Collett’s a record breaker as Brits thrill at Badminton

OLYMPIC gold medallist Laura Collett admitted she was in a ‘dreamworld’ after winning her first Badminton Horse Trials title with a record-breaking score. Collett landed the £100,000 top prize aboard London 52 — her winning mount in Tokyo last year — with her final total of 21.4 penalties the lowest in Badminton’s 73-year history. It is the latest success for the 32-year-old Gloucestershire rider, who was left unconscious for a week after a terrible fall in Hampshire nine years ago. She finished 4.6 penalties ahead of Britain’s world champion Ros Canter on Lordships Graffalo, and with Collett’s Tokyo gold medal-winning colleague Oliver Townend taking third on Swallow Springs it meant a first all-British podium since 2002. Collett said: ‘I am in a dreamworld. My goodness, that horse. He just jumped higher and higher. He is just exceptional.’ It was Badminton’s first staging since 2019 because of the pandemic.