As the sun set on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, so too did the first chapter of this rider’s remarkable year of two halves. Some six weeks later, the team gold medal-winning combination of Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo would lead another career-defining lap of honour – this time closer to home.
“The moment we decided that we weren’t going to Badminton in the spring, we thought Burghley might be an option for him,” says Ros, for whom this was a first Burghley win.
Ros and Michele Saul, who owns the 12-year-old gelding with husband Archie, had the conversation early in the year. While the focus was on Paris, Burghley had also been pencilled in to “Walter’s” tentative season plan.
While the Paris Olympics was the primary focus for Ros and Walter during 2024, a trip to Burghley was also on the cards if all went according to plan. Credit: Peter Nixon
“It wasn’t a last minute, ’let’s just throw him in at Burghley’ – it was very much something we’d had in the back of our minds,” adds Ros. “We were always going to wait and see how Paris went, provided we got there, and what he thought of it afterwards.
“He had had a week off after Paris. Then I took him for a couple of hacks. He squealed, he bucked, he was fairly fresh and fit. I rang Michele, and said, ‘If you still think Burghley is a possibility and a good idea, Walter is telling me that he thinks it’s a good idea!’
“We decided to give it to the ballot date and if we were on target, we would enter, and then take every day as it comes and if he felt good, then we would go for it.
“He never had a day when he didn’t feel like he was as fit as a fiddle and ready to do something else.”
Ros: “Walter felt fit and ready for Burghley”
Heading to Burghley was an easy decision with a horse in sparkling form, having taken the nine minutes of galloping over Versailles’ broadly flat terrain in his stride.
“I felt in a really good place in the last week running up to Burghley and was really happy with the way Walter was going,” says Ros.
Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo were feeling fit and ready for Burghley 2024. Credit: Peter Nixon
“I tweaked a couple of things – nothing major, but you learn about horses with every event, and horses change as they go through their career. I felt I really knew Walter well. I knew how he was going to react to things, and where I wanted to be in my training, and everything was going very well.
“I had Ian Woodhead there at Burghley to help me on the flat, like I always do. But I very much felt that if he hadn’t been there, I would have been very clear about how I wanted to ride.
“I was quite relaxed about the whole thing as well – whether it was because it was in the aftermath of Paris, which had been quite a high pressurised situation – I was really looking forward to taking him there. It just all worked out.”
Ros Canter jumps the drop into the Trout Hatchery at Defender Burghley to become overnight leader after cross-country on Lordships Graffalo. Credit: Peter Nixon
She adds: “Burghley’s terrain rides lumpy, bumpy, even when it looks flat. You can walk it and think you’re going up a slight incline. But actually, when you ride it, you go up an incline and bump along as well.
“Walter – just in his balance and the way he goes cross country – is so incredible that it actually felt quite smooth. He’s so easy on himself, balanced and rideable. He’s so good at coming back to me that I can ride fast towards a turn, take one balance and he clocks it and steadies himself up.
“He’s just the ultimate athlete. He seems to be able to tackle these huge courses, and doesn’t seem to find galloping hard work, meaning can come out on the final day and still have that enthusiasm.”
Ros Canter: a champion’s mindset
Ros’s mindset as an athlete and a horsewoman is exceptional. Her analytic brain and attention to detail set her apart. Walter, after all, is a horse who came to Burghley already a 2023 Badminton and European champion – but she always has a fresh gem to share about something she has learnt in the build-up to that particular event. It’s what makes her post-ride analysis in her debriefs to the media a must-listen. From how focusing on straightness helped Walter nail a new five-star personal best of 22 in the dressage, to not letting her guard slip until through the cross-country finish flags as the last fence had a roof – something Walter hadn’t liked in his younger years.
A focus on straightness helped Ros and Walter achieve a five-star personal best dressage score at Burghley 2024. Credit: Peter Nixon
Ros has also spoken openly about the mental processes she went through to get herself in the frame of mind that led to that Burghley win. Uncharacteristic showjumping faults with Izilot DHI costing them the Luhmühlen CCI5* title in June stoked her competitive fire. Processing her feelings around Paris also helped to give her clarity.
“I do use sports psychology a bit. I had a really good sports psychology session that week [before Burghley]. Again, we tweaked a couple of things, I got myself in a slightly different headspace, and everything did just go well,” she says.
“It’s not something I do on a weekly basis, but I generally have a session at the start of the season. Then when gearing up towards a big one, I normally have one or two sessions.
“We cover all sorts of things. I am quite a thinking person. So quite often, I can come up with the problems I’m having, and I can almost come up with the answers to my problems myself. But it is just nice to bounce ideas off someone who knows me.
“We often talk about family life, juggles, guilt, all sorts of different things, but the preparation for Burghley was very much around the feelings I’d had after Paris, how I’d felt a bit flat and deflated, and how that was actually quite normal.”
Ros got “really revved up to go out and mean it” before her cross-country round at Burghley. Credit: Peter Nixon
She adds: “My psychology around Burghley was making that decision to myself that I actually really, really wanted it.
“I think because I’d had Paris as my big end goal and then that goal had gone, I was a bit like, ‘well, now what do I do?’ Then I sat down and we chatted, and I really decided that I really wanted to go to Burghley, I really wanted to do well at Burghley, and I wanted to get really psyched up for it. And before cross-country, I was going to get myself really revved up to go out and to really mean it, to really want it.
“It was something a little bit different to what we have done before – changing it up, trying to keep everything fresh.”
Keeping things fresh certainly did pay off.
Enjoy the day-by-day reports of Ros’s Burghley win:
Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo win Burghley: ‘I wasn’t sure I’d ever tick this box’
‘I didn’t realise he’d lost a shoe’: Ros Canter’s fascinating analysis of her winning cross-country round at Burghley 2024
‘I held my breath until the final fence’: Ros Canter cements Burghley lead despite last-minute concern
Ros Canter holds one-two at Burghley after ‘lightbulb moment’ with Lordships Graffalo
British Paris Olympic gold medallists head up strong field as Burghley entries close
