Often in driving, we are looking back in time.  How and what we drive, be it for pleasure, sport or commercial reasons, has strong ties to what has gone before.

Our latest batch of features on the CC emphasises this link to the past.  There’s a reminder of the London to Brighton Road from the coaching age after recent visits to The Bolney Stage in West Susses, and some footage of the 2014 coach run between Edinburgh and Gretna Green.  Watching the film again has brought back some lovely memories, and seeing the likes of John Roger climbing onto the coach or the friends who turned out to be part of the adventures made for a happy hour.  These coaching runs take a lot of planning a huge team effort, but there’s little in life quite as special as sitting with a good gang on top of a coach, watching the countryside go by and hearing the hooves and wheels on the road.

In our archive section we revisit the articles about Sylvia Brocklebank, my fourth cousin twice removed.  She was a lady who knew more than most about organising coaching adventures and the book on which the articles were based, ‘The Road and the Ring’, can be read and enjoyed endlessly.  Ensuring that her horses were fit for the many miles on the road, and harnessed and hitched so that they were comfortable and able to perform at their peak while pulling a loaded coach gives any of us curious about the driving life plenty to think about.

Even Minta’s jaunt to Walsall to brush up on her workshop skills where traditional crafts and tools are still being used to make driving equipment prompts us to pay debt to those who went before us.  It’s something we perhaps do more so that in any other equestrian discipline, and that extends to the wisdom about how our forebearers looked after and used their horses.  There is no substitute for knowledge earned through doing something over and over again, while learning from our mentors and elders, and watching those at the top of their game.

Roll forward to the recent Indoor Driving championships the supreme champion was a lady who was achieving impressive results many years ago, including becoming European champion with her pony team. Georgina Hunt (Frith) also competed with a horse team for several seasons and has driven a coach and four.  Her daughter Sophie was the highest placed open junior.  Having so many years of driving behind you, and the experience of handling a variety of animals and combinations in different situations is what helps make champions.

While the Indoor Championships were going on at a windy Arena UK, I was also enjoying the coverage provided by my colleagues at FEI TV of the World Cup finals in dressage and jumping from Fort Worth, Texas.  It was wonderful to get the strong sense of identity from this part of the world, and the officials and audience looked great in their Stetsons.  To be a Brit watching the eminently likeable Becky Moody and her homebred Jagerbomb win the dressage was the icing on the cake.  He is a huge horse – I’ve seen him several times in the flesh – and yet Becky manages to make him seem light and lythe, and their movements and transitions seem graceful.  Like most brilliant performances, usually the easier it looks, the more work and time has gone into getting there.

Those deeply involved in the dressage world must be delighted with this positive story after a turbulent few years. Becky is always smiling and media friendly, and the fact that she bred and home produced the horse from the beginning and took him onto the world stage is heart warming.  And if the dressage bad press is because of self-sabotage or stupidity or bad luck, that’s up for debate, but there’s no doubt that we can all learn lessons.  There will always be bad eggs in any walk of life, and they have a habit of turning up regularly, but keeping the messaging positive and promoting good practice at all times is the very least we can aim for.

The introduction of equine welfare officers at events helps, and having one present at the Indoor Championships was a positive move.  The welfare officer worked as part of a team with the vet, POJ and stewards, and together they tactfully dealt with any issues.  When and if a problem was raised, how the communications were handled was crucial to the successful outcome.

Doing what we can to keep our driving house in order will serve us well in evolving and taking the sport forward.  But do we need to caution against making ‘welfare’ bigger than, in reality, it needs to be?  Have we beaten the drum too much?  Can we ever?  Great strides have been made in the science, education and knowledge sharing which informs us as to how to keep our horses as happy, healthy and as safe as possible. Undoubtedly much of this was being done in the past, by the likes of Sylvia Brocklebank, who also will have wanted her horses to stay happy, sound and fit.  How wonderful it would be to time travel and glimpse at how Sylvia kept and worked her horses, and listen in to her discussions with her farrier, grooms and feed merchant.  And it would be even more fascinating to give the great horsewoman a glimpse of how we do things now.  I’d relish her thoughts.

Nodding to the past is something that Jacky Sinclair has done through her research into the lines of draft and establishing what she believes is the most sympathetic way to harness a driven horse and attach it to a carriage.  We are happy to share Jacky’s findings on The CC and there will be another film soon which illustrates how the angles of the traces impact the horse, especially when used with a breastcollar.  With some modern designs, the point of attachment for the traces to the carriage has moved lower and as Jacky proves, if used with a breastcollar, this can put even more pressure on the horse’s neck, particularly with a single.

Our next podcast takes us into ‘same but different’ territory and discusses the commendable work being carried out by the Brooke charity with its new harnessing initiative.  Their harness advisor is Jackie Hickman, a former RSPCA officer and farrier who visits people and places where often the only means of income for a family is that earned using a horse, mule or donkey.  It’s a big task, and one that has to be carried out while juggling tact with realistic expectations.  Often materials are used because they are all that’s available, such as the ‘square cruppers’ of Nicaragua, and making changes is not simply about undoing what has been done for generations or suggesting that people try something new; it’s about changing human behaviours, demonstrating the benefits and making them attainable.  The discussion with Jackie makes fascinating listening.  One of her best lines was that she works in communities where there is no ‘next day Amazon delivery.’

At the opposite end of the spectrum was the second big event of the season in the European FEI calendar at Kronenberg.  There was a bumper entry which included several British competitors who crossed the Channel, and some of them did very well.  Mention must be made of the respectable placings of Cath Brockie, Sophia Routledge and John Ripley.  Cath and Sophia have the benefit of the wisdom and input of Anna Grayston, and her own many years of competing internationally have been passed onto her pupils.  John also drove at the last Horse Pairs World Championship in Beekbergen and having produced a great dressage test in Kronenberg, stormed round the marathon to place well in what is always a highly competitive class.

The horse teams class is going to be riveting this season in the run up to Aachen.  Naturally, in Kronenberg Boyd led from the front after another excellent, low-penalty dressage test to give himself a huge margin ahead of the rest, and make it too hard to be caught.  Bram and Koos raced up the standings after their impressive marathons, which helped Bram clinch another Dutch national champion title.  Dries, maintaining his form since the indoor season, seems to be the nearest challenger to Boyd’s supremacy.  Another to watch is Taren Lester, a Brit who is based in the USA and has worked in recent years for Harvey and Mary Waller.  With an eye to the American team effort for Aachen, he’s driving under the American flag and with Boyd’s help, is producing great dressage results.

There’s no doubt that the tragic events around the German driver and multiple Young Horse world champion Jessica Wächter are still shocking and raw.  I helped the FEI Press Office put together an article for the FEI website and reached out to the talented Polish driver Weronika Kwiatek, another particularly successful producer of young horses. Her words are heartfelt and beautiful – to read the article, click here.