ROSIE Alcorn enjoyed a successful trip to Scotland last weekend, when she completed the CCI4*-S at Scone Palace with a clear round cross-country riding Chrysanthos. This result was all the sweeter for Alcorn, because not only is she the owner and rider, but also the breeder of the 11-year-old gelding, who is out of her Young Rider eventing partner Fiorella and was the first horse she ever bred.

“It’s a funny story actually,” she says, about how Fiorella ended up in foal with ‘Phoenix’ in the first place. “She was supposed to go advanced when she had a career-ending injury, and my mum and dad were away in South Africa for three weeks. It was August, so we had a very short window to get her in foal and, by the time my parents came back from their holidays, their event horse was a broodmare. They had no choice but to go along with it, because I hadn’t been able to contact them.

“I used Jaguar Mail because I liked him and he was standing at Twemlows, next door to where I was based. We planned to call him ‘Student Loan’, after I spent that money on his stud fee, but when Georgie Stubington foaled him down at Sweetwall, he was so beautiful we decided we couldn’t call him that. He became Chrysanthos because it means ‘golden flower’, and his mother’s name means ‘little flower’.”

He grew up in a field with the Alex Houston-bred Atlantic Rockstar, now the ride of Louise Bloomer and Alcorn says: “They did everything together; their first beach rides, first events, and then last year they ended up doing their first four-star together at Ballindenisk.

“He was so sharp as a four-year-old that he never left the yard other than to hack to lots of different places, but he’s always been an overachiever and tried almost too hard. His five-year-old year was hampered by Covid, so in his first season he went straight to EI110 and was second in the Michael Leonard young horse class at Ballindenisk.

“Then, in an EI100 at Ballindenisk last year, I fell off him in the show jumping. I was devastated, and Robbie Kearns came back to my lorry crying with laughter and told me to remember this moment when I jump round my first four-star. I did! I always thought he was just a nice, normal horse, but he’s always proved me wrong. He really wants to do his job, and we’ll think about doing a CCI4*-L with him now.”