Eventing: New Zealand's Tim Price wins in Holland - riding his wife's ride Cekatinka
Tim Price and Cekatinka on Boekelo's cross country courseTim Price has won the prestigious Boekelo individual eventing competition in Holland and in doing so helped New Zealand take the Nations Cup - 13.4 penalty points ahead of Germany.
Tim Price and his wife - New Zealand Olympian Jonelle Price - are based at Mildenhall, just outside Marlborough. On Saturday, Tim, who was riding Cekatinka, had taken the lead with a clear cross country round with just four time faults - taking him up from his fifth place after the dressage.
He went clear in Sunday's (October 8) show jumping - just two seconds inside the time allowed - to win the CCIO3*competition. All four members of the New Zealand team finished in the top thirty, with Sir Mark Todd and McClaren had a rail down - moving down a place to finish in seventh place.
Whether he will keep the ride on the ten-year-old mare Cekatinka remains to be seen. Until Tim's wife became pregnant (she gave birth to the couple's first child - a son - in August) Cekatinka was Jonelle's ride.
Tim was - apparently - heard to say after his successful cross country ride at Boekelo in pretty nasty weather conditions: "She's not getting her back!" But that may very well turn out to be a joke...
Tim said of Cekatinka: “She’s not got a lot of experience at this level, but she’s a very clever horse. She knew her job, so I stuck to my plan.”
This important win comes after a good September for Tim Price. He and Pats Jester finished first in the CCI3* at Ballindenisk in Ireland. And earlier in the month he was second in the final leg of the Event Roder masters competition at the Blenheim Palace International.
The British team at Boekelo had terrible luck. On Saturday, in the cross country, Laura Collett and Cooley Again - who are based at Lambourn - fell heavily at the final combination: "He just lost his footing coming down the bank and hit the brush at the bottom which sent us both plummeting to the ground. Most important thing is Cooley Again is in one piece and although battered and bruised, we both live to fight another day!"
Then on Sunday morning two of the British team's horses were among nine withdrawn before the inspection for the final discipline of the three day event - the showjumping.