Falls, frangibles and refusals prove costly for World Championship riders
Clarke Johnstone and Menlo Park
(Image credit: Peter Nixon)
There have been some important results for team scores in the World Eventing Championships cross-country, with a refusal and a rider fall that could prove influential.
France’s Thomas Carlile and Darmagnac De Beliard, who were in 18th after dressage with a score of 26.4, were eliminated at the skinny at fence 19; the horse was a way off and jumped through the side of the fence, and Tom came off.
“He was travelling really well, then I found myself a little bit off the triple brush arrowhead. The horse was a bit surprised to land into the bank and floated for a fraction of a second. He made such an effort to get to the back pole but had an unfortunate run-out,” said Thomas. “I was trying to go through the flags and lost my balance.”
The nine-year-old Selle Francais gelding suffered a superficial cut but is sound, said Tom, who was also unhurt.
“Very disappointing and feeling like I’ve sort of let everyone down, but had to fight on after an early stop,” Clarke said. “The stop at the top of the slide caught me by total surprise. I felt like everything was good, correct and just at the very last second he just stopped so that was not ideal. Then I had a pin later on the course as well which again, I got to the fence and wasn’t expecting anything to go wrong, but that came down as well. So yeah, pretty disappointing round for the team and for myself, but we managed to finish so that’s something, I guess.”
Clarke said the 12-year-old gelding felt slightly tired by the end.
“But I think he’s one of those horses that holds a little bit back in reserve for himself,” he said. “He recovered very easily; he feels like he just doesn’t give you the last little bit, which is quite nice because he jumps very well all the way to the end, even if he is getting a bit weary. He jumps cleanly and he pulled up and recovered pretty quickly.”
Lauren Nicholson of the US, who were in third after the dressage, added 5.6 time-penalties to finish on 32.7.
Lauren said she and the 15-year-old gelding know each other inside out.
“I knew all the questions were there for him,” she said. “It was more for me trying to hammer at the time from the get-go; he doesn’t have a huge gallop and the course for me was more about chasing the time than the actual fences.
“It’s always a different kind of pressure riding for the team and you still want to be toeing the line of being gutsy but trying not to do anything stupid. So I’m just very glad to have it done. Coleman has it done and that takes a lot of pressure off.”
The Diamant De Semilly 13-year-old jumped a fault-free round to finish on their dressage score of 31.3.
“It was a perfect run, a perfect horse. I’m so proud of him,” Sandra said. “It was super from the beginning to the end. I’ve never had a horse like him before, and that made it easy for me.”
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