Equestrian Articles

The Badminton Horse Trials (presented by Mars Equestrian), is just around the corner and will this year be starting on Thursday 4th May.

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... more

Ben competes at Advanced Level, running a string of event horses with his wife, Sarah under the Team Way banner, whilst also very actively buying and selling equestrian properties for Butler Sherborn across the Cotswolds and beyond.

Tell us a little bit about your career to date.

I graduated from Cirencester in 2010 having completed the Rural Land Management Degree. Following my graduation, I had a couple of months at home before starting with Butler Sherborn in October of the same year. My father, who works for Knight Frank, always said that I could ride eventing full time if I wanted to do so, on the condition that I qualified first, so that I had something to fall back on, if needed.

How many years have... more

As February turns into March, there is a certain air of anticipation at Seven Barrows, Nicky Henderson’s Lambourn yard, as he arrays his battalions for the battle that is The Cheltenham Festival. Spring is just around the corner, and with it comes what Nicky regards as the four most prestigious days of the National Hunt Calendar.

With 70 winners already on his Festival score sheet to almost match his number of years, Lambourn’s senior NH trainer once again approaches this week with a formidable team, while not so long on quantity, certainly as deep as ever in quality.

The first race on day one, Tuesday, is always a good place to start, The Supreme Novices Hurdle. It always a good one to get in the bag. Constitution Hill, under Nico de Boinville, unbeaten in two runs, including the Grade 1 Tolworth,  has as... more

We have been very lucky at Team Way Eventing with both Sarah and myself meeting the criteria for ‘elite athletes’.

This  has enabled us to keep travelling and training during lockdown, and to run our horses at some of the elite only events in March.  The cancellation of Badminton was very disappointing. However, we are now looking to Luhmuhlen in Germany at the end of June, as a replacement aim.  

All of our horses have had their first runs of season. Now our biggest challenge is that the ground conditions have gone from soft mud to very firm in the space of two weeks. The ground permitting we are... more

Given that in the spring it looked unlikely that we would have any international competitions at all during 2020, at Team Way Eventing we have managed to have a surprisingly successful productive season!

The positive side of the spring lockdown was being able to spend so much time working on the basics with the young horses, without the pressure of having to take them to competitions. Interestingly, I think they ended up progressing more quickly than normal.  The major blows for us were the cancellations of some of the big international events, such as Badminton in the spring and Blenheim in the autumn.  However, we are able to get some good 4* runs into our top horses, and qualify all of... more