Top contenders are among the latest Badminton Horse Trials withdrawals as the clock ticks down to the 2023 event.

Leading US combination Lauren Nicholson and Vermiculus will not be starting at the Gloucestershire five-star, presented by Mars Equestrian.

Lauren and the 16-year-old gelding, owned by Jaqueline Mars, were part of the US silver medal-winning team at the 2022 World Eventing Championships in Pratoni.

Vermiculus, known as “Bug”, would have been among the favourites for a top result at Badminton. He has a remarkable cross-country record, having jumped clear on his last 18 starts, and is an established five-star contender.

Badminton final scores

The pair’s results at CCI5* include fourth at Luhmühlen in 2022, ninth at Burghley and the Kentucky Three-Day Event in 2019, and fifth at Kentucky in 2018.

David Doel and Galileo Nieuwmoed, sixth at Badminton last year, have withdrawn. It has been known for a while that the pair were planning a trip to Kentucky this spring and are now officially off the Badminton startlist.

The duo, who were fourth at Pau CCI5* in October, have won two four-stars since their Badminton debut last year. Gillian Jonas’s 12-year-old gelding has passed the first horse inspection at the Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event and is due into the dressage arena with David at 3.23pm local time (8.23pm British time) tomorrow (Friday, 28 April).

Last year’s Luhmühlen runners-up Kirsty Chabert and Classic VI are another combination to have officially withdrawn from Badminton because they are contesting Kentucky. Kirsty and the 14-year-old mare, owned by Carole Somers, John Johnston and Kate Ward, will start their first US five-star campaign at 3.20pm local time (8.20pm British time) today (Thursday, 27 April).

Britain’s Emilie Chandler and her 2019 Blair Castle-winning ride Gortfadda Diamond, owned by Maria Doel, are also among the latest Badminton Horse Trials withdrawals. The pair have form at five-star, having finished sixth at Luhmühlen in 2021.

How to watch Badminton Horse Trials

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There are 14 British-ridden horses are among the Luhmühlen Horse Trials entries for the five-star class (16-19 June).

Olympic team gold medallist Tom McEwen brings forward two first-timer five-star contenders in the Barkers’ Bob Chaplin and Barbara Coopers’ Braveheart B, while world champion Ros Canter will ride Kate James and Annie Makin’s Pencos Crown Jewel, who was fourth in the one-off five-star at Bicton Horse Trials last September.

World team gold medallist Gemma Tattersall is entered on Chris Stone’s Chilli Morning daughter Jalapeno, who was fourth at Blenheim Horse Trials CCI4*-L last year.

Kylie Roddy will get another shot at five-star with the Fox Family’s SRS Kan Do, who she pulled up at Badminton Horse Trials after he lost a shoe, while Kirsty Chabert – with Classic VI, owned by Carole Somers and Kirsty’s father John Johnston – and Ben Hobday (with his own, his father Stephen and Jane Chambers’ Shadow Man) will both hope to make amends for eliminations at Badminton.

David Doel, who impressed when he finished sixth on his Badminton debut with Galileo Nieuwmoed, will ride Christine Lees Ferro Point and the Pages’ Dunges Don Perignon this time. Bubby Upton is another younger rider hoping for a good result at five-star and she rides her mother Rachel’s Cannavaro, her partner in winning the under-25 national title last year.

Ireland has six entries, including two for Cathal Daniels – Jo Breheny’s LEB Lias Jewel and the Kinsella’s Rioghan Rua, the latter is the horse he rode to an individual bronze medal at this venue at the 2019 European Championships.

The Prices both bring forward five-star winners. Jonelle Price will pilot the grey mare Faerie Dianimo, owned by Trisha Rickards, Jacky Green and her rider, who won here in 2018. Tim Price has three rides, including Sue Benson’s and his own Falco IV, last year’s Pau Horse Trials winner.

There are 38 horses on the five-star list of Luhmühlen Horse Trials entries in total, with Canada, Denmark, France, Lithuania, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden and the USA all sending representatives. The US has three entries – Matthew Flynn (the Flynns and Merry Go Round Farm’s Wizzerd), Liz Halliday-Sharp (The Monster Partnership’s Cooley Quicksilver) and Lauren Nicholson (Jacqueline Mars’ Vermiculus).

As usual, many of the top German riders will take on the CCI4*-S instead of the CCI5* and there are only two home-side combinations in the five-star – Sophie Leube makes her debut at the top level on Jadore Moi and Dirk Schrade pilots Freya Rethmeier’s Casino 80.

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Xavier Faer is among the latest Badminton Horse Trials withdrawals, as the event presented by Mars Equestrian (4-8 May) draws closer.

