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‘I booked my flight across the world at 3.30am and left at 6am’ – what happens when your faraway daughter is called up from the wait list on eve of Badminton
“Badminton called me at 4.30pm on Monday and we left late Tuesday morning,” says Tayla, who is riding 14-year-old Centennial. “I had pressure washed the truck inside and out but that was about it, so we packed and off we went.
“I do feel well prepared though, because I prepared as if I was going – and probably less stressed because I didn’t know if I was!”
The New Zealander only had to travel from Wiltshire; her mum Sonya and fellow owner Sue Rutter hotfooted it straight from the other side of the world.
“We’d actually cancelled our flights, as Tayla wasn’t coming,” says Sonya. “Then Tayla rang me at three o’clock on Tuesday morning and said, ‘Mum, I’m in.’ I thought, ‘I could roll over and go back to sleep, or I could have a look at my phone and see if there’s a flight that could get me there for the trot-up’.”
Badminton final scores
Half an hour later the flight was booked.
“By 6am I left the house,” says Sonya. “I had my bag packed ready. At 5am I rang Sue and said, ‘Do you want to come with me?’”
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This whistle-stop trip is doubly special for Sonya, as she bred Centennial (Chase), by 1.60m New Zealand jumping stallion Centavos out of a mare she herself evented up to novice level. The dam has some Cleveland Bay blood.
“We breed one or two a year and we actually have Chase’s three-year-old brother at home,” she says. “We don’t yet know if he’ll be as good, but he’s twitchy like Chase was. His mane used to be in dreads because he was out on the hill and you couldn’t touch him.”
Tayla Mason on her Badminton debut
Tayla, 31, has already completed Pau twice with Chase, but this is their British five-star debut. They scored 40.2 in in the dressage, which puts them down the order ahead of the jumping phases but Tayla was pleased with how the horse coped.
“He hasn’t seen any atmosphere like this before, and he was nervous outside the ring,” says Tayla. “When I got into the ring, I was stoked because he came back to me but I had a couple of costly mistakes.”
Tayla has been based in England for six years. She spent a few years with Tim and Jonelle Price, and has since set up her own yard alongside Canadian Olympian Rebecca Howard.
“Chase came to England with me, and we’ve done it all from the beginning – and now we’re doing our third five-star,” she says. “He’s a gentleman with a cheeky side, or like an overgrown pet dog, which makes him quite fun.”
It may not be how they anticipated spending their week, but Centennial is making his southern hemisphere fans proud they’ve made their last-minute trip.
“It’s big out there,” says Tayla of Eric Winter’s cross-country track, “but that’s what we expect and I’m excited to give it my best shot.”
How to watch Badminton Horse Trials
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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.
