Thursday Afternoon at Badminton: Tom’s Untouchable But Kitty King’s Closing In

It doesn’t often happen that Badminton’s Thursday morning leader remains in the top spot through the rest of the day, but that’s exactly what happened in today’s competition: coming forward as just the fourth competitor of the day, Olympic medallists Tom McEwen and his eminently reliable Toledo de Kerser delivered a career-best five-star score of 23.4 that proved unsurpassable as the day wore on. There were plenty of admirable challengers for the throne, though, and as the day drew to a close, two of them had come very close indeed.

“He’s getting more and more reliable — he used to be a little bit more tricky, but he’s getting more and more on side as he’s getting older and he’s getting the strength there,” says Kitty King, who posted a 24.8 with Vendredi Biats (Winningmood x Liane Normande, by Camelia de Ruelles). While it’s hardly the Selle Français gelding’s first sub-25 – he’s managed the feat four times at four-star – it easily eclipsed his previous five-star score of 27.2, earned here in 2019. Like many French horses, we’ve seen him hit a peak, both in strength and in hard-earned maturity, as he’s entered his teens and today, his professionalism won out – despite some tricky schooling sessions in the previous days.

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*Article written by: Tilly Berendt *