History makers: Tom McEwen, Laura Collett and Oliver Townend celebrate Britain's first Olympic eventing team gold medal for a half century in Toyko last year
REAT BRITAIN are the triple champions in eventing, holding Olympic, world and European T team gold medals, plus two out of three individual titles. There aren't too many sports one can say that about and it's taken 50 years, since the late Richard Meade spearheaded this country's double gold at the Munich Olympic Games, that British eventing has been able to make those claims.
Badminton Horse Trials was founded in 1949 precisely to give British riders the edge, the idea being that the cross-country there (and at Burghley, founded in 1961) would be more difficult than anything they would find at an Olympics. This is certainly true of the 21st century, with the downgrading of the cross-country phase at championships to four-star level (Badminton is one of seven events worldwide run at the highest, five-star level).
Badminton has long been an international affair, with about a dozen nations represented most years (there have only been three British winners since 2006), but there is no doubt that experience of serious, homegrown competition at five-star level has stood British riders in good stead over the decades—nine of the current top 20 in the world rankings are from here. Most have rides at Badminton and, with the big German names absent and a couple of notable retirements from the sport, expectations are that the magnificent new silver trophy sculpted by Judy Boyt (Town & Country, April 27) will remain here, which would have quietly pleased Badminton's sporting founder, the 10th Duke of Beaufort.
The champions will return: Piggy March and Vanir Kamira en route to Badminton glory in 2019
Best of British
Oliver Townend
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin May 04, 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin May 04, 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
