The 17-year-old Topspin is well schooled in five-star tracks – as is his rider Alice Casburn, at the age of 23. The pair are competing in at Defender Burghley Horse Trials this week, where they currently lie on a score of 31.4.
Topspin comes from the Casburn family’s thoroughbred breeding line, which started with his grandmother.
“The mare was called Spangle, and I evented her up to advanced,” Alice’s mum, Caroline, tells H&H. “She was full thoroughbred, and very excitable.”
Spangle foaled four colts and finally a filly, Capriati, Topspin’s dam. Caroline, who rode at Badminton and Burghley, and represented Great Britain at the 1994 World Equestrian Games (WEG), describes the gelding as “very much like his grandmother.”
“He was sharp when I rode him,” she says. “But he seems to get a lot of confidence from Alice. It took two or three years to really get him to relax and trust her.
“We watched some videos last night [4 September] from when he was young. He spun her off at an owl hole and bucked her off between fences one and two at South of England. But that’s the thoroughbred; once they light up, there isn’t much calming them down.”
Alice and Topspin’s personal best dressage score “thrilled” Caroline.
“He lost a few marks in his walk – but he walked!” she said.
“Last year, he was doing well then wouldn’t do his walk pirouettes. This year we didn’t do the arena familiarisation because on the long rein, I think he decided he could mess around.”
Alice explained after her test that she had jumped Topspin the day before. “He’s 17, you can’t ask him to do flatwork and more flatwork,” says Caroline.
Lordship’s Graffalo: Topspin’s new best friend
Topspin was a little hot coming out of his test, which could be down to his new-found fondness for his illustrious stable neighbour.
“He’s next to Walter [Lordships Graffalo], and he’s absolutely in love,” Caroline says. “Once he knows he is going back to the stables [after a test], he just goes ‘My friends, my friends!” He’s quite insecure in that way. But we’re hoping Walter will give him some good pep talks ahead of Saturday!”
Caroline, who rode Burghley on her WEG and 1994 Badminton top-15 finisher Ghost Town, says “there’s no one point” on Derek di Grazia’s course “where you’ll be relieved”.
“The Defender Valley is a big effort at the end, and then the slope comes to the corner and the arrowhead,” she says. “They’ll have to be on it. But we’re looking forward to tomorrow, and hoping he can do his thing.”
To stay up to date with all the breaking news throughout Burghley and other major shows this year, subscribe to the Horse & Hound website, from £1 a week. Horse & Hound’s 20-page magazine report on Burghley is published in 11 September issue, including full analysis and exclusive comment from six-time Burghley winner William Fox-Pitt.
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