Injured rider takes Burghley lead on tiny ‘superstar with the attitude of a 22hh horse’

Sarah Bullimore now sits at the top of the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials dressage leaderboard, as the first day of action (1 September) draws to a close.

Sarah’s forward flowing test on the home-bred Corouet, an 11-year-old owned by his rider, her husband Brett and the Kew Jumping Syndicate, earned her 22.5 from the judges, just 0.1 of a penalty ahead of Piggy March and Vanir Kamira, who were in the arena earlier in the afternoon.

The mid-test halt was a highlight for individual European bronze medallist Corouet, with two nines from Judy Hancock and Katrin Eichinger-Kniely and a 10 from Andrew Bennie. There were plenty of other nines scattered through his score sheet, too.

“He is amazing,” said Sarah. “He can be quite a little number, quite dominant, but wow, he is a proper little superstar.”

Sarah is riding injured as she took a stud to her knee in a fall at Wellington on Monday.

“We had a couple of little mistakes so it could have been better, but he looked after me,” she said. “I’m not in the best possible place coming here so I’m just chuffed with him, he did help and was totally on side today.”

Because of Sarah’s injury, she passed the reins to William Fox-Pitt for yesterday’s trot-up, which led to some hilarity as William is the tallest rider here and Corouet is only 15.2hh.

“It looked like William and his dog, but he has the attitude of a 22hh horse – he’s a big personality in a small package,” said Sarah.

Sarah said she is taking things a day at a time with her injury.

“I’m icing and doing compression and seeing the physio, trying to keep the weight off it and not stress it as much as possible,” she said. “Being at a three-day and only having one horse to ride is the best thing in a way, but I’ve got a big job to do in a couple of days [on the cross-country]. But we’re just taking it one step at a time.”

Pippa Funnell, who was the leader until lunchtime after being the second rider into the arena this morning, holds third now in the Burghley Horse Trials dressage on Billy Walk On.

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