Just before lunch on the final day of dressage New Zealand’s Jock Paget and Clifton Promise(above) re-established themselves as one of the main contenders in top level eventing, scoring 38 and taking second place on the dressage leader board which held until the very last rider of the day. After an enforced non-competition period of nine months Jock was really pleased with Promise
“I was really proud of him going in and doing the same thing that he did at his last 4* event. He was straight, very accurate and listening to me the whole way through. He’s a great horse, he’s such a professional, he just loves it and it’s nice to let him go in there and get the job done”
Although Jock knows that Promise is very fit his only area of concern is the deep going
“He’s been in deeper going but mainly at one day events rather than on the really big tracks. But he’s a very powerful horse, very fast and a very good athlete and if I had to pick any horse in the world to do it on it would be him”
After lunch Stuart Tinney and the big grey Pluto Mio (above), riding as individual competitors for Australia produced a good test with just a couple of glitches holding the marks down. Despite not being on the team, Stuart had also been drawn after a French rider which seemed to be the theme of the day however he was pleased with how Pluto, who can be a little worried by noise, performed. They finished the day in 25th place on 48.3
Stuart Tinney
Later in the afternoon Paul Tapner rode another grey, Kilronan for Australia as the final team rider. Although he acknowledged that they had made a couple of small mistakes, he was still disappointed with his score of 47, leaving him in 20th place at the end of the day. However with a second place at Badminton in very heavy conditions and a win at Hopetoun, also in deep going,
Paul Tapner (above) watched by the Aussie support crew (below)
Paul is confident about his horse’s capabilities tomorrow and was happy with the changes to the course that had just been announced. The changes take out two loops and two fences – Fence 20 and Fence 23 on the original cross country course – and the time has been shortened by just under one minute. You can view the full cross country course fence by fence here
The last rider of the day Sandra Auffarth was certainly capable of changing the leader board and indeed she did. Riding Opgun Louvo for the German team her score 35.2 put yesterday’s leaders William Fox-Pitt and Chilli Morning into second place (37.5) and Jock Paget into third (38). In the video below you can hear what the top three thought of the their dressage and tomorrow’s cross country day
The forecast is for a fine, warm day and we are looking forward to bringing you all the news of what is bound to be an exciting day tomorrow. In the meantime it’s bonsoir from us here in Le Pin!
Read our Friday morning report here
Individual results after dressage here
