A bitless bridle and brilliant jumping – British riders claim three top-five places at Kentucky

Harry Meade finished third and fourth after two good rounds to hold his overnight places in the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event showjumping on Et Hop Du Matz and Grafnnacht – and Tom McEwen also retained his provisional ranking, claiming fifth on Brookfield Quality in a good week for Britain.

“They were brilliant. I’ve been fifth, fourth and third here now,” smiled Harry, who was fifth on Superstition in 2021, leaving it for the journalists to fill in that perhaps we can expect second and first in the future.

Harry jumped out of order on Amanda Gould’s Grafennacht, who was fourth overnight. Memories of this mare’s last five-star showjumping round, when she had a cricket score at Badminton Horse Trials last year with William Fox-Pitt, costing the pair the title, were in many minds, although she did also jump plenty of good rounds with William, including when second at Maryland 5 Star in 2023.

She rattled a few fences today, but Harry was able to coax her round with just the oxer in the middle of the treble at fence 11abc down, which did not alter her final placing.

“I thought she was super,” said Harry. “I’ve got a little bit of a hypothesis about her, which hopefully is proving to be effective, about jumping her off a curve the whole time, as well as jumping nothing big outside. And I was able to do that the whole way through the course. The only fence I couldn’t come off a curve to was the middle part of the treble and she had that down.”

Harry jumped Grafennacht in a bitless bridle here, as he did when the pair won the CCI4*-L at Montelibretti in March.

“If I think something isn’t brilliant, I try and just un-complicate it as much as possible, like everything off, and she quite likes it,” he explained.

Harry’s second ride, Mandy Gray’s and his own Et Hop Du Matz, jumped a secure clear.

“He’s a really proper, proper horse, and he went in and nailed everything,” said Harry. “It was fun just to school him round and and he really exceeded expectations. I felt it could have gone two holes higher.”

Kentucky Three-Day Event showjumping: McEwen holds fifth

Tom McEwen and Brookfield Quality, owned by Alison Swinburn and John and Chloe Perry – just toppled the brown Appalachian mountains spread fence at number two.

“It was an uncharacteristic rail, but he jumped brilliantly and the rest of the round he was great,” said Tom “It’s his first time in this sort of atmosphere – he’s been down to Pau, which obviously is a cracking atmosphere in a full ring, but this is definitely the next step up so I’m really, really pleased with how his week’s gone.

“He’s feeling well fit and fresh and we’ve got a really cool five-star horse on our hands so it’s very, very exciting.”

Tom finished on the same score as Boyd Martin and Fedarman B. The pair could not be split by cross-country score as both had 10.4 time-faults, so the next differentiator in FEI competitions is dressage score, which gave Tom the edge, leaving him fifth and Boyd sixth.

Boyd also finished seventh on Luke 140 and second on Commando 3, behind winners Michael Jung and FischerChipmunk FRH.

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