Tales from the Body Box - At the Olympics

Over the last few days, I've been having a lot of late nights to catch as much of the Tokyo Olympic eventing as possible.

This is the one horsey sport I follow in person, before Covid I was going to watch about six or seven national or international competitions each year. So last week, I dug back through my photo folders, to see if I have any shots of the British team members and their selected horses in action. 

These pairs will go down in history, part of the long line of Olympians who represented their country, and I feel lucky to have been there at so many events, to have seen and photographed each of them.

Click any picture to see it full size, I've shrunk them here to suit the blog page layout.

Here's Tom McEwen and Toledo de Kerser, taking a drop fence down toward the water at Burghley 2017.

Unfortunately this is the only time I've seen them - I sat here with each horse's FEI record on screen and scrolled through to pick out every event I knew I was at, and most of the time I just missed this pair, either by being there on the wrong day for their class, or they withdrew before XC. So although I know I've seen Tom compete many times with other horses, this is the only time I've seen Toledo.

Another horse and rider combination who I've seen just the once - Laura Collett and London 52, on course to come second in Burnham Market's 4* section. By pure co-incidence, I seem to go to plenty of events Laura doesn't ever enter, and she competes at a lot of courses which are far too far for me to travel to. Thank goodness for this one (very long, very cold!) day in 2019, otherwise I wouldn't have the full team set!

The final team member is Oliver Townend, with Ballaghmor Class - a horse I've seen rather more of over the years. I've picked out one or two of the best pictures from each time I've watched him compete.
 

Here's the earliest photo I've got, a bit of a 'before they were famous' appearance at a 2* in 2016 - he had a lot less fleabite-speckles, and a darker mane.

The day they came 3rd in Rockingham's Open Intermediate section 2017, and on their way to winning the 4* at Burnham Market 2019.

Winners of Burghley Horse Trials, 2017 - including one of the luckiest shots I got, catching the pair in close-up as they came galloping back past me after the leaf pit!

On their way toward second place at Burghley the following year. Getting anywhere near the front of the crowd around the water jump takes a lot of effort, but the results are worth it - look at that splash!

And a couple of shots from their Burghley third place in 2019. I hadn't intended to find the same pair at the Trout Hatchery water complex two years in a row, oops!

Of course, all this eventing on tv got me inspired to paint a custom model.

The logical thing to do would be wait til the final round's jumping gave us the individual gold medallist, and then paint whoever that turned out to be. Or, if you prefer a bit of national bias, then go for the highest placed British horse. But because I've seen Ballaghmor Class so many more times than the others in the team, or even any competing at these games for another nation, he was the one which I was the most keen to paint in miniature. And I'd got the ideal Stablemate scale body in the box...

Here he is with the base coat of grey, before the speckles went in. I've trimmed the mane shorter and a bit thinned-down by filing chunks out of the long solid curve, and took away some length and thickness from the tail, too.

And here he is all finished! 

His lovely bay speckling was quite nerve-wracking to flick on with a thumb across a toothbrush, as you have to dilute the paint to make it spray finely enough, but thin watery wet paint will blob together making the flecks look big and too 'painty'. So I layered it on thinly and with plenty of drying time in between, til I'd got to the point where it looked dark enough to give the right impression of heavy speckling, but without overdoing it so he ended up more pink than grey!

I think this mould is probably the best choice for him, the dressage-style warmblood moulds would be fine as eventers are necessarily great all-rounders, but I've never watched his dressage in person - I catch him in action as he comes flying by on the XC!

It's a shame he didn't go on and take individual gold to further justify painting him rather than the eventual winner, but being part of that team gold (as well as winning Burghley and Kentucky) is more than good enough to thoroughly deserve a portrait in my collection, especially after following his career for so long!