12 **^ Sunday 1 September 2019 The Sunday TelegraphW
hen Burghley Horse
Trials, an event Sir
Mark Todd won five
times to add to his
four Badminton
victories, starts on
Thursday the equestrian knight will
be there in various roles but, for once,
not as a rider.
However, having recently retired
from competitive riding and the gipsy
lifestyle of living in a lorry in the
corner of a field most weekends, his
mind might be elsewhere because
New Zealand’s most famous horseman
of all time, already a Classic winner at
home, is back training racehorses, this
time in Britain.
It was once said that Sir Mark, gold
medallist three-day-eventer at Los
Angeles and Seoul – two of the seven
Olympics at which he rode – could “go
cross-country on a dairy cow”.
“I’ll maybe miss it a tiny bit,” he said
of the eventing. “I had to do the
Burghley course walk last week with
the Horse & Hound. But it’s a bit like
giving up smoking; every now and
again you’ll get a pang and then you
think ‘don’t be ridiculous!’”
When Sir Mark grew up in New
Zealand he dreamt of being a jockey.
“I was working in a racing stable and
breaking horses but I was a late
maturer,” he recalled. “My parents
[farmers] were actively against the
idea but at 16 I shot up [6ft 2½in] and
any chance of being a jockey went out
the window. I was doing a bit of show
jumping and eventing at the same time
and the eventing took over.”
Following the Sydney Olympic
Games (2000) he retired from
eventing (for the first time). “After that
we decided we’d train a few forourselves in New Zealand,” he said.
“I’d had a couple of mares in
partnership with Watership Down in
Britain. I was quite keen on pedigrees.
“We went to the yearling sales in
2001, bought four or five and put them
into syndicates of friends. Nearly all of
them won and Bramble Rose won the
New Zealand Oaks and was champion
staying filly of Australasia.
“The Oaks came very early in my
career. Do you ever go into your first
Group One expecting to win it? I
expected her to run well because she
had good form leading up to it but her
regular jockey smashed his knee in the
race before so we went for a substitute
who had been off a while himself.”
In 2008, however, he returned to
eventing. “It was originally a bit of a
dare. I said, ‘You find me a horse and
I’ll have a go.’ I’d been a bit
disillusioned with the eventing scenehorse on which he won two Olympic
golds, was “near as damn it a
thoroughbred and galloped like one”.
The shortening of the eventing
format and the dropping of the long-
distance roads and tracks phase, which
used to precede the cross-country,
means that warm bloods have taken
over from the thoroughbred.
“The long format suited
thoroughbreds,” he said. “People still
love them but it is harder to compete
in the dressage and show-jumping
formats against warm bloods. I loved
the thoroughbred brain, though.
Generally they would work with you
much more than a warm blood.”
Because of his equestrian
background all his racehorses do basic
Flat work while even the two-year-
olds pop over logs and ditches.
Though many jump trainers employ
eventers to help teach their horses to
jump and training chasers would seem
the perfect fit, popping two-year-olds
over the odd log is as close as Sir Mark
intends to come to training jumpers.
“I’ve always preferred the Flat,” said
the man who once rode round Aintree
in cold blood. “It’s partly commercial
and I also understand the breeding
better though I’m rapidly having to get
back up to speed on that.”
Vela, the only man who has won a
Caulfield Cup, Melbourne Cup and
Badminton, sent him Eminent, the
first flag-bearing son of Frankel, at the
end of last year, initially to look after
before shipping to New Zealand, then
he suggested Sir Mark train him.
First time out he was second in a
Group One at Rosehill in Australia and
might have won but for a wet track.
Second time out he ran into Winx.
“Having a horse fit is having a horse
fit,” he said. “But I’ve got to do things
slightly different. I know how fit I
need a horse for Burghley or
Badminton. In New Zealand I was
doing way too much with them in the
early days. That is probably the biggest
challenge.”
Sir Mark may be eventing’s loss but
he is undoubtedly racing’s gain.but I said it’s no good griping, see if
you can beat them.
“I started enjoying it again and after
Beijing we thought let’s go to London
and do it properly and with the
backing of New Zealand Bloodstock
and Sir Peter Vela we bought Land
Vision who went on to win Badminton
in 2011. But 11 years on from that
comeback I’ve well and truly done it. I
won’t stop riding horses or jumping
horses but I won’t compete again.”
