Blyth Tait taking over the reins in a different capacity
David Evans, course-builder for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, will again design the cross-country courses at Burgham International Horse Trials (July 26-28) for the CCI4*-S and CCI3*-S, while New Zealand’s former world and Olympic champion Blyth Tait will design the national courses and the CCI2*-S. Blyth started his course-designing career here at Burgham, and this will be his very first international track.
Blyth, who has moved home to New Zealand but will be returning to Britain in June and July to design the courses at Burgham and at its sister event, Alnwick Ford, said: “I’m really excited to design an international track for the first time. Burgham is a wonderful event – it has great going and offers plenty of scope to design interesting, challenging and fair courses – and always receives a large, high-class entry as a result.”
World number one Oliver Townend has an outstanding record at Burgham, and won last year’s CCI4*-S with Ballaghmor Class, winner of Burghley’s CCI5* in 2017 and runner-up there in 2018.
The jumping phases of Burgham’s international classes take place on Sunday, 28 July, with the national classes taking centre stage on Saturday, 27 July. On Friday, 26 July, Burgham hosts Dubarry Burghley Young Event Horse classes and the dressage phase of the international sections commences. The riding club showjumping and the inter-hunt relay will take place on Sunday.
