Powys Carriage Driving Group

Powys Carriage Driving Group are immensely proud of their four drivers who have just competed in the National Indoor Driving Trial Championships at Keysoe as all finished in the top ten and two were in the ribbons. With big classes of the best drivers in each category from across Britain and as far as Scotland in the north and the Channel Islands in the south this was an incredible achievement.

The competition is set at three levels with Novice, Intermediate and Open classes for ponies and for horses as well as separate classes for Pairs and tandems and for small ponies.

Janice Sidebottom did really well in all three phases driving her coloured horse Paddy to take 5th in Novice Horse in a big class of 14. Husband Peter also competed Paddy in the Open Horse class finishing in 10th place. Grading for the indoor driving trials is determined by the driver’s experience not the horse, so this class was a big ask for Paddy who is not Peter’s usual drive. Last year Peter was Reserve Intermediate Champion with his horse Archie.

Jonathan Rees drove superbly to lie in 3rd place in Open Horse at the end of day 1 ,after the dressage, cones and first two obstacles. His obstacle times were among the fastest of the class but unfortunately in the excitement of the final phase of the competition, he overshot a gate on obstacle 3 and the penalties for this dropped him to 9th place. Without those penalties he would have finished in fourth!

In Open Pony local champion Emily Ham drove her Welsh Section C Crossfield Glory with incredible skill to lie in second place after the dressage and cones. Her dressage was one of the best of the event and she was one of the few clear in the cones, finishing 5 seconds fast. Competition is especially fierce in Open Pony and all sixteen competitors in this class are top national drivers indoors. Each second in each of the four obstacles counts as a penalty and after the first two obstacles there were just 6 penalties between the top four places. The way the obstacles were set out necessitated lots of tight turns and Emily’s smooth accurate driving meant she kept up the pressure in spite of her pony seeming somewhat under the weather on the second day. Emily was a very worthy fifth in amongst the former national champions. Both the 2014 Indoor Supreme and Reserve Champions came from this class.

Our condolences to Ray Hopkins who has entered the Finals with good prospects in the Veterans Class but was struck down with a flu virus that prevented him from competing

The indoor season restarts in October with the club running six affiliated events at Llwynon Saddlery , Trecastle for the Mid Wales region as well as unaffiliated classes. The club now resumes training and outdoor events over the intervening months and its top drivers will be busy competing at the big outdoor National Driving trial events such as Ashfields, Catton, Raehills and Sandringham aiming to qualify for the three day National Championships in September which will be staged at Erddig.