He moved into his present yard,
Badgerstown, near Swindon, a week
after London 2012. It had been turned
into an eventing centre but it is now a
racing yard again and Sir Mark, who
has already had three runners, has 11
horses in training with room for 40.
When he was eventing, much of his
early success came on thoroughbreds- Bertie Blunt and Face The Music
were while Charisma, the 15.3 hand
The gentle touch:
Sir Mark Todd’s
dream as a
youngster was to
become a jockey,
and now he has had
the chance to enjoy
racing success as
a trainerJOHN LAWRENCE‘Eventing is like smoking, sometimes you get a pang’
On the eve of Burghley,
Sir Mark Todd tells MarcusArmytage how training
horses has filled a voidRACINGBy James Corrigan
GOLF CORRESPONDENTEarning $15 million (£12.2 million) in
four days can never be easy, so perhaps
it was no surprise that fatigue eventu-
ally got the better of Rory McIlroy in
the Alps yesterday.
However, he is still primed to win
the Omega European Masters, his sec-
ond title in as many weekends, and so
begin to close the gap on world No 1
Brooks Koepka, whom he aims to pass
before the end of the year.
With five holes to play at Crans-sur-
Sierre, McIlroy was one shot off the
pace and seemingly locked in that irre-
sistible motion known in the locker
room as “Rory rhythm”. But then he
located water twice and stumbled
through that quintet in two over.
The 30-year-old’s one-under 69 was
far from disastrous and on 11 under he
is only three strokes off the lead. It is
just whether he can summon the en-
ergy after travelling 4,500 miles after
his heroics in Atlanta last Sunday.
“I don’t know what happened at the
end,” McIllroy said. “I felt a little flat out
and a little tired, and maybe it all just
caught up with me. I am looking for-
ward to having a good night’s sleep. If I
can go out and play a good front nine
tomorrow I will be right in it.”
If you are wondering why he chose
to play in Switzerland, his seventh
event in eight weeks and one with
“only” a £375,000 first prize – more
than 30 times less than the Tour Cham-
pionship – you need to look no further
than the sponsors of the tournament.
McIlroy receives a lucrative en-
dorsement from the watchmaker to
play in one of its events each season. He
skipped the Desert Classic in Dubai.
However, with McIlroy, his desire towin should never be underestimated.
Not only is reclaiming pole position in
the rankings for the first time in four
years on his mind – if he wins today, he
will still require at least one further
piece of silverware at such stops as
Wentworth, St Andrews, Shanghai and
Dubai to succeed – but there is also his
experience in Crans as a teenager.
In 2008, he looked certain to win his
first professional title when taking a
one-shot lead down the last, before fly-
ing the green with his approach and
losing out to Jean-Francois Luquin in a
play-off. Despite the garlands since,
that extra-hole defeat has played on his
mind and he should be believed when
he says: “I really, really want this one.”
Also in the frame is Wade Ormsby,
one behind Andres Romero on 13 un-
der, and Gavin Green and Tommy
Fleetwood on 12 under. Fleetwood’s
day was in direct contrast to that of
McIlroy, as he picked up three birdies
in the last five holes for a 68. Without a
title in 18 months, he is overdue a win.Fighting talk: Daniil Medvedev has a frank exchange of views with umpire Damien Dumusois during his tense win over Feliciano Lopez in the Louis Armstrong Stadium, where he also gave spectators a one-fingered saluteBad manners take tennis back to the
future as even Federer shows his fire
Why McIlroy,
the $15m man,
has his eyes on
a smaller prize
Is it all the backstage political wran-
gling? The end of a long, hot summer?
Or is the wave of civility ushered in by
Roger Federer coming to an end?
Either way, this US Open has
returned to the 1980s norm of aggro
and tetchiness – and feels all the better
for it.
Veterans of New York tennis still talk
about Jimmy Connors’ notorious quar-
ter-final here against Aaron Krickstein
in 1991, which felt like a boxing bout or
even WWE wrestling. The same mood
returned for last year’s women’s final
between Serena Williams and Naomi
Osaka, and over the past week there
have been another half a dozen inci-
dents. The sequence began – almost
inevitably – with unguarded comments
from Nick Kyrgios, and continued on
Friday with the most highly charged
night session thus far.
It is a moot point which of the two
main courts was the more intriguing.
Scheduled on Arthur Ashe Stadium,
world No 1 and runaway favourite No-
vak Djokovic arrived late for his warm-
up hit – a result of soreness in his left
shoulder – and was then filmed argu-
ing with a fan through the back fence.
