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The
British Horse Driving Trials Association Announces Great Britain's
Combined Pony World Championship Team
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Following
the last of four selection events through this season, the drivers
to represent Great Britain at the first Combined Pony World Championships
for singles, pairs and four-in-hands to be held in Karlstetten,
Austria from 14-17 August was announced at Sandringham. Julie Camm
and Sara Howe are the single pony representatives, Ursula Hirschberg
and Jo Rennison the pony pairs and Emily Bennett and John Pickford
the pony teams. These drivers will be taking part in history-in-the-making
for there has never been a World Championship for ponies before.
Julie
Camm, a hotelier from Bristol, will be driving her Welsh Section
D mare, Pannau Pandora, with whom she won the first and second national
driving events of the season at Brighton and Hopetoun House. Sara
Howe, an instructor who runs Bradbourne Carriage Driving Centre,
Sevenoaks, Kent drives Coster Llewellyn, Jane MacDonald's Welsh
pony, whom she has been competing successfully for some four years.
They won at Newnham Park, in Devon.
Ursula
Hirschberg, from Cheshire, is better known as a pony four-in-hand
driver, in which capacity she has represented Great Britain at previous
European Pony Team Championships, notably helping to win the team
silver medal at Saumur in 1999. Circumstances combined to make her
decide to compete in pony pairs this year; always in the ribbons,
she scored a win at Hopetoun House.
Surrey-based,
Jo Rennison is a comparative newcomer into pony pairs but had a
fantastic season last year when she was unbeaten throughout. Still
on form this year, she has notched up wins at Brighton and Sandringham.
In
her late 20s, Emily Bennett, from Cheshire, has been competing since
she was 14 and is in the unique position of having been single pony,
pony pair, pony tandem and pony team national champion; she had
wins at Brighton, Newnham Park and Sandringham. A member of the
British team that competed at
the 2002 European Pony Team Championships, where she was the highest
placed Brit, she drives a superb team of black Welsh ponies.
Hampshire-based,
John Pickford, previously a successful pony pairs driver, has been
competing in pony teams for some four years and drives a team of
pretty chestnut Welsh ponies; he won at Hopetoun House.
Our
team will be competing against the 12 other nations - Austria, Belgium,
Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Norway and Sweden - who have currently announced their
intention to send a team.
If
the organisation allows competing countries to send individual drivers,
Liz Rowe (pony), Georgina Frith (pairs) and Phillipa Gammell (four-in-hand)
will also take part in the championships. Bob Johnston will be the
Chef d'equipe assisted by Rosemary Neale and the team trainer is
Boyd Exell who was instrumental in the pony team success at Saumur
when the GB team achieved the silver medal.
Major
fund raising has been taking place to help send our drivers to Austria
and Steve Jarman of www.carriagesales.com will also support the
team.
www.bef.co.uk
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