★ MARS BADMINTON preview
1954 70 YEARS AGO
THE EVENT
BADMINTON was born in 1949, out of the failure of the Brits in the 1948 Olympic three-day event held at Aldershot.
The 10th Duke of Beaufort offered his estate for a competition, to ensure the 1952 team would be better prepared, and brought in his friend and neighbour, Colonel Trevor Horn, who had been involved in the Olympic event as both a British selector and official, as director and coursedesigner. Colonel Gordon Cox Cox took over these roles sometime between 1954 and 1957; sources differ on what year.
For the first 10 years, dressage and showjumping took place in front of the house. The cross-country course - which followed the two sections of roads and tracks bookending the steeplechase - was unroped at this time, so competitors could take their own line and spectators could wander around as they wished, with occasionally dramatic consequences.
42% of Badminton winners have been female
The “time allowance” for the 1954 cross-country course of four miles 1,307 yards was 17 minutes. With scoring in plus points, runners-up Kilbarry and Colonel Frank Weldon achieved a maximum bonus by finishing in 12min 37sec.
The 1950 Badminton winner Tony Collings, a luminary in British equestrianism, lost his life in an air disaster a few weeks before Badminton 1954. Among the letters of tribute in Horse & Hound was one from the Duke of Beaufort, who said that “the Olympic Horse Trials at Badminton this week cannot be the same without him”.
Controversy over dressage judging is nothing new - Horse & Hound reported: “The judges were undoubtedly more severe in their markings of the better horses than on previous occasions, but still seemed to be rather too lenient with the bad performers.”
The report was also scathing about the relative weight of the phases: “Thus the outcome
