Due to the clash with the Coronation, there will be a slightly different timetable  with the dressage days running on the Friday and Saturday, cross country on the Sunday, and the show jumping on the Monday.

This year’s entries look strong, with the equine line up being a really good mix of established campaigners and younger horses stepping up to the level. The one thing that did jump out at me, when looking at this year’s entries, is that there are very few Badminton first timers and mostly riders with plenty of 5* experience. This may be due to the difficult spring we have had, with many events being cancelled, a knock on from ‘the COVID years’ or the qualification changes, introduced to make sure that combinations have got the experience needed to move up to  5* level.

As ever, in the lead up to the event there have been a number of withdrawals, the most notable of which has been Laura Collet’s defending champion, London 52, who has been withdrawn due to an overreach injury. Unusually, for Badminton there are no combinations sitting on the waitlist, so it will be interesting to see how many horses we see at the Trot up on the Thursday.

Over the weekend, they have released the official preview of this year’s course. The course designer, Eric Winter, has certainly shaken things up, adding some new combinations and a new loop in at the farthest part of the course, to make the most of the topography in the park.

From what I have seen, the double of upright gates early on in the course could catch out horses that are running a bit keen, and the new Rolex T bar looks a proper old fashioned rider frightener. There is also a very open triple bar jumping into the lake,  the top rail of which is fitted with a ‘MIM Clip’ safely device, which if triggered causes an automatic 11 penalties.  These clips are designed for horse and rider safety, but are somewhat controversial amongst riders when 11 penalties can be extremely costly. Huntsman’s Close comes towards the end of this year’s course, and a pair of very open corners look as though they could well catch out horses who are starting to get tired in the closing stages of the track.

Badminton is a notoriously tricky event to try and predict a winner, with margins for error being minute.  However, if I had to put my money on one combination, it would most likely be Ros Canter on her up and coming star, Lordships Graffalo, who has already proven himself at this level. That said, there will be established combinations, such as Oliver Townend on Swallow Springs and Tom McEwen on Toledo de Kerser, who will be looking to give Ros a run for her money.

Badminton 2023 looks set to be a hugely exiting competition at the most famous 5* event in the world, which conveniently for us sits within the beautiful Cotswolds.

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