Badminton 2016

What a brilliant Badminton it was, and a fantastic 'out in front' win for Michael Jung, he is really enjoying a crest of a wave experience.

It was a very interesting Badminton with quite a decent cross country course, the course rode well for lots of people but really required forward accurate riding and seemed to play into the hands of the more experienced horses.  Everyone was very bunched together in the results after cross country, so it was very interesting to see the show jumping looked quite straight forward on Sunday.  There were certainly a lot more clear rounds than normal.  It is certain the horses are jumping better overall but it was surprising to see how lenient the time was.  A fence down was incredibly expensive, and a clear round did move Beanie Sturgis and Tina Cook right up the order which was fantastic to see.  I very much enjoyed watching and didn’t feel I should have been riding at all, which could be a bad sign!

Chilli Morning put in an appearance on Friday night for the Stallion parade, and was very relaxed.  He felt great and loved having the outing.

Chilli and his owner Chris Stone

I was there on the Sunday to collect a Ramada Dish for five Badminton completions, which was a lovely honour.

We had a good Club course walk on Friday with a  tremendous turnout of 70+ people.  It was great to see you all there and I was very lucky to be able to walk up close to most of the interesting fences.  

I also used the opportunity to do signings for Sponsons, and it was great to be able to catch up with everybody after so long.

Musto interview  -  https://twitter.com/MUSTOclothing/status/728631921714962432

Gatehouse interview -  http://youtu.be/cxLkCi4eggo

I did an interview with Clare Balding, as a non-competitor, and I did some enjoyable BBCFive Live radio work for the show jumping before Kitty King took over and did the last few.