WEG driving: Britain ninth after dressage
Britain’s final driver Georgina Hunt lies 18th after the dressage phase at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.
“I’m quite pleased, we did as well as we could,” she said. “There was a little bit of bickering with one of the leaders, but overall I think it was very professional. Bits of the test were beautiful, but there were just a few little mistakes.”
With Georgina’s score combined with Dick Lane and Wilf Bowman-Ripley’s performances yesterday, the Brits now lie in ninth place of 14 teams. Wilf lies 17th individually, just one place ahead of Georgina, with Dick in 35th. As driving teams consist of two or three competitors with two scores to count, Dick’s mark is currently discarded in the British team total.
The USA are in pole position in the individual contest, with Chester Weber driving to top spot.
“It felt like dancing on clouds,” said Chester, who had an interrupted preparation for WEG as he went home for the birth of his first child two and a half weeks ago, leaving the horses with his coach, Germany’s Michael Freund.
Three drivers broke the 40-barrier in the dressage today, Chester (32.21), British-based Australian Boyd Exell (35.51) and the Netherlands’ Theo Timmerman (37.28).
Yesterday’s leader, Ijsbrand Chardon, is now in fourth. He and Theo Timmerman are providing the counting scores to give Netherlands gold after the first phase. The USA are in second, with Hungary third.
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The British will be looking to make up places on tomorrow’s marathon and move up the leaderboard.
“I think it’s a very fair course, very even for all horses,” said Georgina, looking ahead to the next phase. “This will be the first time we’ve driven such even, well-prepared obstacles, so there’ll be no excuses. It’ll be a very genuine test of the driver — it asks lots of questions in a very horse-friendly way.”
More updates from WEG online over the weekend; report on the driving in H&H this week, out Thursday, 11 September.
Picture by Helen Revington
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Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.