William Fox-Pitt, a key member of Great Britain's Olympic three-day event team for Beijing, extended his record number of wins at the Bramham International Horse Trials to five yesterday when he and Navigator, a nine-year-old competing at this level for the first time, won the event after a faultless cross-country round on Saturday and a clear round in the showjumping yesterday.

“This was a big step up for him,” Fox-Pitt, 39, said of the former racehorse who improved from sixteenth place after the dressage. His success, in which he relegated Mary King and King's Fancy to second place, echoes Fox-Pitt's third success in the event, in 2005 on Mr Dumbledore, a horse he had thought was “too green” to win.

Owned by a syndicate of four called “Bart's Ladies”, Navigator, known as Bart, had competed previously in only one three-day event, The Houghton International last year, which he won. But Fox-Pitt has always regarded him as “one for the future” and, with a full yard of advanced horses at his Dorset home, there has been no need to hurry the gelding's education.

His careful training was on fine display over Sue Benson's cross-country course on Saturday when the Australian-bred gelding, showed off his great gallop to become one of only four horses to finish inside the time. Yesterday, lying sixth at the start of the showjumping, his clear round put the requisite pressure on the leaders.

Fox-Pitt himself, who had been lying fourth on his first ride, Kaleidoscope, had 12 faults, dropping to twelfth place. The top three riders, led by Dan Jocelyn, of New Zealand, on Mr Pracatan, the overnight leader, all faulted - allowing Matthew Wright, on L'Aristo du Lado, a French-bred gelding, to climb to third place.

King, who celebrated her 47th birthday yesterday, was quietly delighted with her second place. It has taken time to establish a partnership with the home-bred King's Fancy, who retired on the cross country at Blenheim last year and Saumur last month. “I'm used to riding big, brave geldings and this is a sensitive, thoughtful mare - they require very different riding,” King, who has been selected for her fifth Olympic Games, said. The mare's double clear this weekend, after her twelfth place at Boekelo last October, confirms her three-star credentials.

Although Benson's course on Saturday was, in Wright's words, “not the strongest three-star”, it proved to be decisive - no mean feat when the course designer is coping with up-and-coming international horses and established four-star horses such as Mr Pracatan and Oliver Townend's Flint Curtis. “It's refreshing to still win at this level when you've been sixteenth after the dressage,” Fox-Pitt said. But the course proved the undoing of Tracy Garside and Dunauger, the surprise leaders after the dressage, who were eliminated at Fence 21.

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