Kate Green tips the horses, riders and daunting fences to watch at this weekend’s Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials
The setting
British eventing’s USP is its unmatched country-house settings, of which Lincolnshire’s Burghley is perhaps loveliest of all. The golden-hued Barnack rag stone and fairy-tale turrets of the Elizabethan house built for the politician William Cecil are traditionally bathed in mellow late-summer light and fallow deer graze peacefully among the mature trees in the park landscaped by Capability Brown, whose features, such as the Lion Bridge, are still part of the cross-country course. (The house and gardens will be closed during the trials.)
The history
The horse trials owes its existence to the 6th Marquess of Exeter, an Olympic gold medallist in the 400m hurdles at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games—he was famously played by Nigel Havers in Chariots of Fire.
In 1961, the most important three-day events were Badminton and Harewood, but the latter was blighted by foot-and-mouth disease and the Marquess, whose granddaughter, Miranda Rock, is now custodian of the estate, invited the British Horse Society to transfer the event to Burghley.
Badminton and Burghley, which next year will receive five-star status in the sport, remain easily the most prestigious events in the world; their cross-country days, with crowds of more than 100,000, are two of the most attended sporting occasions in the world.
The illustrious names
Such famed competitors as Richard Meade, Sheila Willcox, Mark Phillips (who designs the cross-country course now), Lucinda Green, Mary King, Pippa Funnell and the reigning Olympic champion Michael Jung are immortalised with plaques in Winners’ Avenue.
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