Roundup
Equestrianism
Burghley: amazing and entertaining as always BY JULIA DUNGWORTH
W
What an amazing Burghley. Andrew Nicholson was never going to leave without a fight and he won and in style. Andrew was fourth after the dressage and he must have been a little worried, as his previous week’s team-mate from the World Equestrian Games, Jock Paget, was in the lead. The New Zealander didn’t have the best time at the World Games and Jock, as with many others, entered Burghley as a back-up in case anything went wrong. Sam Griffiths, fresh from a Badminton win, and William Fox-Pitt were also in front of Andrew after the dressage and to be honest, it was just the four of them fighting it out all the way. All four of them put in exemplary cross-country rounds, with William being slightly slower than usual and although it caused its usual problems, it was almost a race to make the time between the top few. Both local riders Simon Grieve and Kerry Varley however also pulled off clear rounds, but both had time penalties in the 50s. Show jumping day almost lulled you into thinking they were all going to jump clear if
you just watched the top 10, with some early classy clears, but as it got nearer the climax, the tension mounted and poles started falling, namely for Oliver Townend, who dropped from third to eighth with four down. Sam also had one down, but both Andrew and Jock jumped a clear. Burghley also played host to the Dubarry Young Event Horse classes and Pony Club jumping on the Thursday and Friday. The Pony Club jumping attracts clubs from all around the country. This year was a very popular win for the local Belvoir Pony Club. The Burghley Pony Club was represented and Rachel Dinwoodie from Tallington was the only one in the team to jump a double clear. Rachel has been on flying form and the weekend before she ran her new horse Lisfrank in their first BE90 at Keysoe and finished a very respectable third. The Belvoir Hunt also kicked off the Team Chasing season at Garthorpe. They were over-subscribed on entries with more intermediate entries than ever before. They run a fun class and a pairs in the morning, then the bigger classes operate from lunch time, and with four in a team going pretty
much flat out over some very formidable hedges, it’s fast becoming a good spectator sport too. There are horses literally everywhere and as you can imagine they also get there fair share of fallers. Luckily they mainly have a soft landing due to it running over the wetter part of the year. JumpCross had a competition the same weekend and hit the headlines for a different reason. Regular competitor Margo Sly from Deeping had a fall on the flat and lost consciousness. The air ambulance popped in to to see if she was OK – I think Margo was hoping to see Prince William! Margo’s fall did give Rebecca Bullock another win in the group 3, and JumpCross then decided not to run the Group 2 after a long hold. They also ran a very popular grassroots section, which was won by Chloe Jones and the junior section by Charlotte Rathbone. Katie Webster won both the Junior Intro and Junior Group 3 Class. Wittering Riding Academy also started its winter dressage league and it’s not too late to join in the action with many more competitions planned. For more information, go to www.witteringacademy. com for the rest of the dates.
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19/09/2014 17:11