America's David O'Connor spoiled the perfect story for Ireland yesterday when he rode his Badminton winner Custom Made to take the narrowest of leads over defending champion Lucy Thompson at the open European championships in Burghley yesterday.
The Virginian jockey does not have happy memories of the last open Europeans, when Thompson led from flagfall. Well in touch after the dressage, O'Connor fell on the cross-country and Custom Made was then eliminated in the show jumping. But the Bassompierre gelding was back in tune for Atlanta last year, finishing fifth in the individual, and went on to win the premier British fixture this spring.
Thompson missed both the Olympics and Badminton with Welton Romance when a leg injury kept the gold medal mare sidelined. The Kent-based rider has also been off the circuit, handing over Romance to former European show jumping champion Peter Charles while she was in hospital in mid-July.
Both sides of the reunited partnership are now back to full health and there is no doubt that it is not just the jockey who has her eye on the main prize here at Burghley. Romance was at her brilliant best in the dressage arena yesterday afternoon, floating through an almost-flawless test to score 40.2 and take the lead with just 10 horses waiting in the wings.
Unfortunately for Irish hopes, second last of those was Custom Made and, despite two obvious errors in the flying changes, his consistently good work gave him a fractional advantage over the mare to leave O'Connor on what many ringside judges saw as a rather generous 40 penalties.
But O'Connor was quick to acknowledge that the dressage placings will be considerably reshuffled during today's crosscountry. The Irish plan to go out with all guns blazing and it is down to David Foster to act as pathfinder with the ultra-consistent Duneight Carnival in a bid to boost Ireland further up the placings from overnight seventh.
Britain, who took team gold in Pratoni two years ago, has a healthy lead over two of the non-European contenders, America and New Zealand, but there is a mere 2.6 penalties dividing the next four teams, to give the Irish every reason for optimism.
Out on the showjumping circuit, Trevor Coyle and Cruising, best of the Irish in seventh at the European championships in Mannheim a fortnight ago, topped a world-class field to win the £30,000 Cana Cup for the second time at the Spruce Meadows Masters in Calgary on Thursday.
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