One of seven events in the world at this level, held in the park of a private house in Gloucestershire
Badminton Horse Trials has been run since 1949 in the park at Badminton, the Duke of Beaufort’s estate in Gloucestershire. It is one of a handful of five-star three-day events in the world, and around 180,000 people attend across the four days.
The competition runs in three phases: dressage across the first two days, cross-country on the Saturday and showjumping on the Sunday. The cross-country is the day everyone comes for — a course of solid fences over roughly six kilometres of parkland, walked by the crowd in the morning and jumped in the afternoon.
Cross-country day is the only occasion in the calendar where a hundred thousand people move around a course on foot, picking their fence and waiting. It is closer to a point-to-point than to a stadium event, and the etiquette is unwritten: pick a fence, hold your ground and do not move while a horse is coming.
Badminton’s cross-country is roughly six kilometres with around thirty numbered efforts, and what makes it a five-star test is not height but question. The Lake is the fence everyone knows — a drop into water in front of the largest crowd on the course. The Vicarage Vee, the Quarry and the Mirage each ask a horse to read a problem at speed, and the ground at Badminton is famously firm or famously soft depending on an English May.
Riders walk the course three or four times before they jump it. Spectators can walk it once, on the Saturday morning, and doing so is the difference between watching a horse jump a fence and understanding why the rider took the line they did.
A word on the practicalities, because Badminton punishes the unprepared more than most English sporting weekends. There is one road into the park and it carries a hundred thousand people on the Saturday. The nearest towns of any size are half an hour away. The ground is grass and the weather is an English May, which means boots rather than shoes and a plan for rain that does not involve going home.
Tell us which May you are planning and we will build the weekend around cross-country day
Around the competition sits a shopping village of several hundred stands, which is a substantial part of why 180,000 people come, and a trade presence that makes Badminton the British equestrian calendar’s commercial centre as well as its sporting one.
The Sunday is the showjumping, and it is the day the competition is actually decided — a horse that has gone clear across country can lose it in the arena. It is shorter, seated and civilised, and for anyone who finds cross-country day too much walking it is the better ticket.
Over four days each May, at Badminton Park in Gloucestershire.
On the Duke of Beaufort’s estate in Gloucestershire, between Bristol and Swindon, with no town of any size attached to it.
Dressage over the first two days, cross-country on the Saturday and showjumping on the Sunday.
The Saturday. Cross-country is what the event is known for and what the crowd comes to see.
Houses near the park are taken by regulars year after year.
The Lake is the famous one. The Vicarage Vee, the Quarry and the Mirage are where the competition is usually decided.
Yes, on the Saturday morning before the competition, and it is the best hour of the weekend.
A shopping village of several hundred stands, which is a large part of why the attendance is what it is.
