Tim & Jarillo at Pau: Same score, better performance, and an upward trajectory

Tim Price & Jarillo won Pau on 30.9 last October. Last weekend they won it again on 30.9.

Same horse, same rider, same score - but the conditions underneath changed. The 2026 course asked harder questions across the country. The 2025 field was stronger. Put it all through the HPR and the two wins land one point apart.

Price and Jarillo are also the first combination to win Pau in successive years. They join a list of 10 other combinations to win the same five-star back to back, going back to 1955.

Same score, a one-upped performance

The dressage got better. The cross-country time got two seconds slower. The two cancelled each other out to the decimal point.

The HPR puts the two wins one point apart. The conditions at Pau explain why the win earned a higher rating (but a close one at that).

Two different Paus

The field was stronger in 2025. Most of the phases were harder in 2026.

The cross-country jumping is the biggest swing. In 2025 the clear rate was 3% above expected. In 2026 it was 14% below expected (i.e. XC was significantly harder this year). Jarillo jumped clear both years.

The time was harder to get in 2026 too. In 2025, the top half of the field picked up 3.8 fewer time penalties than expected. In 2026, they picked up 0.9 more. So the XC time was tougher to get this year. But Jarillo added just 0.8 more time penalties than he did the year before.

Dressage marks were closer to expectation in 2026. In 2025 the field scored 1.2 penalties lower than expected, against just 0.2 in 2026. This means dressage scoring was tougher this year, but Jarillo still improved his test, from 26.5 in 2025 to 25.7 last week.

The 2025 win had its own credit to bank. The 2025 field strength was 656 against this year's 631, and the show jumping was tougher, with 3.0 more penalties than expected versus this year's 0.3 more. Jarillo showjumped clear in both 2025 and 2026. Also in 2025, Jarillo won by a greater margin: 2.3 penalties over Tom Jackson & Plot Twist B versus 2.0 over Bubby Upton & Its Cooley Time last weekend.

Those factors pull in opposite directions. In 2026, dressage and cross-country (jump and time) were tougher. In 2025, the field was stronger, the show jumping was tougher, and the margin was wider. Together they leave two wins of similar quality but with 2026 having the edge: 98 (2025) and 99 (2026).

The back-to-back club

Winning the same five-star twice in a row has happened 12 times. Lordships Graffalo has done it twice, at Burghley and Badminton, so 11 combinations now share the list.

Badminton has seen it five times. Kentucky has seen it three times, Burghley twice and Adelaide once. Tim and Jarillo add Pau to the list for the first time. Luhmühlen is still waiting.

Pau has been good to Tim Price. He has won seven five-stars, and three of them have come at Pau: with Falco in 2021, then Jarillo in 2025 and 2026. No other venue has given him more than two CCI5* wins AND Tim the first ever three-time winner of the event.

Defending the title two (or three) years in a row

Our HPR records go back to 2008. Since then, nine title defences have an HPR attached to both wins. Six of them rated higher than the win before.

* Previous HPR from his Burghley 2012 win. ** Previous HPR from her Kentucky 2015 win. *** Won a record 3 Badmintons but the 2023 win was not consecutive with the 2025 and 2026 wins.

The biggest HPR jump between consecutive CCI5* wins at the same venue belongs to Willingapark Clifford. His 2018 Adelaide win carries the lowest HPR of any five-star win since 2008, at 69. A year later he won again on 89.

Where Jarillo goes from here

Jarillo is 12. He has started his five-star career the same way Avebury did, with a win in the high 90s and a slightly higher one a year later.

He went into Pau 2025 with an Elo of 589. He came out of Pau 2026 on 683, a rise of 94 points across the two wins.

His 99 sits just below the median winning HPR, which is 100. Lordships Graffalo operates in a higher bracket, with all four of his repeat wins above 105. Jarillo's numbers are moving the right way, and he has a record to chase.

Same score, a better HPR, a rising Elo and a 12-year-old horse. Can Price and Jarillo make it three at Pau next year?