First-timers hope for luck of the Irish
Two Irish first-timers have made good headway
at this year’s Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials. Sam
Watson and Elizabeth Power are currently based in England but both
hail from Ireland, and bring Irish-bred horses to Badminton.
Sam, 23, who is based in Gloucestershire with
Laura Collett, is riding his parents’ John and Julia Watson’s
Horseware Bushman, a horse they bred at their Ballybolger Stud in
Co. Carlow. The 10-year-old gelding, by Irish Sport Horse
sire Puissance, goes forward to tomorrow’s cross country on a score
of 60.3.
“It’s good to have the dressage behind me so I
can really focus on the cross country – it’s now all about tomorrow
for me,” said Sam, whose father John competed at Badminton in 1978
on Cambridge Blue, the horse with whom he also won a World
individual silver medal at Kentucky in the same year. “The
course may be a little less frightening than last year but it is
still intense and there is plenty out there to keep me on my toes,”
he added.
Irish born and bred, Elizabeth and Kilpatrick
River are the other Irish combination to have made a good start at
The Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials. Kilpatrick
River, an Irish-bred Thoroughbred by Petardia put in a strong
dressage performance yesterday to score 54.0 for Elizabeth, leaving
them in 11th place at the half-way stage. The
24-year-old is the daughter of former leading show jumper Con
Power, and her brother Robbie won the Grand National at Aintree
aboard Silver Birch in 2007.