Mike McLennan had more than 2,500 miles on his drive home to Brenham, Texas, to savor his win in the Bromont CDE advanced pair division, the final selection trial for the 2005 World Pair Championships, in Bromont, Que., Canada, May 20?22.

He’d never made the trip to Canada before, but the descriptions he’d heard of the challenging course turned out to be all too true. “Lisa Singer told me that every hazard in Bromont was built on a hill, and that they built a hill to put the hazard on if there wasn’t one available,” said McLennan with a laugh.

McLennan bred all of his driving horses at his Pecan Mill farm, located between Houston and Austin. “I breed Quarter Horse mares who have won money as cutting horses to a Friesian,” he said. The stallion they use, Foster, is the only American-bred Friesian to pass the breed’s 100-day test.

Pecan Mill’s Rough, Tough and Ready, all 9, were as up to the marathon task as their names implied. Their marathon score of 73.6 was the best of the advanced drivers, and McLennan was particularly proud of the fact that he outdistanced Canada’s Andre Paquin by slightly more than 2 points. “I think he’s one of the best marathon drivers in North America,” said McLennan.

He found the toughest hazard to be No. 4, the Wood Pile. Built along the side of a hill, it consisted of a fairly steep slope divided by log piles and heavy duty post and rails to create four chutes. German course designer Wolfgang Asendorf marked gates that created very tight turns, and tough angling was required through each gate. McLennan said hazard 3, the bridge, and hazard 6, Undergrowth, felt great with his horses.

“Ninty-nine percent of being successful is good horseflesh,” said McLennan, who began driving in 1986 after seeing a marathon photograph in the office of his friend, four-in-hand driver Paul DeBrantes, while on a trip through the Loire Valley in France.

“One carriage wheel was off the ground in the photo, and I decided I needed to find out what this was all about,” said McLennan.

McLennan’s experience comes at the price of heavy mileage. “The trailering gets to be a job in itself, and it takes a lot out of the horses,” said McLennan, who spends five days traveling so that he can stop along the way to give the horses a break. “In any sport someone competes in they are going to get better the more they compete against others, especially at world-class caliber.”

While McLennan has competed cutting horses, he prefers CDEs. “I get three days of adrenaline going with driving,” he said with a laugh, adding that he enjoys being outdoors.

McLennan placed second in the cones phase to Alan Aulson of Georgetown, Mass., a relative newcomer to the advanced division. Aulson was pleased with his black Morgan geldings, who placed second overall. He has been driving at the advanced-level for just one year.

“I only had two advanced level events under my belt before the selection trials began in March,” said Aulson.

He took advantage of several notable clinicians who made their way to his Black Prong Farm in Bronson, Fla., where he trains during the winter, including Nikki Palsson of Sweden and Tjeerd Velstra of the Netherlands, as well as Chester Weber and William Lower, both of Florida.

Aulson gained an experienced assistant and navigator in January when he invited 27-year-old Hungarian Attila Bardos, son of two-time four-in-hand World Champion Gy? Bardos, to spend six months in the United States. “It has been very much a mutual learning experience,” said Aulson. “Attila is very knowledgeable. He was driving in the womb.”

Aulson appreciated the challenging marathon course, especially since Asendorf would be designing the World Pair’s course. “If you shy away, you don’t get better,” he said.

Aulson described the cones course as very difficult with constantly changing, tricky angles, but his score was 13.26 points lower than at Garden State (N.J.), where he incurred 24.53 penalties.

He attributes his improvement to Weber, who has been named the pairs team coach. “Chester is very focused. We worked on transitions so that the horses would respond quickly to galloping forward and then coming back for accuracy. He set up elements found in the course for practice.”

While McLennan and Aulson were gearing up for speed on marathon, Larry Poulin of Petershaw, Mass., was thinking the opposite. Poulin, a veteran whip who has represented the United States in Europe seven times and is six-time national pairs champion, had to plan his strategy around qualifying his newest horse in marathon. He has only been driving Wiley, a 6-year-old Hanoverian, since January.

All horses who are to be considered for a world championship must complete an FEI marathon.