04.18.08
Have marathon cart, will CDE
Friend Kim has acquired a marathon cart and plans to train another one of her horses to drive! She has Abby now, and will probably start out with Abby– Abby could probably do well at lower levels of competitive driving.
Kim in her marathon cart…
Yes, as in everything else, people compete in various types of carriage driving…
CDE = Combined Driving Event, consisting of three phases similar to ridden Eventing. In a CDE the driven horse(s) do a CONES course which is an obstacle course in a ring; they do a driven DRESSAGE course in a ring, being judged on form; and they do a timed cross-country course where they are driven through HAZARDS such as crossing water and bridges and navigating fence mazes.
Some of these extremely daring people run four-in-hands (four horses) pulling a cart through the most intricate series of sharp turns and narrow passageways that you can possibly imagine! With the fours there will be two “Navigators” riding standing on the back of the cart, whose job it is to counter-balance it on sharp turns by leaning way out to the side to keep the cart from tipping up on two wheels. Which it could easily do because the horses are going so fast!
Kim envisions herself and hubby Jack sharing the competitive driving experience as a team, with Jack being the Navigator who hangs off the back. I’m hoping to learn from the sidelines and will share it all here!
A good magazine for competive driving articles is Driving Digest.
This is Abby, our former horse (Morgan-Percheron mare), saying hi to Hubby when we visited!
