I was recently in the UK during the 2006 Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials. I have always enjoyed watching the event on the TV but at the same time am aware how much smaller the fences look on TV compared to real-life. Most of the event horses and riders make it look very easy, yet there are always a few mistakes resulting in heavy falls to remind everyone that 3 Day Eventing is a very unforgiving sport, particularly with the cross-country phase.

The winner this year was Lucinda Fredericks and the little mare Headley Britannia who was thought by the owner to be too small to compete at this level. She was one of only a few mares in the competition and the first to win in 33 years.

However, I think the main story relating to this year’s event was the potential for Andrew Hoy. to win $250,000 if he won the Burghley event, in addition to two other major events in Lexington and Badminton. He looked likely to win at the end of the first two phases as he had horses placed both fifth and first. Unfortunately he had a number of fences down in the show-jumping and ended up in second and fifth place. The prize money for winning Burghley was 40,000 GBP, so $250,000 represented a massive amount of money for the sport and it was therefore disappointing that he was unable to win this special prize. Hopefully it will be won soon as Pippa Funnell completed this hat-trick of wins three years ago.

The prize money in equestrian events is very low compare to the costs to buy, own, train and compete a horse. Only a few major events actually have significant prizes. A Young Event Horse competition at Burghley had a first prize of 50 GBP, which is much more in the usual range of winnings. I remember reviewing a BSJA winnings list in the 90s and it appeared that only 30-50 of the top horses would actually pay for themselves. This was not taking account of sponsorship which is again limited to the major professionals and household names. This is in stark contrast to other sports where prize money is at ridiculously high levels - golf, tennis etc. Even though the latter are more popular sports, there still seems a very wide gap. How many major sports would view $250,000 as a significant amount?