A cool start to the day followed by some decent sunshine and temps back up into around 19 degrees which the horses appreciated for sure. Just Vitali today for Team Price and he was last to go so he had the final warm up all to himself and he looked an absolute picture with his black coat gleaming in the sunshine.
He went into the arena and then turned into Vitali-at-Badminton- 2.0, except that the new version was no different to the old version at Badminton. For some unknown reason he tensed up in the arena and went tight on Tim, just as he did last year. And as Tim said, when a horse goes tight and tense with you all you can do is hold their hand through the movements, it’s like skating on thin ice.
Hold his hand he did though….the halt before the rein back was the only really low point and Vitali rallied at the end for the best marks of all for his final halt. He had a skip in the middle of what should have been a perfect extended trot and just enough tension showing to end up with a mark of 30.6, just shy of 70%. It’s only 9.5 off the lead but it’s also 16th spot and that is always disappointing when a horse is a record breaker at Burghley with a score in the teens. Tim was philosophical enough to comment “this is probably the year he will jump double clear” but in reality there was nothing that he could have done to change things, even if his brother Cam did ask in the family debrief “perhaps it’s you who got tense and Vitali followed your lead” which was a theory that was swiftly dispatched by Tim.
Tomorrow is another day for sure….fast ground, an 11 minute 40 track, a top class field. Badminton is where dreams come true and dreams come crashing to the ground in equal measure so we shall see what Lady Luck has in store for us. The only thing that is a given is that at five star the leaderboard can always change with alacrity.
Results/live scores https://www.badminton-horse.co.uk/dressage-results-2025/
