PrintOur columnist reflects on the sport’s history and the modernization that will be showcased at the upcoming World Equestrian Games.
An advanced four-in-hand competitor contacted a show secretary and asked if the competition would allow him to enter but not do Section A (Section A is approximately 5km of any pace) of the marathon. His reason was that the track was “too rough.”
As the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games approach and U.S. drivers are working hard to make their last few competitions count before the team and individual drivers are selected, this statement really made me stop and think.
Isn’t combined driving supposed to be a test of agility, obedience, strength and endurance? Wasn’t it modeled after eventing, which in turn was modeled after games designed by cavalry officers to “simulate the kinds of athletic feats that a trained army horse might be expected to perform under actual battlefield conditions?”
It’s obvious that the sport no longer tests horses for battlefield conditions (although some might argue this point in a few isolated circumstances!). So how did we get from there to where we are today?
I looked back in time to the first few driving events in this country and read about some of the first few World Championships. The sport of combined driving isn’t all that old –about 40 years– and there are quite a few organizers and drivers who are still around and still involved who can document how the sport has changed. Jim Fairclough is one of those.
Jim’s father was a competitor at the first combined driving event held in this country, and Jim was on the carriage. It took place at Johnson Park in New Brunswick, N.J., in June 1970. Organized by Philip Hofmann, a respected horseman, founding member and first president of the American Driving Society as well as CEO of Johnson & Johnson, it was the first show to be run under the newly created Fédération Equestre Internationale rules for driving. The marathon was 15 miles long (24 km)!
Jim recalled that during the marathon, one of the horses lost a shoe, so they stopped (the marathon track was mostly on roads in those days), took the horse out of the team and finished with three horses! And they won the competition!
When the legality of this decision was questioned, someone actually phoned Prince Philip (who was the force behind the development of the original rules for combined driving) in England who verified that at the time, there was no rule stipulating that one had to finish with the same number of horses as he started with.
That rule was quickly added, along with other rules that said that you had to finish with both axles, all the wheels, etc. It was a rough and ready sport, in large part because there were no modern, marathon-specific carriages or harness, and things broke with terrifying regularity.
Like Matchsticks
Victor and Evelyn Shone held events between 1974-77, and several participants have endured to become leaders in our sport today as judges, drivers, clinicians, organizers: Deirdre Pirie, Craig Kellogg, Jean Kinsella, Macy Hill, Jamie O’Rourke, Holly Pulsifer and Richard Nicoll, to name a few.
