The Carriage Driving Ashes – a collaboration between the UK and Australia, with identical competitions held over identical courses in NSW and Wales – has been won by Australia, with five wins to Britain’s three.
The event was the brainchild of British driver Julia Liles, who said “sometimes you just have to go a bit maverick to see what happens”.
And that’s what she did, pulling off a great international competition between carriage drivers competing on opposite sides of the world.
“Following in this summer’s tradition, like our cricketing counterparts we were pipped by the Aussies in the ashes challenge,” she said.
“And so the little urn is off to Oz, but we’re not whinging Poms as all the contested classes were closely fought and we look forward to revenge in 2024.”
The host events for the ashes challenge were the Short Format National Carriage Driving Championships held at the Southern Highland Harness Club in Bundanoon NSW and the David Broome Event Centre at Cricklands, Wales.
It was a very different format for the Australians and aimed at grass-roots drivers in three phases.
The event consisted of compulsory figures (dressage) in a 30 x 60m arena (not the 100 x 40m Australians are used to), a cones course with 15 cones to test precision and finally four obstacles of increasing difficulty.
There were a huge variety of classes catering for horses of all sizes, from mini ponies to heavy horses.
In Australia, competitors came from not only all around the Southern Highlands (Bywong, Braidwood and Canberra) but from Victoria, Sydney, Hunter Valley, Mudgee, Blayney, Queensland and even New Zealand.
There was great camaraderie amongst competitors.
“We had to wait for a nail-biting 24 hours to know the results because of the time differences,”one of the Australian organisers, Jenny Martin, said.
“We were finished our competition and the UK hadn’t even started.
“The points were accrued by each winner of corresponding classes and Australia was victorious.”
In a first for carriage driving, the events were streamed online so the classes in both countries could be watched.
The awards podium was a WWI goods and services wagon driven by Graham Brown of Exeter with a pair of Standardbreds.
The wagon was escorted by three Light Horse members, two of whom carried the Australian and British flags.
The teams were led by two equestrian legends; the British team by multiple European and World Champion and Olympian David Broome and Australia by multiple World Champion and World Cup Champion Boyd Exell.
See all the photos in the issue.
This article appeared on The Regional on 23 August 2023.
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