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The road to Badminton....
The road to Badminton....
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Click here to follow Little Tiger at our new Badminton 2009 Mini Site. Everything below is also on the new site along with live updates on the Show Jumping as it happens and photo galleries.
If you're a picture editor looking for images of this combination, then click here. or ring me on 07739 913696. Mike Dixon
Frostie and Phoebe collected something of a cricket score in the show jumping - a contribution from both horse and rider.
The horse had the first two down, and the rider had a blonde moment before fence 5 and turned the wrong way - making the approach impossible... After fence 5 they looked fantastic - and they completed...so that's three times round Badminton on the trot! |
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Polly Taylor:
Frostie is now having a few days off at Twemlows stud - taking up (we hope) the second of her embryo transfers won as Best Mare at Burghley last year. She has not been the most enthusiastic mother, so keep your fingers crossed! We do have "Dosh" (Dont Stop Me Now) who is nearly 2 years old, and a 3 month embryo in "Equity" - both by Catherston Liberator. Many thanks to Michaela and all her colleagues at Twemlows for persisting and making her so welcome.
Little Tiger at Badminton for the 3rd year running is a complete fairy story; she is tiny, far, far from a typical 4 star horse and it is thanks to Phoebe loyally sticking with her - through all the stops in the show jumping, all the less than 50% dressage - that we are all here at this great event once again. And this year the press have picked up on it, focussing, inevitably perhaps, on the rider, her unusual background and the contrasts between her and other riders, particularly Zara Philips.
As the owner, I would like to keep the record straight and to thank all the others who have made it possible: Jo Lawrence, Phoebe's parents, my daughter Eleanor, my husband Peter, Simon Grieve and Val Gingell. see below for how the whole thing is put together..
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Today (Friday) was day-off for everybody. Frostie and Phoebe went for a hack and jumped after the rain had finally stopped. We watched some classy dressage (Yes, Zara Philips,Toytown did beat Frostie so let's see what the Daily Mail make of that one...) and we did get to see Frostie's husband, Catherston Liberator in the stallion parade. Simon, as you can see, is still confident. |
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Badminton 2009
6pm Wednesday 6th May 2009 and we are through the trot-up. Little Tiger was sound which is more than could be said for the rider, sporting very smart boots, unfortunately very slightly too small!
No worries: they're though to dressage (11.30 Thursday)
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Polly: Tom Buckley-Phoebe's Dad, told me how much he was looking forward to Badminton week. Here he is taking the plaits out after the trot-up-if he looks tired it's because Frostie towed him round and round beforehand. |
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Dressage- Thursday
Frostie did one of her best tests today. She was calm, the trot work positively fluent – and there was only one proper mistake – in the serpentine canters. Well done both of them – pity it was not reflected in the marks. She still suffers from being small, and built “downhill”.
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How it all fits together (2009)...
Little Tiger, “Frostie” lives at home in my yard, and Phoebe comes to ride her daily. I fractured my pelvis about 6 weeks ago (yes it was a horse accident…) and have been unable to do anything useful since.
But, stepping into the breach; Jo Lawrence has run the yard immaculately and gets on so well with Frostie. My daughter Eleanor did so much when she was home from University over Easter. Phoebe’s parents have driven Phoebe and Frostie to all those lessons and events instead of me, Val Gingell, who bred her, has continued to support us and my husband Peter, who is not horsey, has backed us behind the scenes all the way. Mike Dixon, my business partner, event photographer and Frostie’s most loyal supporter got me to Badminton and is making sure no further injuries occur….
It is thanks to them all that we are here at all, with Simon Grieve who is grooming for us.
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Click here to follow Little Tiger at our new Badminton 2009 Mini Site. Including live updates on the Show Jumping as it happens and photo galleries.
And now: the original Badminton Diary, 2007 (How it all began). |
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‘Why the hell am I doing this?’
It's early spring, 1999, and Dr Polly Taylor is sitting on the edge of a small, wooden footbridge, dangling her feet over the water and consulting her watch every two minutes. At this rate she will look at it thirty times more before needing to warm up Little Tiger, or “Frostie”, for her cross country test. It’s nobody’s fault, but the times allotted for this tiny thoroughbred’s first event are, to say the least, inconvenient. We left early to be in good time for the dressage, and the show-jumping came soon after, but now we have a three hour wait before cross-country. We’ve walked Great Witchingham’s Intro track twice now and there’s still ages to go. Polly rehearses the route she’ll take through the water once more and stands up. ‘Lets go back to the car.’
‘Do you want anything to eat.’
