Cool and breezy at Badminton today but the rain stayed away which is always a blessing. We usually only have one arena in the warm up at Badminton but this year someone has found some petty cash and we have two which means the horse that is next to go in has a full arena to themselves for around 8 minutes which does make a big difference for sure.
Chilli’s Midnight Star (Ollie) is enjoying his second five star gig more and more by the day. He has never lacked confidence in himself and has taken the whole Badminton experience very much in his stride and is quite happy that he most certainly deserves to be here. For a first timer it was quite the score board for his trot work in the test…he was trending in the lead with forward and supple work that showed he displayed all the scales of training in his work.
The judges didn’t particularly like his walk which was expensive and his ‘good’ change earned fairly good marks but his weak change didn’t. He finished with a flourish though and his mark of 33.5 was good enough for 11th spot at the end of day 1 and so much more to come. It was a great effort and he was dead proud of himself in the collecting ring afterwards!
