Bubby Upton has set herself up to defend her CCI4*-L title by taking the lead in the Defender Bramham Horse Trials dressage this afternoon (12 June).
Bubby and the athletic grey Its Cooley Time punched in a mark of 24.2, topped by a 10 from Swedish ground jury president Christina Klingspor at C for her final centre line and halt.
“I think I had him in the best place I’ve ever had him in before a test,” Bubby Upton told H&H after her Bramham Horse Trials dressage. “I made a mistake in my test at Kronenberg and at Belsay, so I was determined not to do that today.
“He’s an unbelievable horse in all three phases and it really is just about making sure that I have him in the right place because he is so sharp and so sensitive, so the line is very thin between unbelievable and not so good, but I was thrilled with how he performed in there.
“Something crashed in the middle of my test because I heard a huge racket and in my last half-pass, I could feel him try to blow underneath me, and I was like, ‘No, we’ve literally got three more movements to go.’
“So the last two movements sadly were a bit disrupted by that, because he just lifted up in his frame and became quite tense, but we managed to navigate our way through them, as opposed to riding it like the rest of the test felt like I could, but he did absolutely nothing wrong. He was pretty much perfection today.”
Bubby Upton: “We’ve gone back to the drawing board”
Bubby has not had an easy ride with the 11-year-old – who belongs to his rider, Susan de Zulueta, Hilary Russell, the Duchess of Norfolk, Jane Dear and Susie Holland-Bosworth – since their win here last year; they had falls at the European Championships and Pau last autumn and Kronenberg in March.
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Bubby explained: “I described him last year here as a freak of nature and he really is that, but now he’s so much more experienced, what used to back him off in terms of greenness doesn’t any more. So that’s run me into trouble in the past. I have ridden him too generically, like my other horses, which has created mistakes on my part.”
She said. “The mistakes I had at the end of last year were me finding out things with him – like at the end of a five-star, he still had as much reaction and engine as at the start and I’d never had a horse like that before, so that was me learning on the job. Kronenberg was disappointing because it was more a flaw in my system.
“We’ve gone back to the drawing board, stripped everything back and adapted my system because he’s like no other horse in the world in the way he goes – he’s a complete freak in terms of his talent but he’s also really sensitive, with an unbelievably high head carriage.
“I put the new system into action at Belsay and training before here, so I’m really confident with what I need to do – now I’ve just got to go and do it.”
How a third back surgery has helped
Bubby suffered serious spinal injuries in a fall in August 2023 and had her third surgery as a result in November last year, because the rod in her back had snapped in half in July.
“It was almost a relief finding that out because we couldn’t get on top of the pain and the symptoms I was struggling with and that explained why,” she said.
“So I have genuinely felt like a new person since my last surgery – I feel nearly back to the Bubby that I was pre-accident. I’m now riding nine, 10, 11 horses a day, pain-free, and it’s the first time in two and a half years that I’m on no painkillers. As always, I’m so grateful to my incredible surgeon, Dr Ivan Timofeev.”
Bubby no longer has the structures in her back that would usually hold up the spinal column.
“Without the metal, I was never meant to be able to function, so we’re now relying on muscle strength, so in Pilates and the gym, I’m just really focusing on the muscles that will hopefully allow me to do this for longer,” she said.
Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.
