Exell second after Driving dressage

World four-in-hand driving champion Boyd Exell has finished the dressage phase of the FEI World Equestrian Games 2014 driving competition in second position.

Boyd and his team of horses – Capone II, Curios, Rambo and Winston – were in action early on day two of the dressage and they went straight to the top of the leader board after being awarded a score of 32.21 penalties. US driver Chester Weber took to the arena late in the day and was the only competitor to eclipse Exell's score. Weber currently has a 3.3 penalty advantage over Exell heading into Saturday’s marathon phase.     

“My horses were just right. I didn’t need to push and I didn’t need to hold, I just needed to sit quiet and let them do the job,” said Exell.

“I could feel that if I asked too much they had too much energy. So the preparation was perfect,” he said.  

As a team, Exell and Gavin Robson currently have Australia sitting in 4th position (97.87) behind The Netherlands (79.40), the US (88.31) and Hungary (94.62).

Looking ahead to Saturday’s marathon course, Exell said he'd made provisions to his carriage to deal with the terrain.  

“I have special grooved indoor wheels for good traction on this sort of material so they were shipped down last night and we fitted them and hopefully we are ready to go.

“It’s a nice course and it’s testing enough.

“It will be interesting to see how the horses turn.”

The first driver is on course tomorrow at 9:30am local time with Gavin Robson on at 11:01am and Boyd and 2:51pm.

With 16.000 spectators expected for the marathon the competition is sold out. After a 5.080m long A-section followed by a 940m Transfer-section, the competitors will enter the B-section covering nine kilometres and eight obstacles.

Results