May 12, 2025 
Long before she and Lordships Graffalo became the MARS Badminton Horse Trials winners for a second time, Ros Canter was a kid at home in her living room, screening footage of Huntsman’s Close and Broken Bridge on a VHS tape during her holiday break.
“The highlight of my year was Father Christmas bringing me a video of Badminton Horse Trials or Burghley Horse Trials, or the Olympics, or something that I could watch on Christmas afternoon,” Canter, 39, told Team GB in a promotional video last year. “I kind of grew up maybe dreaming of what could be but not really understanding how to get there.”
In the intervening years, Canter seems to have worked that part out.
This weekend marked her fifth CCI5* victory and second win at Badminton with Lordships Graffalo. But it’s just one of a long list of accolades on the pair’s resume, among them double-gold medals at the 2023 European Championships at Le Pin au Haras, France; and a team gold medal at the Paris Olympic Games last summer.
What’s more, according to Equiratings, Canter and “Walter” are the only horse and rider combination in history to reclaim the Badminton title in non-consecutive years—2023 and 2025—after first taking the runner-up spot back in 2022.
Despite being the Equiratings Prediction Centre’s winning pick from the start, in fact, the pair’s latest victory is no small feat given the startlist. The statistics company deemed 2025’s CCI5* field to be the strongest on record outside of a championship since their data-keeping began.
For his part, Walter has been consistently winning 5*s and championships for the better part of two years. But the 13-year-old British-bred sport horse—who jumped his first international class with Canter back in 2018—seems to be taking his new-found celebrity in stride.
According to Canter, if Walter was a person, he wouldn’t put on airs; an assertion supported by the collection of paddock-rolling videos of the gelding on her Instagram. What’s more, Walter once licked a vet’s car clean when she parked outside his stall window, and he’s been known to “rugby tackle” anyone trying to put his bridle on.
And while Walter can work out the trickiest 5* cross country questions with the ease of the valedictorian, according to Canter, he’d be far more likely to win ‘class clown’.
“Let’s put us in a classroom situation, with a classroom full of kids. Walter is a practical joker. He’s [putting] the whoopee cushion on the teacher’s seat; likes to have fun, [is] pretty laid back—probably [he’d] have his shirt hanging out. He might stride-in five minutes late,” Canter joked to Team GB.
“Until you found his job in life, and got him interested in something, and he’d be an absolute [winner] at it. That’s Walter for you.”
