Badminton Horse Trials 2010
Badminton 30 April - 3 May 2010
By DropBear
For years in Australia I have been reading various horsey magazines, and due to the somewhat smaller horse industry in Australia, many of the available magazines are UK based (though this has been changing). For years I read about his event in the UK called Badminton Horse Trials, held in beautiful green manicured grounds of Badminton Castle. I was impressed mainly that the grass was green, but I probably should have been more impressed with the level of riding as this was a one of the top international events with the top riders in the world.
Badminton is a three day event. The first day is dressage where horse and rider show off their training, accuracy, obedience and discipline, known as the ballet of horse riding. The second day is cross country jumping where horse and rider must complete a 6km course jumping solid man-made and natural objects (i.e. logs and jumping in and out of water). The final day is show jumping, designed to test the pairs’ agility and accuracy at speed. Mind you, the riders can’t change horses over the three days; one horse must do all the events.
So, having heard about this extraordinary event for a number of years, I was quite keen to go and see if it actually existed. I tried a few horsey people in the UK but no one else could make it so I asked Boris to come. After a bit of kicking and screaming I promised him that a) we would camp out the night before, and b) people would fall off. Grudgingly, he agreed. We couldn’t go to see all three days, so we just got tickets for the cross country as I knew that is probably the most interesting to watch, especially for non-horsey people.
Badminton, as mentioned, is held outside a magnificent castle around 140 km from London, close to Bath in south east England. On Saturday we picked up our hire car and set off for Bath for a nice relaxing drive there, to arrive in plenty of time to set up the camp. We had booked a campsite just outside Bath. We arrived to Bath in time for lunch and we stopped at a very old pub, The Globe. Built in the 17th Century, it has been a pub for over 300 years. High ceilings, exposed wood work everywhere, a typical English pub and the food was excellent. After this nice lunch we headed to the campsite only to find the grey clouds had arrived. We got the tent up and about 5 minutes after this it started raining, and raining and raining, it didn’t stop all night!!
On Sunday morning we awoke, after a somewhat good night’s sleep to find the tent was a bit wet from condensation, the ground saturated but at least the rain had stopped, for the time being. We quickly packed up the sopping wet tent and put it in the hire car, hoping the hire company wouldn’t notice their car was wet at the end of the day. Off to Badminton we went. The cross country course is quite long so we had to park a little way away. To get to the course viewing points, the organisers had kindly organised some golf carts with trailers. Now by this point they had travelled over the ground a few times so it was more like mud and more mud then grass, but on we got and off we went, mud flying everywhere, we felt like true outdoor people!
We arrived at the course and made our way to one of the water jumps so I could keep my promise to Boris of people falling off. We sat and waited for the first horse. Soon the sound of thumping hoofs alerted us to the competitor and along she came, over one jump and then on to the next... going, going, going..... THUMP ... and off she falls!! Once we know she is OK, I look at Boris who has a massive grin on his face and is trying to stop laughing. I must admit, you can never look good whilst falling off a horse! Soon the ground started shaking again as the next horse came but this one made it over. So as the morning wore on, we saw, out of 6 competitors, 3 people falling off. On the next jump over there were also a few that fell off. Now, the main issue with falling off in an event like this is that once your feet touch the ground you are disqualified. All that training and money for nothing!
So after Boris was satisfied with people falling off, we headed up the course to look at some other jumps and marvelled at the way the riders can man these big beasts and push them over these jumps with twists and turns. We watched a number of riders come who appeared quickly in a thumping of hoofs, and disappeared just as quickly. The weather cleared up and it ended up being a sunny day.
We left Badminton happy, a bit muddy and ready for next year. Boris was satisfied as he got to see people fall off, I was satisfied to see the competition actually exists (though I was still jealous about the green grass!) and we had a very nice day. The best thing was though that the event was won by an Australian, GO AUSSIE GO!!
By DropBear
For years in Australia I have been reading various horsey magazines, and due to the somewhat smaller horse industry in Australia, many of the available magazines are UK based (though this has been changing). For years I read about his event in the UK called Badminton Horse Trials, held in beautiful green manicured grounds of Badminton Castle. I was impressed mainly that the grass was green, but I probably should have been more impressed with the level of riding as this was a one of the top international events with the top riders in the world.
Badminton is a three day event. The first day is dressage where horse and rider show off their training, accuracy, obedience and discipline, known as the ballet of horse riding. The second day is cross country jumping where horse and rider must complete a 6km course jumping solid man-made and natural objects (i.e. logs and jumping in and out of water). The final day is show jumping, designed to test the pairs’ agility and accuracy at speed. Mind you, the riders can’t change horses over the three days; one horse must do all the events.
So, having heard about this extraordinary event for a number of years, I was quite keen to go and see if it actually existed. I tried a few horsey people in the UK but no one else could make it so I asked Boris to come. After a bit of kicking and screaming I promised him that a) we would camp out the night before, and b) people would fall off. Grudgingly, he agreed. We couldn’t go to see all three days, so we just got tickets for the cross country as I knew that is probably the most interesting to watch, especially for non-horsey people.
Badminton, as mentioned, is held outside a magnificent castle around 140 km from London, close to Bath in south east England. On Saturday we picked up our hire car and set off for Bath for a nice relaxing drive there, to arrive in plenty of time to set up the camp. We had booked a campsite just outside Bath. We arrived to Bath in time for lunch and we stopped at a very old pub, The Globe. Built in the 17th Century, it has been a pub for over 300 years. High ceilings, exposed wood work everywhere, a typical English pub and the food was excellent. After this nice lunch we headed to the campsite only to find the grey clouds had arrived. We got the tent up and about 5 minutes after this it started raining, and raining and raining, it didn’t stop all night!!
On Sunday morning we awoke, after a somewhat good night’s sleep to find the tent was a bit wet from condensation, the ground saturated but at least the rain had stopped, for the time being. We quickly packed up the sopping wet tent and put it in the hire car, hoping the hire company wouldn’t notice their car was wet at the end of the day. Off to Badminton we went. The cross country course is quite long so we had to park a little way away. To get to the course viewing points, the organisers had kindly organised some golf carts with trailers. Now by this point they had travelled over the ground a few times so it was more like mud and more mud then grass, but on we got and off we went, mud flying everywhere, we felt like true outdoor people!
We arrived at the course and made our way to one of the water jumps so I could keep my promise to Boris of people falling off. We sat and waited for the first horse. Soon the sound of thumping hoofs alerted us to the competitor and along she came, over one jump and then on to the next... going, going, going..... THUMP ... and off she falls!! Once we know she is OK, I look at Boris who has a massive grin on his face and is trying to stop laughing. I must admit, you can never look good whilst falling off a horse! Soon the ground started shaking again as the next horse came but this one made it over. So as the morning wore on, we saw, out of 6 competitors, 3 people falling off. On the next jump over there were also a few that fell off. Now, the main issue with falling off in an event like this is that once your feet touch the ground you are disqualified. All that training and money for nothing!
So after Boris was satisfied with people falling off, we headed up the course to look at some other jumps and marvelled at the way the riders can man these big beasts and push them over these jumps with twists and turns. We watched a number of riders come who appeared quickly in a thumping of hoofs, and disappeared just as quickly. The weather cleared up and it ended up being a sunny day.
We left Badminton happy, a bit muddy and ready for next year. Boris was satisfied as he got to see people fall off, I was satisfied to see the competition actually exists (though I was still jealous about the green grass!) and we had a very nice day. The best thing was though that the event was won by an Australian, GO AUSSIE GO!!