She looks to see if I’m joking. ‘Afterwards. I can’t eat now.’
I’m not joking; she hasn’t eaten all day. We walk in silence for a few minutes.
‘Where are you going to stand?’ She asks casually but I know what she’s getting at.
‘Do you want me there at the start?’
There’s a small, loaded pause. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Then I’ll watch you down the hill and then leg it across to the finish. Might get a picture as you go through the last.’
She nods gratefully and looks at her watch again.
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I did get a picture although I nearly forgot to switch the camera on. My hearing isn’t good and I’d been straining to catch the Tannoy all the way round. “A new starter out on the track, Little Tiger, ridden by Dr Polly Taylor, clear at the first….And the second….And the third.” It wasn’t until I heard “Little Tiger, clear at the Colonel’s Brush, racing for home now with just three fences left and still some petrol in the tank…” that I started to breathe again properly.
There was plenty of petrol left too; the little horse was going like a train. I clicked my shutter as she cleared the last and started to run. I wanted to see them cool down…both of them.
I have only a vague memory of cantered circles on the long, uneven grass, of Polly unwinding the little horse’s young muscles, relaxing her mind as well as her body before jumping off to ease her own back, but I do remember, very clearly, her first words from the ground:
She grinned, from ear to ear, and slapped Frostie’s neck. ‘I remember why I do it!’
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‘Can you come down? The lorry won’t start.’
It’s a variation on “The horse won’t load” but we’ve not had that one for a while now. Eight years have passed since that tentative first outing and Little Tiger has grown up. She is now a delight to “do” and to load, if a trifle troublesome to catch. One of my happiest memories is of Polly and Frostie ignoring each other in a field, each looking firmly in the other direction while Polly edged towards her horse and Frostie edged away to the other side of the field.
And the slightly rusty trailer has been replaced by a modest but serviceable lorry. At least it's usually serviceable….The tension in her voice is, I know, not just the normal frustration from non-compliant machinery; the stakes are higher now. It is, once again, the night before Great Witchingham horse trials, with Frostie entered, but now at Intermediate Level. And this entry is a critical part of her final work up.
For Badminton.
‘On my way.’ I put down the phone, push a glass of wine to one side and change into my oldest jeans. There is, she says, a local mechanic coming, if he has time, but at ten o’clock on a cold spring evening, she needs some back up. Polly departs in the Fourtrak to borrow a trailer from a friend, and I scrabble under one side of the lorry, tracing the battery leads across the chassis, quickly before the rain really starts. The mechanic, Jeremy, who arrives a few minutes later, squirms under the other side and we exchange greetings. His family are horsey so he understands the urgency. We share spanners and poke at wires together.
Polly returns, blocking the drive still further with the borrowed trailer. It’s newer and smarter than the one she sold, but cannot be reversed because the brakes keep locking on. She has already maneuvered herself into a near impossible spot while turning it round at the owner’s house. The gentle aroma of cooked brake linings joins the powerful fragrance of diesel and, looking up into the freezing night sky, I can see stars on one side of the lorry. On the other side is heavy cloud. It starts to rain, and Jeremy diagnoses a broken starter motor.
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‘She’s so little.’ Phoebe Buckley, shivering in the lorry with an hour before dressage, is relaxed and happy to chat about Frostie. She’s had the ride for about three years, since Polly decided that the little horse had real potential and needed someone younger and, she freely admits, a little braver, to do her real justice. I pour coffee, glad that the broken starter became a dodgy starter cable which Jeremy, in the manner of all true mechanics, managed to salvage at ten o’clock last night. It's much nicer in the lorry, with a cooker and plenty of seats, than huddled up in a car.
‘That’s the main difference between her and Ginger. On Ging, you’re looking across at the fences, on Frostie you’re looking up at them.’
Ginger is her other ride, a big grey owned by Val Gingell.
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‘So do you ride her differently?’
‘I let her get on with it more. You need to keep the pace up, especially at this level. Otherwise you just get time faults. If I see a stride, a long way out, I just push on and she’s so honest, she’ll just get on with it. You don’t want to start mucking about, shortening and then lengthening. That’s when accidents happen.’
Phoebe warms to her subject. ‘A second at each fence is twenty seconds on your time. So you have to keep going, riding out of the fences as well as into them, picking her up quickly. And always looking for the shortest route.’
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Badminton 2007, Wednesday midday. We sit in the riders’ briefing in the tiny village hall, Polly whispering names to me as people come in. William Fox-Pitt sits down, relaxed and…tall, just to our right. Jeanette Brakewell joins the end of our row and I think how different she looks off her horse, while Zara Phillips joins the row in front. Finally, Bruno Bouvier lopes in to stand quietly at the back.
