08/31/2026
the GOAT 🩷
🐎✨ Lucinda Green: Six of the Best — A Golden Era of Eventing
Few names are woven quite so firmly into the history of eventing as Lucinda Green (née Prior-Palmer).
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Lucinda became one of the sport’s most recognisable figures — admired for her courage across country, her instinctive understanding of horses and an extraordinary ability to bring out the best in very different partners.
And between 1973 and 1984, she achieved a record that remains remarkable more than four decades later:
🏆 Six Badminton Horse Trials victories
🐎 Six different horses
Her winning partnerships were:
1973 — Be Fair
1976 — Wide Awake
1977 — George
1979 — Killaire
1983 — Regal Realm
1984 — Beagle Bay
It remains the record for the most Badminton victories by a rider — made all the more extraordinary because every win came aboard a different horse.
Perhaps no victory illustrates Lucinda’s horsemanship better than Badminton 1977 with George.
George arrived with a decidedly daunting record: he had fallen in each of his previous five events. Lucinda herself was initially reluctant to take him on, but she held to a philosophy that would become synonymous with her approach to horses — the belief that every horse had something to teach her.
The timing was deeply personal, too. Lucinda’s father was dying of cancer, and taking on George gave her something on which to focus during an enormously difficult period. Remarkably, her father was well enough to be at Badminton and help with George in the 10-minute box.
Conditions that year were atrocious. After a difficult steeplechase, Lucinda doubted whether George could possibly cope with the cross-country course and feared that their round might end in a fall.
Instead, George rose magnificently to the occasion.
In the mud and rain, over a course that included a formidable new bounce into the Lake, horse and rider found a partnership neither could perhaps have predicted. George fought his way around the course and carried Lucinda to an unforgettable victory — fittingly, on St George’s Day.
And 1977 became an extraordinary season. Lucinda and George went on to win Burghley and the European Championship, completing a remarkable trio of major victories.
But Badminton was only part of Lucinda Green’s story.
She became World Champion in 1982, won individual European titles in 1975 and 1977, and helped Britain secure Olympic team silver at Los Angeles in 1984. Her contribution to equestrian sport was recognised with an MBE in 1978.
Yet statistics alone do not explain why Lucinda Green remains such an important figure in eventing.
Her legacy lies just as much in the way she rode: brave without being reckless, instinctive yet thoughtful, and always fascinated by what the horse beneath her could teach her.
Six Badmintons.
Six different horses.
One extraordinary horsewoman.
Lucinda Green didn’t simply dominate an era of eventing — she helped define it. 🐎✨