Please find below comments from French Equestrian Federation regarding Driving at WEG.

Proposed Competition Format Driving H4

French NF supports Driving Technical Committee regarding the choice of Four in Hand horses class at WEG to ensure top sport quality.

The H4 class is the class which brings a maximum of : hight sport performances, public/fans, sponsors, images in all memories, typical driving values...

However in order to decrease costs involved for WEG OC and NF and increase the number of competitive teams , it should be good to adapt the team composition by :

- team of 2 drivers, no drop score. We support this idea only for WEG because it would be too much restrictive for other championships.

- 1 individual driver for each nation who send a team and 3 for host nation

- possibility of additional entries if OC allow it, with same number for all countries including host nation.

WEG Competition Format

French NF is supporting the idea of 2 different competitions (excluding marathon) for individual and team ranking. It makes it much more entertaining and understandable and for the public.

For the dressage French NF supports the idea of Pas de Deux with 2 drivers per nation which makes a real team results. We do not support Individual Kur proposal.

For the cones French NF does not support the FEI proposal.

Strangely, while in Jumping and Eventing the proposed change is to have first individual competition/podium and then team competition/podium the Driving proposal is the opposite.Team podium needs to be the last one because it’s the more important one for public, NF, governmental bodies.
Cones drive off relay as last team competition would bring a great added value of team spirit and would respect horse welfare which is not the case with combined marathon proposal. Do not forget that with these proposals, horse efforts will be bigger than nowadays : 2 Dressage competition (and so warming up time) instead of 1, Marathon stays the same, 2 Cones competitions instead of 1.

Please find our proposal,

Day 1 AM : Short dressage test - Individual ranking

Day 1 PM : Pas de deux - Team ranking

Day 2 : Marathon - Team & Individual rankings

Day 4 AM : Cones - Individual ranking

Day 4 PM : Team final based on Cones Drive-off relay (2 drivers/nation) of the top 6 (has to be defined) nations after the individual cones

With this schedule horse welfare is respected and sport entertainment, and team aspects are increased

Additionnal remark regarding horse welfare and Driving Sport Promotion

This point is mainly an horse welfare issue. The improvement which can be brought for the marathon is to allow as an option for the OC "30 minutes warming up session" inside a training arena under supervision of steward instead of Section A.

It would be a much better way to organize when OC has no good tracks to warm up horses than what is done in 90% of international events.

Section A with asphalt like there is more and more is no longer acceptable especially when you know that for pairs and teams it’s not possible to fix the studs during the halt so all horses are doing the section A with them even if it is on asphalt.

By changing this rule, FEI would make the best choice to take care about horse welfare which is unfortunatelly not the case nowadays regarding this point.
This is not as important as the first point but nevertheless important, FEI would also do his best for the growing of the driving sport. By this change, FEI could help organizer and drivers to promote driving sport closer to the public and so closer to the sponsors. All driving actors would be winners with this “warming up time" instead of A section.