The briefing is gentlemanly in the extreme, the technical representative at pains to reassure people about the ground, despite the lack of rain. Five hundred tons of topsoil will, apparently, be sprinkled on the cross country track before Saturday, and there is a massive program of aeration around all the fences.
The briefing is short and there are no questions, which seems strange to me. I have the feeling that some of the riders have already decided what they think about the ground.
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Wednesday 4pm; we are preparing for the trot up. Famous faces are walking famous hooves up and down the timeless, cobbled yard. There is a gentle air of concentration and an aroma of hoof oil. Phoebe appears, wearing smart black trousers and a double breasted jacket. Jokes are made about the suitability of her bra for a brisk jog in front of the judges. I cannot resist asking, ‘If your horse is lame, do you wear a bra at all?’
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I’ve brought the wrong lens. It’s eight am on Saturday, cross-country morning and we’re walking the course. Phoebe and Simon are striding ahead, paced easily by Polly who, despite her diminutive size, marches everywhere at six miles per hour, and I’m trailing behind, weighed down by the medium-long lens which, this morning, is not medium…it’s far too long. I’m too close for every picture I want to take. They pause, finally, at the second water complex, Phoebe wading through the slightly evil-looking pond with a man in gumboots, discussing the approach. Another nice shot but I’m too close. He wishes her luck and we move on.
‘Didn’t you want a picture of that?’ Polly is curious.
‘Wrong lens. I was too close.’
She looks at me with amusement. ‘You don’t know who it was, do you?’
‘Er..no.’ I have a sinking feeling.
‘Captain Mark Philips!’
‘Oh…..bother!’
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The Tannoy is distant but I hear her start, and crinkling up my eyes, can see her racing towards fence two, the huge brush with the drop in front. I check the exposure on the shorter lens one last time, look at the sun, judging its distance from the clouds, and pick up the long lensed camera again, drying my palms on my shorts. Then she’s there, racing towards me and I track her in, angling my elbow against my stomach to provide support.
Click.
I put the camera down, resisting the temptation to look at the little screen on the back. Either I got it or I didn’t. The other camera is on a strap round my neck. I snatch it up and track her in across the bumpy, lumpy ground that is a yearly feature of this end of the course. She’s moving quickly, far faster than some of the earlier horses. Not only has Phoebe taken the fast route through this combination, but she’s straightened it right out, and will jump the second element at a real angle.
Click.
They make it look so easy. There is a huge round of applause, and I track Little Tiger out and into the distance, letting the camera run.
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Phoebe, later that day, will recall the moment, gleefully: ‘It was fence four, the cottages, where I knew she had the scope. As we took the second element I suddenly just knew: this is a four star horse!’
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‘Why do you use two cameras?’ The question comes from the man standing next to me. Round his neck is a Canon like my own, but with a much shorter lens. He’s learning, just like I did, and I desperately want to answer him, to help him along the way.
But I only have six minutes.
‘Different focal lengths. This one’s really long, and this one,’ I gesture to the camera round my neck, ‘goes from medium long to quite short.’ I hesitate, wanting to say more, but conscious of the seconds passing. ‘Buy the best you can, they’re worth it. Sorry, I need to run now.’
He smiles gratefully and I leg it away, forcing myself to trot rather than gallop. I don’t want to arrive out of breath.
I’m jogging across the grass now, up towards the owner’s enclosure, battling against the tide of people while straining to hear the Tannoy. ‘Little Tiger taking the long route through the lake, Phoebe Buckley on Little Tiger going strongly…’
And then suddenly “A fall for Phoebe Buckley at the Huntsman’s copse.
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Phoebe, later on: ‘It was so unfair, it wasn’t like she hadn’t got the scope, I’m not sure what happened but she just pecked as we landed over the log (fence 17) and I went out over the front. She’s so little there’s nothing there to stop you. It’s not like you’re on a big horse. And this woman comes up to me and introduces herself like it’s a bleeding party and all I’m thinking is, I want to get back on my pony! She asked if I was carrying on and, I’m like, we’re four fences from home, she was going like a train, what the hell do you think I’m going to do?’
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‘Phoebe Buckley, now reunited with Little Tiger, continuing down through the…..’
I pick up my camera again and train it on the Rolex turn. The second element has been abandoned after an earlier horse fall on the slippery turn, so I focus on the first, and wait, wondering what went wrong at fence 17.
