With Badminton less than 2 weeks away, we caught up with 4* event rider Imogen Murray. After jumping clear at Burghley in 2015 on Wiseguy IV, Imogen is looking forward to her first Badminton aboard Charlie, aka Ivar Gooden.

Image courtesy of Tim Wilkinson

From Showing to Eventing

Imogen’s competitive career started in the show ring. Although it may be hard to believe now, she would refuse to jump anything over 65cm, dismounting and abandoning her pony if her instructor tried to sneak the fence up behind her back! However the arrival of a new pony at the age of 12 changed all that and by 13 Imogen was BE eventing.

 

Preparing for Badminton

Although this will be Imogen’s first Badminton, she believes the experience she gained at Burghley will be a great help explaining "what I learnt most was to concentrate on each fence one at a time rather than worry about the whole course". Charlie has never been on such top form and having had two 2nds and 6th in his last 3 runs out, Imogen feels now is the ideal time to move him up to 4*.

Image courtesy of Tim Wilkinson

Favourite Fence

When we asked Imogen which fence she is looking forward to the most she said “none of them, no actually the last fence! There have been lots of changes this year. I'm quite glad the Vicarage V has gone but I've watched the course preview online I'm looking forward to getting there and walking the course to see for myself. It does look quite upright and technical but we'll see"

 

A Team Effort

M.S. Team Eventing pride themselves on being a real team effort and support all of their grooms through apprenticeship programmes. Imogen told us “we are really lucky to have such great owners and everyone is reminded there is no ‘I’ in team!”

 

Bucket List Dream

"I'm quite boring and can't imagine doing anything else apart from riding horses. I used to think I might like to a marine biologist if I wasn’t an eventer but actually I don’t really like the sea!”

 

Will you be making a competition debut of your own this year? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below!