6 September 2024

World Championship Szilvásvarad: Australia leads, individual win for Chester Weber

The second day of competition at the World Championship for Four-in-Hand in Szilvásvárad was a day full of highlights. It was a feast for fans of the dressage section from 10 a.m. onwards. Throughout the day, the tension in the sporting competition was palpable. Not only for the audience, but also for the competitors.

The first dressage block that started at 10.00 am already had a delicious ‘breakfast’ with Bram Chardon as the second starter. Bram rode an excellent test with which he did himself and the Dutch team a favour. Not too flamboyant, but driven solidly and safely to excel tomorrow in the marathon.

Bram Chardon
Photo: Martin Dokoupil

Anna Sandmann the woman to beat

And what a morning: German individual drive Anna Sandmann, who had put in a fantastic performance of 40 penalty points yesterday, was the woman to beat. After Bram, Glenn Geerts, Tor Van Den Berge and Georg von Stein also showed superb tests in the ‘forties’. Glenn had on the unlucky number, point 13 briefly cantered his right-leader, but it was clear that they had set the bar high for the other drivers in the second and third dressage blocks with their trials.

Tor Van Den Berge
Photo: Nanda van der Burgt

After the short break, individual rider Edwin van der Graaf took the lead. He started well, but his left-leader gradually built up tension as the test progressed, which meant that the harmony was gone and the penalty point total increased. Fredrik Persson from Sweden, also driving individually, continued the series of ‘forties’: a beautifully harmonious test that looked as if four-horse driving takes no effort at all!

Expectations were high when American Chester Weber appeared in the ring. By now, the indoor grandstand was packed. Chester had shown in the last few competitions that he and his horses are in top form thanks to many hours of training, excellent (stable) management and a dedicated team of grooms. And what a test … every section was a hit and the eights and nines flew over the live scoring. With four tens and a nine and a half for overall impression and presentation, he finished his test with a monster score of 31.06 penalty points and was the first to take Anna Sandmann’s lead. He did not hide his joy, rightly so!

Chester Weber
Photo: Martin Dokoupil

After the lunch break, the audience waited on the edge of their benches in the heat of the day for the ‘dressage cracks’ from the Netherlands, Australia and Germany to enter the ring. IJsbrand Chardon, dominating the driving sport for decades, put in an excellent and valuable performance, with the concentration and the same ‘drive’ as when he was Bram’s age. He finished two-tenths behind Bram, giving father and son Chardon, together with Koos de Ronde who rode yesterday, a great result for the Dutch team.

Dries Degrieck did the same for his national team. The young Belgian, whose father drove a Lipizzaner team, improves every year and he too drove to an under fifty score today (48.58).

 

IJsbrand Chardon
Photo: Martin Dokoupil

Busy day for Boyd

And then Boyd Exell, who could be seen coaching in the warm-up ring all day yesterday and today. Until the moment he had to put his own span on edge for a moment in the warm-up ring, he was busy with ‘others’ . Knowing what he had to drive to surpass Chester Weber, he rode into the ring focused and with some tension on his face. In supreme concentration, he showed a formidable and faultless test and rode himself to a fantastic score of 33.53 which, had you known in the morning, would probably have been declared the winning test. But suddenly there was Chester; today four out of five judges rated his performance as the very best dressage test.

Boyd Exell
Photo: Martin Dokoupil

Nations Cup

In the race for the Nations Cup, Australia leads with the fantastic performance of Boyd Exell and Tor Van Den Berge with 80.91 penalty points. The Netherlands follows more than five points behind with a score of 86.44 and Germany is third with just under three penalty points more than the Netherlands (89.29).

Tomorrow’s marathon will start at 10.00 am with the test driver followed by Hungarian János Papp. The competition can be followed via livestream on ClipMyHorse and the FEI Driving Sport YouTube channel.

Click here for results, start lists and link to livestream

Click here for the photo album from today

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