The 16-year-old gelding, who is owned by Trisha and Sophie Rickards and his rider, New Zealand’s Tim Price, would have been a strong contender for a podium place – he was third here in 2017 and has since finished third and second at Kentucky Three-Day Event, in 2019 and 2021, and third at Maryland 5 Star last year.

Tim will still start at the event on the former Burghley Horse Trials winner Ringwood Sky Boy.

US rider Lauren Nicholson has withdrawn Vermiculus, saying in a post on Instagram that he “gave himself a good whack on the ankle recently which resulted in some uncharacteristic swelling”.

She adds that he was never lame but has always been a stoic character so “we erred on the side of caution and backed off his galloping and intense work while we made sure it was not anything serious”.

Badminton final scores

“After a lot of discussion, we decided that we had missed just a bit too much fitness work to be comfortable putting him on a plane to Badminton,” said Lauren, who says Vermiculus will now head to Kentucky for some dressage practice before being targeted at the German five-star at Luhmühlen Horse Trials in June.

“We’re very disappointed not to be able to be at the fabulous Badminton, but that is horses for you,” added Lauren.

The withdrawal of Vermiculus will be a particular sadness because he is owned by Jacqueline Mars, whose family business Mars Equestrian is Badminton’s presenting sponsor for the first time this year.

Vermiculus was due to make his Badminton debut but he has been in the top 10 at Kentucky twice and was ninth at Burghley in 2019

French rider Sidney Dufresne has withdrawn Iris De Fleurieu’s Swing De Perdriat, who was 10th at Pau Horse Trials last year on the horse’s five-star debut.

Corouet, the European individual bronze medallist with Britain’s Sarah Bullimore, has also been scratched from Badminton, but this is an expected withdrawal as he heads to Kentucky. He belongs to Sarah, her husband Brett and the Kew Jumping Syndicate.

Tom McEwen has also confirmed that his rides will be Olympic double medallist Toledo De Kerser and Pau runner-up CHF Cooliser, as he has withdrawn Fred and Penny Barker’s Bob Chaplin.

These Badminton Horse Trials withdrawals mean four more pairs have been accepted to start the competition from the waiting list – Britain’s Alex Bragg with Michael and Naomi Roe’s King Of The Mill, Gloucestershire-based Swede Sofia Sjoborg on her own and her mother Juliet’s DHI Mighty Dwight, Britain’s Nicky Hill and her own MGH Bingo Boy and Ireland’s Elizabeth Power on Soladoun, the ex-racehorse who belongs to Richard Ames and his rider.

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Lauren Nicholson (née Kieffer) is one of the US’s leading event riders, with an Olympic appearance and a runner-up placing at five-star to her name. We find out a bit more about her…

1. Lauren’s first horse was called Snooze Alarm. She started riding the Anglo Arab when she was 13 and took him all the way up to five-star level.

2. One of her current top horses, Vermiculus, is Snooze Alarm’s full-brother. Snooze Alarm’s stable name is “Maggot”, so she chose Vermiculus’s name because it’s Latin for maggot. His stable name is Bug.

3. Lauren has ridden at four of the world’s five-stars – Kentucky in the USA, Badminton and Burghley in Britain and Pau in France. Her best result at the top level is second at Kentucky in 2016 on Veronica, the mare she took on when Karen O’Connor was forced to retire from eventing after breaking her neck in 2013.

4. She married an Irish cross-country course-builder, Sam Nicholson, in November 2019. For the first birthday she celebrated after she started dating him, he built her a cross-country jump.

5. Lauren made her Olympic debut in Rio in 2016, but she didn’t complete the cross-country after she and Veronica had a fall.

6. Lauren’s parents aren’t horsey, but she persuaded them to buy her riding lessons for her sixth birthday.

Continued below…

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7. Lauren Nicholson’s major owner is Jacqueline Mars, an heiress to the confectionery giant Mars’ fortune.

8. The rider broke her back in a fall when she was 16 –her parents asked if she was scared and when she said no, they said if she was too stupid to be scared, she needed to get some proper training. This resulted in her being sent to a week-long summer camp run by David and Karen O’Connor. She then became a working student with the leading US eventing couple.

9. Lauren was a Pan American Games team gold medallist in 2015 in Toronto on Meadowbrook’s Scarlett, finishing seventh individually.

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Ellie Hughes talks to the bubbly leading American event rider about being the “barn rat”, her competition demons and earning her place in the spotlight

“AN interview for Horse & Hound; that means I’ve made it, right?” writes Lauren Nicholson (née Kieffer), signing off with a winking emoji at the end of our email exchange to arrange a time to talk.

Currently ranked seventh in the world, the bubbly, easy-going American is her country’s leading event rider at the moment. And if results at the highest level are a yardstick to go by – in the past four years, she has ridden three different horses at 10 CCI5*-Ls and finished in the top 10 five times and the top 20 a further two times – she has most certainly earned her spread in the spotlight.