The whistle sounds, warning the crowds. It always sounds to me like a bird call. The call of the lesser-spotted fence judge. Only here it’s the call of the bowler-hatted fence judge, worn above a checked green suit and brogues. They look, to a man, as though they’ve stepped out of Country Life Magazine. And they’re all friendly, polite and efficient.
There she is. I see the trail of dust before the horse, like watching motor racing in the streaming rain. They round the turn and take the Rolex turn in front of me. Click.
I pan round and track her into the arena, not sure how I feel. Jubilation, certainly, that they’ve completed. But a fall, and it sounds like a really unlucky one, will put them right down the running order.
But, in the cooling down ring, Phoebe is happy, gutted that she fell off but ecstatic to have completed. She hugs Polly while her father, Tom, leads Frostie round and round with pride all over his face. Simon, the groom, throws the first bucket over her with a fine, wristy action, but he’s used to doing it for much bigger horses and most of the water misses. Simon laughs, picks up another bucket, and adjusts his aim.
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There’s a problem; Frostie has a bruise on one knee from fence 17, and she’s lame. The champagne stays in the lorry fridge and we all congregate in the stableyard where, with a huge icepack on the joint, and yards of purple vetwrap around (everything for Frostie is purple), Simon and Polly are planning the evening’s care. Val and I decide to take Polly to the pub for supper reasoning that Frostie is in the best hands with Simon and that it will stop Polly checking too often.
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We hurry to the stables, Polly answering the phone from Phoebe as we walk. The news sound good, but she stiffens half way through the conversation. I wonder what Phoebe has said. Eventually, Polly clicks her phone shut and grins. ‘Phoebe forgot the saddle so she’s riding out bareback!’
I quicken my pace; this is a shot not to be missed.
We stand in front of the Badminton house, shivering in the early morning mist. It is raining, for the first time in about six weeks, exactly what nobody wants, a slippery, top surface and rock hard ground beneath.
‘There she is…between the two sets of loos, over by the lake.’
The rows of bright blue, plastic toilets are as much a feature of Badminton as the dogs, if not as aesthetic, and I wish, fleetingly, for a more pleasing frame to my picture.
But that’s where she is so I rack out the long, long lens, rest it on Polly’s shoulder and let Little Tiger walk into the shot. Irresistibly, I am reminded of my father’s story about the press photographer who, sporting an outrageously long lens, rested it on the shoulder of the woman in front of him with a cheery “Hold still, Luv” and took his shot, oblivious to the frantic gestures of those around him.
Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne, herself a keen photographer, remained obligingly motionless. History does not record the photographer’s reaction when he realised the liberty that he had just taken.
But now, a cheerful Phoebe, jean-clad legs motionless against Little Tiger’s flanks, walks easily up to us. ‘Sound as a bell’ she declares, trotting just a few paces to prove the point.
Polly relaxes, fractionally, and starts to plan the few hours we have before the Sunday morning trot up.
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‘One more thing; we must get rid of that purple line round her hock. Really draws the eye.’ Simon fetches soap and Polly remarks that, in years before, she’s had horses standing in buckets of icy water while they wait for the trot up.
‘Is that legal?’
‘Oh yes, as long as they’re sound when you trot them.’
‘It’s a bit like trying to get an old car through an MOT.’ We scrub away with warm, soapy water and I pause to ease my back.
‘Except the MOT inspector doesn’t wear a bowler hat.’
‘This is true.’
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| 'There's Mark Philips! Don't you want a picture?'
I smile, thinly. The gag is still running strong as, a few minutes before the show jumping starts, we watch the last competitors walk the course. The famouse Captain, presumably in his official capacity, is supervising the aeration of the surface, into and out of the jumps. It's the first time I've seen a high ranking army officer direct a tractor and, mainly to silence the jokes about the shot I missed the day before, I raise the longest lens.
'Not long now.' Frostie is in thirty eighth position, last of the competitors still in the game. But for the fall yesterday she would be half way up the field. But what the hell? Barring a really bad round, she's going to complete Badminton in a few minutes time. The showjumping runs in reverse order of current position, so Phoebe will be the trail-blazer for the day.
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AND SHE DID IT!
Phoebe Buckley, riding Little Tiger, owned by Dr Polly Taylor and with Simon Grieve as groom, completed Badminton 2007 in 38th place with a final score of 198.8. This was made up of a dressage score of 59.6, 65 penalties cross country for a rider fall and 63.2 time penalties. There were 2 down show-jumping and 3 time penalties. You can see a full photo record at www.littletiger.org.uk
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