Having popped back & forth to Badminton all week (the advantages of living 20 minutes away!) I elected to watch the cross country on TV. I camped out at my trainers house (thanks A!) to benefit from her huge TV & BBC interactive which was showing the whole of the cross country phase.

And what a day it was! The ground problems of last year have been sorted, the field was full of big names & young riders & the course was a mix of rider frighteners (the vicarage vee!) & technical questions. It proved perfect! This time, the cross country has had a huge influence with a number of refusals & those with poor dressage but good jumping rocketing up the leaderboard. Number 1 & 2 overnight both elimnated to shake up the order!

In my opinion, this was a great course design. It was exciting to watch but there were very few injuries to horse & rider (& non serious). The fences were designed so that horses who were tired or backing off incurred penalties with glance offs or refusals rather than taking dangerous leaps. Kudos to several riders who pulled up tired horses close to home - including Matthew Wright, who stood to finish on a good score, but decided to save his super talented but young & tired horse for another event.

I do wonder if horses finding the course tiring are suffering becuase they are not pure TB or becuase riders are fittening in a different way now there is no roads & tracks & steeplechase?

We head into the show jumping tomorrow afternoon with a large complement of horses (subject to the nail biting trot up of course) & an exciting afternoon of showjumping, where the placings could well swap about again!

(For those overseas, radio badminton is available online via the Badminton website).