course issue. Now, does this mean I also unequivocally believe this course is perfect? I’m not sure I’m really qualified to make that judgement, but from my view as an observer I do know there are multiple opinions on it since this event began. In fairness, the same can generally be said about most of the other 5* events as they — and the sport – have evolved.
To back this up, I went into the numbers from 2023, which saw nearly the exact same track built by Ian. He changed a few fences this year, moved some things around, made some adjustments to lines based on what he saw last year, but in many ways it was very similarly routed.
David Doel and Galileo Nieuwmoed. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
If you look closely, the leaderboard from 2023 also bears some similarities to its 2024 counterpart. After cross country last year, the top three placings were held by British horses (Cooley Rosalent, Graffenacht, Brookfield Cavalier Cruise). Two strong American horses who also competed here this year, Sorocaima and LCC Barnaby, jumped around clear. Hannah Sue Hollberg and Mia Farley also finished strong, with Mia being the only one to catch the optimum time. Nine pairs were eliminated or retired. The remaining four horses who completed cross country last year all collected jumping penalties.
Cool as a cucumber, Jennie Brannigan navigates the MARS Sustainability Bay with Twilightslastgleam. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
So, yes, the optics of this year’s result look worse, on paper. But the story is still the same: this course is tough, and the strong cross country horses emerge on top. It’s no secret the British are strong on these types of courses; more than once, the Maryland track has been compared to Burghley in terms of terrain and its stamina element. So it should really not be a surprise to see two very seasoned, proven English horses in possession of the top two spots (and another in fourth), and an equally strong New Zealand pair (Tim Price and Falco) holding third. It should also not be a surprise, after looking at last year’s results, that Sorocaima with Buck Davidson now holds fourth place, and save a 15 penalty mark for missing a flag, Lillian Heard Wood and LCC Barnaby also delivered a strong performance. Another strong horse on cross country for the U.S. is Jennie Brannigan‘s Twilightslastgleam, who delivered a clear aside from a 15 penalty mark for missing a flag at 17 (the Sawmill Slices).
Oliver Townend and Ballaghmor Class. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
Oliver Townend and Tim Price both spoke to this after their rides.
“Brilliant, Ian,” Oliver, who has competed at this event since its inception in 2021, said. “I know it’s been a tough day, but this event is going to be as important as Badminton, Burghley, and Kentucky. Nothing comes near these four events. I thought last year was plenty tough enough. And I think, you know, it’s Ian’s last year. Why shouldn’t he let his imagination go a little wild? He wanted to build a five-star, and that’s what he’s done. And it’s a fair course. It’s just, you know, we haven’t got 80 runners, so when 23 set off and only 10 or 12 come home, it doesn’t look great. But that’s nothing to do with being an unfair track. It’s just the the field and and the way it’s panned out.”
Tim, who sits third on Sue Benson’s Falco (the horse he competed with in Paris this summer and with whom he won Pau in 2021), echoed this. “[Equiratings] needs to look at the world ranking of riders and use that as a part of the benchmark that they’re measuring against when building things to do with ratio of riders to clear rounds,” he said. “I think if you had more riders of mine and Ollie’s ilk and there’s others — I’m gonna apologize for leaving people out, this is an abbreviation of the top riders — if you had a few more of those, I think you’d see more clear rounds and good rounds. You know, they’re good on good horses, and they’ve mastered these courses after they’ve walked them a few times, and they will come out with a plan and and nail it, but look, it’s just a decent track. I think you would still see good combinations struggling, whether it was with the time or whether it was with a combination here or there, or a jump here and there. It’s five-star.”
Bubby Upton, who jumped a beautiful, gritty mostly-clear with Cola save a frangible pin at the coffin, also summed up the ask that Ian Stark puts on his courses quite well:
“The thing is, with Ian, why he’s so clever, and why the course rode so tough, is because if you commit to the straight route, basically you’re in and there’s no room for error,” she said. “So that’s kind of where we then pay quite a high price if it goes wrong.”
