A super day

Eric Winter’s track provides a brilliant cross-country day, with Irish first-timer Lucy Latta delivering the outstanding performance

THE ground was the major talking point before crosscountry, after a very wet six months and then blazing sun in event week. Would it dry good – or tacky and holding? No one really knew.

Kylie Roddy also pointed to the weather as a possible factor.

“The horses haven’t galloped in temperatures near the 23°C forecast for Saturday, so there’ll be a fatigue factor,” she said.

The track ran anticlockwise and the intense area around the Vicarage ditch was again the focus of the jumping questions, set by Eric Winter.

“It seems like we are in that area for a much longer period than in previous years,” said Pippa Funnell, adding that she didn’t like the acutely angled log coming out of the Mars Equestrian Sustainability Bay (fences 17ab and 18). “It’s ugly and horses can’t see it until the last second.”

Ireland’s Sam Watson said that the track “offers more chance of run-outs than Eric normally builds”.

He added: “It has all his normal features of slowing you down, using terrain, every lump and bump. I’ve also never known the Vicarage Vee to be so late on the course.”

The optimum time, at 11min 19sec, was 16 seconds shorter than in 2023. Usually when running in this direction, horses climb up by the Beaufort staircase and home over bumpy ground, but this year they cut left soon after passing The Lake, omitting this testing terrain.

JACKSON SETS THE TONE