The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Four seasons in one day for northern contest
Fife-based professional event rider Wills Oakden launched his Scottish event season as he means to go on, reaping two wins and a second placing from northern event, Burgie.
Making up for lost ground, Wills stamped a winning return on the early Forres competition, after missing out on the same event in 2014 due to injury.
The competition – the first of three fixtures set for Burgie in 2015 – endured four seasons in one day.
Early competitors benefited from spring sunshine, while the grassroots riders – in the BE80 sections particularly – rode through hail and snow storms which rolled in during the late afternoon.
Wills topped the first two classes of the day – the open intermediate and novice sections – with Alfi Brown and Ball breakers SD, respectively.
Alfi, which led from pillar to post, was tailed on the OI leaderboard by another of the five-strong string that Wills took north to Burgie – Chiara D. Both horses are owned by his aunt, Frances Hay Smith.
Third place in the OI went to Kinross rider Louisa Milne Home riding Yorkies Delight.
Wills’s novice winner, meanwhile, is owned by fellow competitor Stephanie O’Neil, from Perthshire, who has already piloted the rising six-year-old gelding by Balou de Rouet to a third place at recent Scottish event Dalkeith.
This was Ballbreaker’s fifth BE win over two seasons, following pole position finishes over the BE100 level tracks Floors, Hopetoun and Drumclog and Burgham.
And it was Ballbreaker’s first attempt at a novice level competition. He heads next to Warwick Hall, this weekend.
The second of three Burgie fixtures for 2015 takes place on Sunday June 14.