Is This Harry Meade's Five-Star?

Harry Meade has finished in the top five of a five-star twelve times. Six thirds, four fourths, two fifths. But he has never won one.

He went to the top of the FEI Eventing World Athlete Rankings in June 2025 and stayed there for eight months, the first British rider to hold the position without a five-star win to his name. He is world number two now. The man above him is Tim Price, who is also competing at Burghley this weekend.

The two-time defending champion is not here. Lordships Graffalo won Burghley in 2024 and 2025 and took a record third Badminton in May, and Ros Canter has no ride this week. What is left is a field with no obvious winner in it.

Cavalier Crystal has started Burghley three times and finished third all three times.

A hundred and fifty-five horses have been on a Burghley podium since 1961. Seven have done it at least three times. Only five managed three in a row, and she is one of them, alongside Avebury, Ballaghmor Class, Parklane Hawk and Lord Killinghurst.

Only one horse has ever made four. Ballaghmor Class won in 2017, was second in 2018, third in 2019 and won again in 2023. Nobody else has got there. A podium on Sunday and Cavalier Crystal is the second horse in sixty-five years to do it.

Cavalier Crystal Harry Meade	Win 8%	Top 3 25%
5* starts 6	Best 5* finish 3rd	6RA 32.2

The reason this pair have not won Burghley has nothing to do with the cross-country and nothing to do with the show jumping. It is the first phase. In 2023 she added 5.2 and finished 4.4 behind Ballaghmor Class. In 2024 she added nothing at all and still finished 7.7 behind Graffalo. In 2025 she was 9.7 behind, after adding 2.8.

Five horses have put together three straight Burghley podiums. Three of them won the event, and all three had won it before the run began. Winning here first and placing afterwards is the normal shape of a great Burghley career. Doing it the other way round is not.

No horse has ever turned three consecutive Burghley podiums into a first Burghley win. Lord Killinghurst is the only one who tried. He came back in 2007 and finished fourth.

Et Hop Du Matz Harry Meade	Win 3%	Top 3 12%
5* starts 4	Best 5* finish 3rd	6RA 33.5

The second ride is not the one likely to end the wait. Et Hop Du Matz is on three per cent, and the show jumping is usually where he loses ground. He was ninth here last year and third at Kentucky in 2025 on a finish on his dressage score.

He also goes out on the cross-country before Cavalier Crystal, and that is the thing a one-horse rider cannot buy. Whatever the first round tells Meade about the lines, the ground and where the time is going feeds straight into the mare's round later in the day.

He first rode Burghley in 2005 and finished thirteenth on Midnight Dazzler. Twenty-one years later he is still coming back, and the record he has built in that time is a strange one. Everything except the win.

This is what has changed. There is no horse in the field scoring in the low twenties. HSH Blake, Corimiro and Falco head the dressage form on 28.9, 29.1 and 29.3. Nobody is likely to have a huge margin on Friday evening.

Cavalier Crystal is still down the order. She is 15th. The difference is the size of the deficit. In 2024 and 2025 she gave the eventual winner 9.3 and 8.1 penalties in the dressage arena. On these numbers she gives the best horse in the field 3.2. She has halved the gap without changing a thing.

The Prediction Centre does not make Meade favourite. It makes him joint fourth. Corimiro tops the list on 20%, which is another way of saying the model expects him to lose four times out of five.

Four of the Prediction Centre's top five have never started Burghley. Between them Corimiro, Falco, HSH Blake and United 36 have fourteen five-star starts and none of them here. Only Galileo Nieuwmoed has seen the place, and his record includes a second place finish.

Corimiro Sarah Bullimore	Win 20%	Top 3 39%
5* starts 2	Best 5* finish 5th	6RA 29.1

Corimiro is the favourite on 20% and he has two five-star runs to his name. Fifth at Pau, tenth at Badminton, and clear inside the time cross-country on both occasions. Ten-year-olds have won Burghley twelve times but only once in the modern era. That was Ballaghmor Class in 2017. Sarah Bullimore first rode here exactly thirty years ago. With twelve starts and no podium, she will be hungry for a big result.

Falco Tim Price	Win 15%	Top 3 33%
5* starts 7	Best 5* finish 1st	6RA 29.3

Falco is seventeen. Two horses that age have won Burghley, Vanir Kamira in 2022 and Lenamore in 2010. Falco arrives on a show jumping clear streak of 17 rounds, the last of them at Aachen three weeks ago. The worry is the clock. He made the time at Pau in 2021 and Pratoni in 2022 and has not done so at five-star since. Aachen cost him 8.4, the slowest round of his five-star career, although team orders may account for that.

HSH Blake Caroline Pamukcu	Win 13%	Top 3 29%
5* starts 4	Best 5* finish 2nd	6RA 28.9

HSH Blake came out of Kentucky with both his and Caroline's first CCI5* podium. He is eleven, and there are few brighter prospects in the American string. Caroline Pamukcu reroutes him here after a fall at Aachen, for her own Burghley debut, and brings HSH Tolan King as well. After a championship that disappointed, this is where they look to prove it.

Twelve times in the top five. Six thirds. Not one second place. World number one for eight months with nothing in the cabinet. There is no horse in this field that makes you think nobody can beat it, and none of them will lead the dressage by eight penalties.

Cavalier Crystal has already produced a winning Burghley score. She produced it in the wrong year.