So, where does this leave us?
David Doel and Gaileo Nieuwmoed. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
We’ve got Oliver Townend with the seemingly ageless Ballaghmor Class in first, followed by David Doel and Galileo Nieuwmoed, who took Mia’s place this year and were the sole pair to catch the time (doing so grandly, coming home nearly 24 seconds fast), and Tim Price in third with Falco. Buck Davidson leapt his way up to third place despite a broken martingale on course with Sorocaima, and Bubby Upton would’ve been placed higher but broke the pin at the A element of the Irish Horse Board Coffin Question and now sits in fourth with Cola on a score of 50.5. Jennie Brannigan and Twilightslastgleam, sitting fifth overnight with time and the flag penalty added today for a two-phase score of 52.3.
Equiratings now gives Oliver a 51% chance to pick up another 5* win with Ballaghmor Class, who adds a legend-status 12th cross country completion at the level to his resume.
“He’s been phenomenal,” Oliver, who was visibly emotional about this horse of a lifetime in the mixed zone, said. “I worked him this morning and he spooked at a bin, wouldn’t go past the generator, and I thought, ‘yeah, it’s hopefully gonna be a good day.’ It’s his sharpness and his strength, and that’s why I’m lucky enough to have kept the ride on him. Only a couple of people ever tried him, but they got off fairly rapidly. One fell off and one got off! So yeah, I’m just very privileged. He is a special horse.”
David Doel has been knocking on the door of a 5* win for what feels like ages. His closest call came with a second place finish at Burghley last year, and now he finds himself in similar stead with the speedy round he delivered aboard the 13-year-old KWPN gelding today.
“We didn’t actually have the best of preparations,” David said. “We were originally aiming for Burghley and Galileo actually had a bit of an infection in his hock following Luhmühlen. So it was either go back to Pau or come out here, and I know we’ve got a good galloping and jumping horse underneath me there.”
“He was ten seconds up at about the seven minute mark,” he continued. “And I just sort of felt like he kept on cruising, really. I just had him gallop underneath me, and he’s just so smooth to ride — I don’t really need to do too much on top. He was phenomenal in his assessing of the flags today, and really tried to make sure you jump between the flags. It was almost a little bit embarrassing going that quick. But it just was within his stride. I never really felt like I was pushing him. I never felt like it was actually going to go into his limit.”
Tim Price and Falco. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
I would certainly not say there was a question mark around Falco‘s suitability for a bigger, beefier track than what he would have seen at Pau or Paris, but Tim acknowledges that for a horse that’s got just 28% Thoroughbred blood, it would on paper be a challenging ask. I found his approach to the course today fascinating, though, so I’ll let him speak for himself:
“He’s always had a bit of a system where we start out quiet, we build up through the middle, and we push at the end,” he described. “And [there’s hardly] been one occasion where we’ve had him racing from the start. When you’re asking a horse that, it might not be this most natural thing to push and to dig and to find a second wind and to stay balanced, not just blindly running. You do it in a way that you’re asking something that they’ve got to give. I was quiet at the start. [Giving] him clean jumping is the other thing. I’m giving him good distances. He’s not up against anything. [The jumps are] just passing underneath. So that’s good for energy conserving. And then let’s ask a little more as he goes, and it’s a bit of a rinse and repeat. I’ve done it lots of times now, so he knows that he can do it, and he has belief in himself.”
Tim picked up 7.2 time penalties, but the result is good enough to put him within a rail of Oliver and Ballaghmor Class, .1 penalties behind David’s 34.5.
