William Fox-Pitt may not be riding at this year's event but he came along for the preview day
It was, by all accounts, a very good preview of this year’s Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials.
On a beautiful sunny day a host of Mitsubishi cars filled with members of the press and a few other bods rolled out from the crunchy gravel driveway in front of Badminton House onto the estate parklands. The invitees were naturally keen to see what this year’s course, designed for the first time by Eric Winter, would hold. A few fences were visited, not too many so that the sense of anticipation totally disappeared but enough to whet the appetite, then it was back the big house for an appetite of a different kind - lunch in the big room in the big house
Which is where we came in. Literally.
After a lovely evening in London with friends, it should really have been just a hop and skip to Badminton in Gloucestershire (well, a hop and skip by our standards; we travel a lot of miles)but just as we neared our destination, the M4 ground to a halt and ominous orange flashing lights warned of an hour’s delay ahead.
Time and tide may wait for no man but neither does the Badminton Event Director Hugh Thomas so there was little doubt we were going to miss the official preview. We called, explained our predicament and were very kindly told just to join them as and when we could (it must have been tempting for them to ask if we were actually coming from Australia in view of our tardiness)
So, I can tell you very little about the actual preview (luckily you can find out more here) apart from the fact that the lunch was very nice and the company very good. At my table I had on one side Andrew Tucker, who manages many of the sponsors and is also the son of the well known eventing couple Mike and Angela, and on the other was the video maestro Randal Cowell. Thanks to Randal I can now see some of the bits I missed, as can you, in the video below .........
Well, it’s always more exciting to see the cross country course when it’s fully dressed isn’t it? So I’m afraid you’ll have to wait to see it in its full glory when we upload the first Badminton photo galleries.In the meantime,how about a few photos of a different kind from Badminton
