An Eventful Life is filming all competitors at Larkhill Horse Trials - order or view cross country videos here
The first of three days of competition at Larkhill Horse Trials got underway on Friday 10th April with Samantha Brown riding Spirit LSS taking out the Intermediate Novice, finishing ahead of Hector Payne riding Bueno and Sophie Fouracre on board Chacco Faer.
It is the first win at this level for Samantha and her 14-year-old Irish bred gelding, starting in the lead after dressage on a score of 28.2 but Hector was close behind on 29.6. Both combinations had a rail in the showjumping, but Samantha put her foot down on the beautiful old turf of Larkhill to come home under time and stay just ahead of Hector, finishing on 32.2 to Hector’s 33.6.
Larkhill is happy hunting ground for Hector, whose wife Yasmin Olsson-Payne won this class here last year, and this year was no exception with Hector also taking third place in Friday’s Novice Section D riding One For the Road and sixth in the BE100 Section G.
Bonny Peckham riding Kermit took out the Open Novice on their dressage score of 27.0 ahead of Aaron Millar riding Cooley Exchange and David Doel riding Miss Morningstar BB. David, who also claimed the Novice section B on Tudor Gold, was not the only 5* rider in the field with Tim Price, Georgie Goss, Tom Jackson and Harry Meade all having a run across Salisbury Plain on their younger horses, not to mention legends Andrew Nicholson and William Fox-Pitt, who is patron here.
And it isn’t just the ones who in the saddle that are legends at Larkhill - Jenny Loriston Clarke was out fence judging today!
Competition continues at Larkhill on Saturday and Sunday and we’ll be back with a full report and rider thoughts on the new Andy Heffernan designed courses next week. In the meantime, keep an eye on our socials for snippets of cross country action and you can buy your full cross country video here!
