A day of highs and lows for British riders at the Showjumping World Championship

Ben Maher and Scott Brash pinned picture-perfect rounds on the board, but teammates Joe Stockdale and Harry Charles were left devastated. Can the team bounce back and find themselves on the podium after tomorrow’s final?

With the British team sat in fourth place and two riders in the top 10 overnight, the second qualifier of the Showjumping World Championships was always going to be a dramatic one. At this level, the course is never going to be straightforward, but boy did it throw some challenges at our young British riders.

Ben Maher and Faltic HB were the first combination to go from Great Britain. Their smooth, effortless and quick round put them into second place, but there was still a lot of action to come. Ben was thrilled with his performance as “everything went to plan again” – a rarity in equestrian sport.

“It makes my life a lot easier when I don’t have to adjust and change the rhythm. Everything seems to be happening how I planned so far this week, and the pace was right, the angles, the numbers… everything came up exactly as it did. I don’t think he could’ve jumped the round any better than he did today.”

Speaking highly of his teammates and remaining hopeful for the rest of Great Britain’s showjumping campaign, Ben added, “Yesterday was about risk management, and keeping yourself individually and the team. You can’t win the first day, but you can lose the first day, and we kept ourselves well positioned. Now it’s just about jumping one jump at a time and trying to knock off the rounds. Hopefully I’ve given the team good, positive confidence to finish the day well. We have a good team, everybody’s on form”

But the two youngest members of the British team had rounds they’d rather forget. Joe Stockdale came into the ring looking nervous after his fence down yesterday. Even though his round got off to a fantastic start, he lost the rhythm coming into the combination and quickly added 12 faults to his score.

“It’s obviously not the result I wanted. I thought my mare was jumping well until there, but I made a mistake,” Joe admitted, “and it cost me three fences. It’s good to be here, but it would’ve been nice to do well today. We’ll just come back tomorrow and see how we do.”

Harry Charles and Romeo 88 entered the arena with an almighty amount of pressure on their shoulders. Their round got off to a cracking and confident start, but the troubling combination struck again, and Harry finished with eight faults – knocking Team GB down into 10^th place and on the cusp of not qualifying for the final tomorrow (Friday 12 August).

“It was nearly the perfect round.” Harry reflected, “I still don’t really know what happened to be honest as I’ve not watched the video back yet, but we seemed to get into the combination really good but ended up somehow being a bit of a mess in the middle. I still don’t really know why. Apart from that, he didn’t touch a pole and jumped amazing.”

But Harry held his head high, was looking forward to the challenges tomorrow will bring and remained full of praise for Romeo 88, “He’s good… jumped better than yesterday and still has loads of energy. He finished as good as he started, so hopefully tomorrow we won’t be too far behind, so we’ll try make up for it.”

As the last combination of the day, Scott Brash and Hello Jefferson, entered the arena the British team had shuffled up the leaderboard into sixth, as a result of mistakes made by Canadian, Swiss, American and Brazilian riders. Scott had one fence in hand for the British team to remain in the top 10 so the pressure was certainly on.

We held our breaths as they got underway, but there was no need to worry, as the incredibly experienced pair cruised around the course with a foot-perfect clear keeping the team sitting in sixth place overnight.

Echoing his comments from the previous day, Scott was “delighted” with his round. “Jefferson feels good,” he said, speaking of the horse’s tremendous form. “He feels like he can do anything so I was pretty confident coming here that he was in good shape. To go well, keep the poles up every time inside the time allowed is demanding, so you need a bit of luck along the way.”

The partnership Scott shares with Jefferson looks effortless and you’d be forgiven for thinking something so fateful might have fallen together overnight – more like a fairytale than a relationship they’ve had to work at. However, Scott confirms that’s absolutely not the case. Of his partnership with the “busy brained” gelding, Scott said its taken “hours of training” to get to this point. “I spend more time with him than my family!

“He always wants to be doing something. The other horses could be asleep in the stables but he’ll have his head over the door thinking where are we going, what are we doing? He’s that sort of horse,” Scott continued. “He was quite tricky to start with just because he’s such a busy brain and strong minded. He always thinks he knows best.”

Results and what’s coming next?

The top 10 teams carry their scores forward and go through to the final tomorrow (Friday 12 August) to fight for the medals. With everything still all to play for as scores remain tight at the top, as well as inevitable jump and time penalties in the final, it’s going to be an unmissable evening of action.

Today’s top 10 is as follows…

1. Sweden ­– 3.69
2. France – 5.44
3. Germany – 11.76
4. Netherlands – 13.31
5. Belgium – 13.49
6. Great Britain – 14.66
7. Switzerland – 14.83
8. Canada – 15.56
9. Ireland – 17.15
10. Brazil – 17.29

Photo credit: Scott Brash and Hello Jefferson © FEI / Leanjo de Koster