Piggy March admitted she was questioning her decision to take on new ride MCS Maverick – and considering putting former rider Pippa Funnell on speakerphone to chat to him – before her Bramham Horse Trials dressage today.
But despite her misgivings, Piggy and 12-year-old pulled off a great test, scoring 27.5 to lie second at the conclusion of the first phase in the Defender CCI4*-S, behind yesterday’s leader, Sebastien Cavaillon (Elipso De La Vigne), who retains top spot.
MCS Maverick won the CCI4*-L here with Pippa in 2023 and has recently been sold to the Maidwell Mavericks syndicate for Piggy to ride. He is undoubtedly a talented horse, but also very sensitive to atmosphere, and Piggy said he was hot to ride in the arena familiarisation.
“I’ve had some hot ones before, but I’ve not had one that feels like his eyes and his brain are spinning that much at 6 or 7pm, with absolutely no atmosphere and a load of your mates walking around,” she said. “I had to get off and I’ve never done that in arena familiarisation before. I thought, ‘F***, this is going to be a nightmare.’
“I did ring Mrs Funnell this morning, because I thought, do I need to put her on a loudspeaker in his stable or something? Do I need to say, ‘Pip, just whisper the stuff you used to whisper to him – Come on Eric, we’re good friends, you could do this today’. Because I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, is this actually going to happen?’
“He’s a difficult horse because he’s clearly very sensitive, he gets wound up by an occasion quite easily. But he’s a beautiful horse, a lovely, light athlete who has been produced by the best rider in the world.”
Piggy March on MCS Maverick: “I thought we’ll have a go”
Piggy admitted she had some doubts when she went to pick up Maverick, but his former owner Sarah Ross kept ringing and saying he would suit her.
“I thought, ‘Really?’ but I do have time, because I don’t have many horses, and I love a blood horse. I like a sensitive horse. And so I thought, we’ll have a go,” she said.
“But I have to say, I was questioning it this morning… there was a point I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just go home. I’ll go to Aston in two weeks’ time.’”
But she said she had entered Bramham because it has more atmosphere than any event except Badminton Horse Trials and she wanted to see Maverick at his worst – “which I did get for the last 24 hours”.
Piggy March followed Pippa’s advice to keep the horse on the move, including loose lungeing him, then got on and did just 15 minutes’ work with him before her Bramham Horse Trials dressage test, riding him in rising trot and low in the neck. Her tactics paid off in the arena, where she said she was “going on the back of Pippa’s training”.
The test had a couple of mistakes, but she was determined for this to be an educational day. The horse jogged a couple of times in walk, but she didn’t back off with her leg – “because I’ve got to get in there and be able to ride him” – and when he gave her a flying change early, she stopped and corrected him rather than just accepting it.
“If I was at Burghley Horse Trials or at a championship, I’d have go to with that, but today I was training. I would like to take him to Burghley at the end of the year, and I don’t care about winning a rosette this weekend,” she admitted. “This is my first big run on him, and I want to figure a lot of stuff out.
“But he came back to me, he understood the pressure and he didn’t lose his s***, which is where Pip’s work over the years comes in. Hopefully we’ll come on from that.”
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