As we chat online a week or so later, Lauren, clad in light-coloured breeches and a dark baseball cap, is busy polishing bridles in the tack room of the yard in Virginia where she is based with Olympians-turned-revered trainers, David and Karen O’Connor.

The eventing calendar in the United States is back in full swing (albeit with its pandemic permutations) and Lauren – now sporting a new name after marrying Irish course-builder Sam Nicholson last November – has recently returned from The Plains, where she put in good performances in the CCI4*-S with two of her top string, Vermiculus and Paramount Importance.

“Being in lockdown here hasn’t been so bad as we’ve been able to keep busy with training and barn competitions, but it’s been so good finally to get back out again,” acknowledges Lauren, who impressed at the end of last season with a ninth place at Burghley.

A great many things have gone right for the 33-year-old in the past decade. With an enviable stable of horsepower, the backing of one of America’s richest families and training with the most experienced eventing couple ever to grace the sport, you could mistakenly assume that she has had it made. But as we all know, it takes far more than “being in the right place at the right time” to succeed in any sport, especially eventing.

A non-horsey family

FROM persuading her unhorsey parents to buy her riding lessons for her sixth birthday, to her early attempts at four- and five-star level – which were “pretty disastrous” – and more recently self-doubts about her cross-country riding, Lauren has overcome hurdles and heartache to reach this point.

Her childhood was different to many riders’. She grew up in a small farming town in southern Illinois in the Midwest, her father worked as a mechanic in an oil field, while her mother was an accountant.

“I was one of those kids who obsessed about horses without any real reason,” smiles Lauren who, aged 12, started working at an eventing and jumping barn, competing her own horses as well as those sent in for training and breaking.

“I was the ‘barn rat’ – I’d ride anything and everything. I spent a lot of time falling off. But I got lucky one day when we were sent an Anglo Arab called Snooze Alarm. The barn owner, Susannah Lansdale, was pregnant at the time, so I had the job of breaking him in. He was super-smart and cheeky, but a talented jumper and I loved him.”

Lauren persuaded her father to buy Snooze Alarm and the pair progressed through the grades until they eventually reached the dizzy heights of Kentucky CCI5*-L (then CCI4*) in 2010.

Their progress was characterised by peaks and troughs, and ironically it was a low point – a fall when Lauren was 16 in which she broke her back – that paved the way for her next, crucial, move.

“My parents – who don’t believe in mollycoddling – asked me whether I was scared after such a bad fall. I told them no. They said that if I was too stupid to be scared, then I needed to go somewhere and get some proper training,” she recalls.

Lauren was despatched to a week-long summer camp run by the O’Connors, and from there took on a position as a working student.

Her ability to produce young horses was quickly noted and she began riding horses for one of the O’Connors’ longest-term supporters, Jacqueline Mars.

“I would never be where I am now without Mrs Mars,” acknowledges Lauren.

Jacqueline Mars is an heiress to the confectionery giant Mars’ fortune and also a huge benefactor to eventing in the United States, both supporting individual riders and events.

She has a breeding operation and owns three of Lauren’s current top string – her home-bred Landmark’s Monte Carlo, Vermiculus, who is a full-brother to Snooze Alarm, and Paramount Importance, who was produced to four-star level in Britain by Ludwig Svennerstål. Mrs Mars also owns the bases in Virginia and Florida from which the O’Connor team operates.

Being in the right place at the right time

LAUREN’S move coincided with David’s retirement from competitive riding, so she was given his advanced horse at the time, Tigger Too, to compete – “another case of being in the right place at the right time”. Then in 2013, when Karen was forced to retire completely from the sport after breaking her neck, she was also handed the reins on her last five-star ride, Veronica.

“Taking on Veronica was a great honour, but also a huge learning curve,” says Lauren. “She and Karen had a reputation for being a fast partnership across country, but when I tried to go fast on her, I’d fall off. I lost confidence as a result and went completely the other way, racking up a bundle of time-penalties, which led to people labelling me as a slow rider.”

Murmurings that Lauren would likely squander any dressage advantage by racking up time-penalties across country is a demon that has weighed heavily on her mind until relatively recently.

“About 18 months ago, I went through a stage of being very down about it,” she admits. “Then our national federation hired [statistical analysis company] EquiRatings to talk us through our stats. They asked me whether what I read on paper was better or worse than I had expected and it was actually much better.

“I’m never going to be as fast as [her good friend] Jonelle Price, but the stats reassured me that I was also not the slowest in the world,” she says. “With David’s help, I sorted out a lot of the speed stuff and figured out a way to go more quickly without crashing out. So much of it hinges on getting the basics right and building up a partnership. In the last few years, I even had some of the fastest rides of the day.”

