Congratulations to Australian rider Lucinda Fredericks, who has won the 2007 Badminton Horse Trials with her mare Headley Britannica. The pair also won the grueling Burghley event in the fall of 2006, and Lucinda’s husband, Clayton, won the Rolex (Kentucky) Three Day Event in the USA last week. Lucinda led throughout the event, and basically won on her dressage score.

“Brit” is the first mare to win Badminton since Bambi in 1954.

Sadly (for us), American rider Kim Severson incurred a few faults in show jumping today and slipped to third place. German rider Andreas Dibowski and the mare FRH Serve Well, fourth after a clear round cross-country, had a clear round in show jumping and moved up to second place to produce another unique Badminton result – never before have mares taken the one-two. Serve Well is the daughter of Hanoverian sire Sherlock Holmes.

Once Headley Britannica cools down, she’s off to the ET station. She’ll be bred and the embryo will be flushed and implanted in a surrogate mare so Brit can stay in training. This will be her first foal.

British eventing star The Wexford Lady has six foals on the ground, thanks to ET technology.

Phoebe Buckley’s 15-hand mare Little Tiger has a foal by Catherston Liberator due in July, from a surrogate mare. She also will be bred next week, this time to the eventing stallion Mill Law. Phoebe fell on cross-country but remounted and finished.

Harald Ambros, who was the first rider ever to represent Austria at Badminton, rode the Irish-bred mare, Miss Ferrari.

Six mares made it through Badminton this year; nine started.

To learn more about Badminton Horse Trails, visit the EquiSearch.com Badminton 2006 slide show by Fran Jurga.

Archival photo of trot-up preparations in the Badminton stable area provided by Badminton Horse Trials. It looks like a still from an old movie that would have to star Cary Grant. Still, things haven’t changed much in 50 or so years.