BY JAMIE FOSTER

In 1949, the 10th Duke of Beaufort started Badminton Horse Trials with the idea of better preparing British riders for the Olympic Games after a disastrous showing on home ground the year before. His legacy is the world’s oldest and most prestigious horse trials, which has captured the imagination of riders worldwide and in 2024 celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary.

Badminton is still an Olympic proving ground as well as a captivating place where dreams can be made or shattered, and the one all riders want to win.

The centrepiece remains the cross-country course, a spectacle that draws thousands of spectators and is an imposing challenge for riders, no matter how experienced they are, in an egalitarian sport in which men and women compete on equal terms and the amateur can take on the Olympic gold medallist.

Badminton Horse Trials at 75 written by Kate Green with a foreword by the current Duke of Beaufort, published by Quiller, is a superbly illustrated book celebrating those riders and their horses, from Sheila Willcox’s hattrick in the 1950s to New Zealander Mark Todd who came out of retirement to win three decades after his first victory; from the golden era of Richard Meade, Captain Mark Phillips, Lucinda Green and Princess Anne, to twenty-first-century heroes and heroines, including William Fox-Pitt, Pippa Funnell, Andrew Nicholson, Michael Jung, Oliver Townend and Rosalind Canter.

Kate Green has been an equestrian journalist for three decades, reporting on four Olympic Games and working in the press office of numerous major events. She has written twelve books, including the ‘Little Book of Burghley’ and autobiographies with Mark Todd, Pippa Funnell and Mary King. Kate was editor of ‘Eventing’ magazine for ten years and is deputy editor of ‘Country Life’. She lives in west Somerset.

A copy of Badminton Horse Trials at 75 can be ordered here.