‘Cross-country remains at the core, but it’ll be a little less hilly coming home’: changes to Bramham course for 2026

Andrew Heffernan plans to make some changes to the Defender Bramham Horse Trials cross-country course for this year’s event (11-14 June).

“I want to provide a course that still supports the preparation of horses for the top five-star events, but by easing the terrain of the track, one that also helps combinations to prepare for championships,” said Andrew, who took over as course-designer at Bramham last year. “We need to maintain the technicality, boldness and flow riders expect. Bramham is the barometer riders can use to gauge what type of horse they have and where its future lies.”

The two courses, for the CCI4*-L and CCI4*-S, will start in the same place as in recent years, in the field next to the stables.

“I feel like that’s a really good place for the start that suits the warm-up and the stables, and there’s loads of room there,” Andrew told H&H.

“I’ve then tried to take the immediate downhill out of the beginning of the track and take the uphill out of the finish as much as possible. So horses will turn right out of that first field, go to the Womble Bond Dickinson water early on in both classes and finish by coming through the Round House area.”

The track will broadly run anti-clockwise, rather than the clockwise trend of recent years, though Andrew said it’s not a case of just reversing the route.

Bramham Horse Trials cross-country course: aiming to attract championship pairs

“Bramham has always been a stepping stone towards Badminton Horse Trials and Burghley Horse Trials and that won’t change,” said Andrew. “The intention is definitely to keep cross-country at the core and not to soften the track or make it less of a cross-country test.

“You can’t take the terrain out of it and I’ve tried to use it in the same way we have before, but just to make it a little easier coming home so that the last parts of the track are not quite so hilly. Hopefully that will allow horses who haven’t got quite the same amount of [thoroughbred] blood to use Bramham as an event for preparing.

“I hope this year we’ll attract some competitors aiming for the World Championships at Aachen – almost certainly only in the four-star short class, not the long – but I’ve tried to design a track to prepare horses for that, rather than just for five-star competitions at the end of the year. I hope it won’t be necessary for British-based riders to travel to Luhmühlen or places like that to prepare.”

Andrew assisted previous Bramham Horse Trials cross-country course-designer Ian Stark for three years before taking on the main role for the 2025 event.

“Last year we built quite a lot of new fences, whereas this year there’s been more of a structural cost on things like groundwork with swapping things around, changing direction and so on,” he said.

“The estate and the Lane Foxes [the family who own Bramham] have been incredibly supportive and let me do what I want to do – probably in the hope I’ll stop spending as much money from now on!”

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