Buck Davidson and Sorocaima. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
Buck Davidson is the top-placed American, sitting fourth with Sorocaima on a score of 39.2. “Look, he’s a great cross country horse,” Buck said, noting that he’d had to change his bridle due to FEI rules and decided to put on the ill-fated martingale as a result. The breakage of the martingale did cause some rideability difficulty, but Buck got the job done. “Last year, the Sunken Road was a bit funny, and this year it was like he’d done it before. I’m pretty happy with him. When you go up past eight minutes [on a Thoroughbred], you think, ‘whew, I’m still going!’. His steering wasn’t amazing today, but maybe I shouldn’t have put the martingale on. He’s amazing. He tries to get through the flags even if there’s no chance, so I couldn’t be happier.”
Buck has been vocal in the past about his thoughts on this Maryland track, and in contrast to some of his fellow riders, he actually has had some gripes about the difficulty — as in, he thinks in some ways it’s not quite up to 5* standard.
“I mean, it’s a different kind of five-star,” he said today. “I’m not sure it’s really five-star, to be honest with you, but it’s hard enough work. The way he’s tightened the ropes up, it’s not as flowing and the horses do have to work to get around here. I think Morven Park is harder, if I’m being honest. I think the hills, yeah it feels pretty hard at that top water if you’re not on a Thoroughbred, but I think usually the let-up fences at a five-star are really big, and they’re not big here. They’re almost, in a way, too small. The worst jump we had was at that little log before the [Foxcatcher Flyer at 24]. If there was a big jump there, that might maybe help a little bit. But it’s unique and different and it still has to be jumped. It doesn’t appear that many people have finished, because I don’t see a lot of people here [in the vet box], so maybe I just have a really good horse.”
Tamie Smith and Mai Baum. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
Looking to the rest of the field, as I mentioned earlier we saw Tamie pull Mai Baum up after running out at the Sawmill Slices at 17. It had always been her plan that if she had any trouble, she’d pull up, and for her, it was an easy decision.
“I think that that long pull on that hill, I just got to the top and he ran out of steam,” Tamie told me, out grazing Lexus. “He felt great all over through the whole thing and then just that whole climb he just ran out of steam. Nothing technical, he looks great now. He thinks he finished. “I already said if I had a problem I would stop. Honestly, Maryland’s terrain…I don’t know whether Lexus could have ever been able to withstand that. He did everything really easy and he’s good and he’s happy. Just the prep coming in, he could’ve maybe had another run or another gallop — or maybe not, I’m not sure. But the most important thing is he’s happy.”
Boyd Martin had a weekend he’d like to forget, first falling from Mo Chroi in the 3* earlier in the day and subsequently withdrawing Barney Rubble so he could regroup for his two 5* riders. He then fell with his first 5* horse, the debutant Commando 3, at the A element of fence 3, the Select Event Group’s Locust Log Pond, when the horse got his back legs tangled up over the fence and sent both of them tumbling into the water. Thankfully, both horse and rider are ok. Boyd opted to withdraw Tsetserleg and will now focus on the two horses he’s got running at Pau next weekend.
Bubby Upton and Cola are fifth after cross country. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
Cosby Green also had a down day, logging three refusals (two at the coffin and the last at the Sawmill Slices) after a really strong start with Highly Suspicious and therefore ended her weekend prematurely.
In terms of his final course, Ian shared some thoughts with us at the end of the day.
“The ones that got around looked phenomenal, and there were others that I thought looked amazing but had a hiccup that could have happened anywhere, anytime, and it stopped them completing,” he reflected. “But I thought there was some great riding and some fabulous horses, and there were some green combinations that they had the odd hiccup that they’ll learn from. The main thing, from my point of view, is the horses and riders are all at home in one piece and ready for another day.”
We are happy to report that no injuries to horse or rider have been reported from the 5* today. In the 3*, one rider, Kiersten Miller, did have screens put up after her horse landed on her at the Timber Rails early on in the course. We did receive reports that Kiersten was back on her feet, but have not received any further reports on her or her horse at this time. We will work on getting an update from Kiersten.
We now move on to show jumping tomorrow, and the final trot-up has been pushed to 9:30 a.m. Show jumping will then begin with the 3* at 11:35 a.m. EST, followed by the 5* at around 3:00 p.m.
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