Mark Phillips on Maryland’s cross-country course: ‘We need to build in some leeway’

I WAS lucky enough to be at the inaugural Maryland 5 Star to watch my daughter Zara Tindall and Class Affair and also to see what Ian Stark was doing with his first five-star course.

People had been talking about the terrain at the venue for weeks and walking the course, there were more hills than Burghley and even Bicton.

I was very impressed with all Ian’s clever ideas. Everybody thought this would be another of Ian’s big and bold courses, but instead he used the terrain rather than a lot of top spread.

Controversy is never far away, though, at the five-star level. The senior riders and coaches all made the course around 180m shorter than specified. After remeasuring and adding an extra loop, Ian and technical delegate Alec Lochore came up with the minimum 11 minutes but the riders were still measuring it short, giving them an advantage of around 10 seconds.

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Article written by: Mark Phillips