Competing in Britain

LAUREN’S first foray into eventing in the UK was in 2015, when she spent the summer based at Aston-le-Walls and finished sixth at Blenheim with Veronica.

“It was a good move as it forced me out of my comfort zone,” she says. “There’s a misconception over here that everything about eventing is bigger and better in Britain, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. The courses are rougher and less manicured than ours, which is probably why people get confused. You need to learn how to ride them.”

In 2017, Lauren and Veronica finished 17th at Badminton and 12th at Burghley. Then the following year, they were ninth at Badminton, while Vermiculus showed his potential by coming fifth on his CCI5*-L debut in Kentucky.

Last year signalled Lauren’s most successful to date when she followed up an eighth and a ninth at Kentucky with Paramount Importance and Vermiculus with a ninth place at Burghley, also with the latter. By now she was turning in quick cross-country rounds to complement flashy dressage scores.

“Competing at Badminton and Burghley is the stuff you dream about as a kid,” she says. “I love the big events in the UK as they have a different atmosphere, a special buzz, and you get to make different connections and friendships. Everyone supports each other. When you fall off at a British event, you get a slap on the arse and are told to get on with it, whereas over here it all gets a bit more emotional. It’s harder to pick yourself up and move on.”

Championship challenges

WHILE good results have been plentiful at the major five-stars in recent years, delivering in a team scenario at a major championship is still something that has eluded Lauren.

At the Rio Olympics, she and Veronica suffered a very public fall while attempting a direct route that barely anyone else took and it knocked her and the American team out of contention.

“Rio was very much a case of looking back with the benefit of hindsight,” she says, the memory of it clearly still raw. “We were down on the clock and Veronica was brave, so I took a risk jumping a wide corner to an upright gate that didn’t pay off. Of course afterwards I looked like a complete idiot.”

Hopes of putting that performance behind her two years later at the World Equestrian Games in Tryon were dashed when she tipped off Vermiculus at a downhill fence.

“That was more of an unlucky fall – it was just s*** luck,” she says candidly.

With another Olympics on the horizon (pandemic permitting) and Vermiculus and Paramount Importance bang in contention for team selection, the stage is set for Lauren to banish her championship demons once and for all.

“Vermiculus will only be 14, so theoretically he should be in his prime,” she says.

One thing’s for certain, should she return from Tokyo with a medal around her neck, Lauren will never again have to ask the question, “Does that mean I’ve made it?” Because the answer, of course, will be a resounding, “Yes.”

.

This interview was published in full in H&H magazine, issue date 29 October 2020

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Lauren Nicholson (neé Kieffer) is an event rider from the United States and she has multiple five-star completions and good results to her name, as well as being a frequent face on teams, including when she represented her country at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Lauren’s first five-star horse came in the form of Snooze Alarm, with whom she completed Kentucky CCI4* (now CCI5*) in 2010.

“I was very much a ‘barn rat’ kid growing up,” explains Lauren while being interviewed by H&H’s eventing editor Pippa Roome for episode 22 of the Horse & Hound podcast. “I grew up in the Mid-West, which is a very rural area, and Snooze Alarm was sent to the barn I was riding at when I was 13 and he was a rising four-year-old to be broken in. My trainer was pregnant and Snooze Alarm was quite wild, but I was quite keen to ride anything I could, so I started riding him and took him to his first couple of events.

“My parents then bought him — it was a very big purchase for us back then — I think he cost $8,000 and it was quite a fairytale sort of thing to have your first event horse and to go all the way from beginner novice level to five-star at Kentucky. He’s still here with us now, aged 23, and he lives out with Vermiculus, who is one of my current top five-star horses, and who is also Snooze Alarm’s full brother.”

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There is also a good story behind the name of Vermiculus, with whom Lauren finished ninth at both Burghley and Kentucky in 2019.

“Snooze Alarm’s stable name is Maggot. So when I bought Vermiculus, I was trying to think of a proper show name for him,” explains Lauren. “And I chose Vermiculus as it is Latin for maggot, and his stable name is Bug and it’s my little inside joke as Vermiculus actually sounds like such a regal name!”

To hear more of Lauren’s exclusive interview, listen to episode 22 of The Horse & Hound podcast or search “The Horse & Hound Podcast” in your favourite podcast app.

Horse & Hound magazine, out every Thursday, is packed with all the latest news and reports, as well as interviews, specials, nostalgia, vet and training advice. Find how you can enjoy the magazine delivered to your door every week, plus options to upgrade to access our H&H Plus online service which brings you breaking news as it happens as well as other benefits.

Stay in touch with all the news in the run-up to and throughout the major shows and events during 2026 and beyond with a Horse & Hound subscription. Subscribe today for all you need to know ahead of these major events, plus online reports on the action as it happens from our expert team of reporters and in-depth analysis in our special commemorative magazines. Have a subscription already? Set up your unlimited website access now