“I’ll come find you afterwards, trust
me,” Djokovic warned ominously. Even
when his match against Denis Kudla
started, he remained unusually prickly,
barking at a couple of different rowdy
fans to “Shut the f--- up!”
Meanwhile, the leading young player
of the American hard-court season to
date – 23-year-old Russian Daniil Med-
vedev – was also antagonising the
crowd on Louis Armstrong Stadium.
During a tense win over Feliciano
Lopez, Medvedev first attracted a cho-
rus of boos when he aggressively
snatched a towel from the hands of a
ball boy – apparently because he had
not wanted it brought to him in the first
place. He then gave the fans a one-fin-
gered salute, but held his hand at the
side of his head so that chair umpire
Damien Dumusois could not see it.
Poor behaviour? Absolutely. But itWilliams’s meltdown last year may
have helped create a more hostile envi-
ronment. In an effort to avoid further
embarrassment, the US Open briefed
all the umpires more rigorously than
usual before the tournament.
The idea was to improve consist-
ency, but in practice, this meant every-
one emulating the famously hardline
Carlos Ramos, whose tough stance had
helped turned that final into a circus in
the first place.Williams’s coach Patrick Mourato-
glou suggested before the tournament
the whole shemozzle was “the best mo-
ment for tennis in the last 10 years”. As
he added: “People want to feel the emo-
tion, root for someone, they want to be
shocked, happy, sad.”
OK, so there might have been an ele-
ment of self-justification in this argu-
ment, given that Mouratoglou had
earned Williams her first code viola-
tion when he made a coaching gesture
from the stands. But the last week has
supported the point, by reminding us
everything works better when players
are truly themselves.
In the case of Djokovic, he is far more
effective when he reveals some of the
inner fire that drives him. Between the
summers of 2016 and 2018, he spent
much time hanging out with his guru
Pepe Imaz and meditating on “har-
mony of the soul”. He won nothing of
consequence. But as soon as he started
baiting the partisan crowd on Wimble-
don’s Centre Court last summer, cup-
ping his hand behind his ear during his
ousting of British No 1 Kyle Edmund,
we knew he was back.
The balance is tricky to strike. Man-
ners are important, and no one would
wish to celebrate rudeness for its own
sake. But sports without human drama
are just board games writ large.Simon Briggs
TENNIS
CORRESPONDENT
at Flushing Meadows
Determined: Rory
McIlroy wants to
make amends for a
play-off defeat at
Crans 11 years agoSport Subject
GOLFUS OPENEntertainment value soars
as players vent feelingsUS Open feels like a re-run
of gripping Eighties gamesJohanna Konta
v Karolina
Pliskova
The British No 1
is aiming to
reach her third
straight major
quarter-final,
but has only one
win from seven
meetings with
the big-serving
Pliskova, the
third seed.
Novak Djokovic
v Stan
Wawrinka
The championmeets the 2016
winner in a
mouth-watering
collision.
Djokovic says
his left shoulder
is much
improved, and it
will need to be.
Serena Williams
v Petra Martic
Everything is
pointing in the
right direction
for Williams,
who looks in her
best shape since
maternity leave.Three to watch
was hard not to chuckle at Medvedev’s
anti-hero posturing after his four-set
victory. Interviewed on the court, he
positively relished his infamy, holding
his hands above his hand and saying:
“Thank you all guys, because your en-
ergy gave me the win. I want you all to
know when you sleep tonight I won be-
cause of you. The more you do this, the
more I will win. For you guys.”
Intriguingly, this was a similar mes-
sage to the one Djokovic later sent to
his practice-court antagonist. Asked
what the unknown person had said to
him, Djokovic said: “We’ll keep it be-
tween us. But he definitely helped me.”
And there you have it. Truculence is
back. Fake mateship is out. Even
Federer uttered a profanity in the in-
terview room on Friday. Asked whether
he had requested an early start against
Britain’s Dan Evans, Federer burbled
inconclusively for a few moments and
then barked: “I have heard this s--- too
often now. I’m sick and tired of it, that
apparently I call the shots. The tourna-
ment and the TV stations do.”
The opening week here has thrown
up several other umpiring bust-ups, in-
cluding first-round loser Stefanos Tsit-
sipas telling Dumusois that “you have
something against me ... because you’re
French, probably, and you’re all
weirdos.”RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws