Bryce puts her best foot forward

Elspeth teamed up with her Defender Burghley ride, Lacoste, when she was 15.

“He’s the only horse I compete — I did my first ever BE100 event on him in 2018,” she explained.

Elspeth’s last competition before coming to Burghley was a BE80 training event at Solihull on a pony that she has been schooling for its owner.

“You could say that was my prep run,” she laughed.

Speaking about the 14-year-old Lacoste, who she owns along with Jim Spiers, the Gloucestershire-based rider said: “He’s so easy to deal with, you could literally do anything with him. My mum does most of his hacking.”

The pair kicked off their Burghley campaign by posting a dressage mark of 39.9.

“He doesn't get caught up in the atmosphere, so he lets me really ride him in the arena, which is great,” said Elspeth. “The flying changes are a work in progress, but apart from that I was really pleased with how it went.”

Elspeth, who originally hails from Stirling in Scotland, cut her eventing teeth while under the tutelage of five-star rider Wills Oakden.

“My godparents bought me a couple of lessons with Wills for my 11th birthday and I ended up spending most of my school holidays at his yard,” she explained. “I caught the eventing bug, decided I wanted to do horses full-time and it went from there.”

Elspeth has since spent time with Australian Olympian Sam Griffiths and British European squad member Caroline Harris, but is now based with her trainer, Angela Tucker.

“Angela’s so supportive, as is the whole team. It's like being part of one big family,” she said.

This will be the Elspeth and Lacoste’s 20^th international start and follows a seventh place in the CCI4*-L at Blair Castle last year and a top-30 finish at Bramham this spring.

“Burghley is the event I’ve always wanted to come to as I often visited as a child. I thought the jumps looked huge back then, and I think they still look huge now!” she smiled.