Pippa Funnell and Supreme Rock lead from the front to win the coveted Badminton title with fellow British European Championships team mates runners-up in this year’s classic event .
Eventing magazine Editor Kate Green looks back on the final day
Amid emotional scenes, Pippa Funnell won her first Mitsubishi Motors Badminton horse trials and headed a second consecutive British one-two-three.
Shehad led from the start, the first rider to have done so since Ginny Elliot in 1993, and show jumped clear under enormous pressure to clinch the trophy on the Pitt Lewthwaite Syndicate’s 14-year-old Supreme Rock.
Her team mates in the winning team at last year’s European Championships filled second and third places, William Fox-Pitt on the relative novice Tamarillo, owned and bred by Mary and Finn Guinness, and Leslie Law on Shearwater Insurance’s experiencedShear H20, the runner-up in 2000.
The major upset was the crashing round by Andrew Hoy and Darien Powers, who had performed such a class cross-country round on the day before. Powers is, however, an unreliable show jumper and Andrew’s demise, to eighth place, was not wholly surprising.
In fourth on his dressage score was Andreas Dibowski, riding the mare Ginger, who scored the best Badminton result by a German rider.
Newcomer Kate Lambie was best of a large New Zealand contingent, on another mare, Nufarm Alibi and Greece’s Heidi Antikatzides scored her best Badminton , sixth.
Final results: 1, Pippa Funnell, 37.81; 2, William Fox-Pitt, 41.81; 3, Leslie Law, 47.2; 4, Andreas Dibowski, 48.8; 5, Kate Lambie, 53; 6, Heidi Antikatzides, 53.6; 7, Polly Stockton, 53.8; 8, Andrew Hoy, 54.61; 9 & 10, Andrew Nicholson, 55.81 & 57; 11, Amy Tron, 61; 12, Kristina Cook, 61.8.
Read the full report will pictures from Badminton 2002 in Eventing magazine on sale next week.
For full scoreboard visit the Badminton website www.badminton-horse.co.uk
