Andrew Nicholson: ‘Credit to British events where it’s due’

Andrew Nicholson on which autumn fixtures on the British eventing circuit have impressed him

As we proceed through the autumn three-day events, at home and abroad, there are some British horse trials that I think deserve recognition.

Cornbury is a great event site and works very well for the three young horse championships it holds – for five-, six- and seven-year-olds. It has much more of an international feel about it than many events at that level, with a spectacular main arena and a lot of atmosphere.

With so many classes at Cornbury, the timetable can’t be easy to put together, and having the open intermediate and the CCI3*-S on the Thursday meant that several of the Blenheim-bound horses, including Tim Price’s CCI4*-L winner, were able to run.

I did prefer the cross-country warm-up in its original site, on the far side of the main arena, rather than on the fairly small, cambered bit of ground it now occupies near the lorry park.

However the whole thing has a smart, championship-type feel about it, and the extra prizes, such as each winning rider getting their bodyweight in Hawkstone beer, were innovative and well received. And owners love the excellent hospitality and big screen on which they can watch all the cross-country.

Using the terrain

I haven’t been to South of England for a few years, and I was quite hard on the cross-country course in this column the last time I went, as I thought they hadn’t used the hills well enough. I was really pleased to see that the track now utilises all the undulations and the natural terrain in the way it used to – up and down, into the dark and then back out into the light. Proper old-fashioned cross-country.

I only had one ride, in the intermediate on a six-year-old that has been going pretty well, and I felt I had to work quite hard round there – in a good way. It dawned on me afterwards that most of the horse’s novices, and certainly his intermediates, have been on flat tracks. South of England should have been very good for him.

Because the ground was so varied and hilly, you just had to sit and ride, rather than carefully count your strides everywhere. It felt like proper cross-country riding; most people had time-faults, and most horses coped very well with the demands of the course.

The other thing that impressed me was that the horse trials was held alongside the South of England Autumn Show, which had lots of countryside sports activities. The place was very busy and they stopped the showjumping in between classes for a hound parade. The arena was packed with children who were invited in to meet the hounds and it was great.

I presume the public were there more to attend the show than the horse trials, but the kids were hooked on the hounds, and when I jumped afterwards, there were loads of them on the fence line watching the cross-country. They were walking into the lorry park to have a look – it got them interested.

These sorts of things will help shows to survive and both sides of the event must have benefited. Full credit to the organisers in every way.

Why so difficult?

I thought the courses at Blenheim were quite soft, and I can’t quite work out why so many riders made it look difficult. They often looked to be going a gear too slow and adding strides too early on in lines they shouldn’t have been adding in, and then the fences became more difficult because they weren’t riding forward to them.

I have probably never walked round the four-star at Blenheim while it was happening, and I was impressed with how many people were there. That is possibly what makes the course harder than it walks, if the horses and riders aren’t used to crowds.

The eight- and nine-year-old CCI4*-S attracts a high calibre of horse and, a bit like Le Lion d’Angers for seven-year-olds, Blenheim plays a key part in introducing them to crowds at a relatively early stage in their career.

● Which events have impressed you the most this year? Write to hhletters@futurenet.com, including your name, nearest town and country, for the chance for your letter to appear in a forthcoming issue of the magazine

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