‘My horse’s flight was cancelled five times’: tortuous trip to Burghley ends in smart test

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Burghley Horse Trials Woods Baughman and C'Est La Vie 135 in the dressage phase
Woods Baughman and C’Est La Vie 135 at Burghley 2022.
(Image credit: Peter Nixon)

Woods Baughman made a striking start at the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials on his first ever visit to the UK. Riding his own and his parents’ 14-year-old gelding C’Est La Vie 135, the US rider produced an impressive test to score 29.8 and go into equal second on the first morning of action (Thursday, 1 September).

The Contendro gelding (stable name also Contendro) is talented in this phase, but on his five-star debut in the spring he suffered an incident with an out-of-control horse in the warm-up and never settled. At Burghley, he scored nearly 10 points better.

Martha Terry
Martha Terry
Features editor

Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.