A passenger's eye view!

"What better way to start the week?" I asked myself… It was a beautiful May Monday morning and I was enjoying a carriage drive through Windsor Great Park, courtesy of one of Holland's up and coming young drivers, Bennie Gosschalk, together with his girlfriend, Sieith. Pulling the carriage was a smart pair of Dutch warmbloods and we seemingly had the whole of the Park to ourselves! I was able to guide Bennie past the glorious chestnut-lined 'Long Walk', stretching a mile away to Windsor Castle, all around the huge open expanse of the polo grounds and around the rhododendron rimmed lake - surroundings which Bennie said were just what the horses needed after the ten hour journey from Holland.

Bennie was competing in the Royal Windsor Carriage Driving Championships due to commence later in the week and he explained "So many hours in the horsebox make the horses just as tired as completing the marathon section of a three day event, and they spent quite a lot of the day lying down yesterday, so it is important to give them some easy exercise today." Bennie and his family had decided to make the trip into a short holiday, so came a few days early in order to enjoy just being in the area and to soak up the atmosphere of the Show.

A gentle drive in WIndsor Great Park for Bennie & Sieith

After the drive we gathered at the family's huge horsebox and it was soon evident that just to be able to compete at Royal Windsor was in itself the fulfilment of an ambition and that it was the one show, outside Holland at least, that really mattered to Bennie. He said, "It is a wonderful show - probably the best in Europe. Here you have all kinds of horses - in fact, everything to do with horses, and it all looks so perfect! We really love to come here." So much so that he begged for an invitation to compete… "There were four invitations for the Dutch competition - just the leading drivers of last year in each section were invited, and I was only fourth on the international list so I decided to email the show office and ask if I could come too!" To his joy, Bennie eventually received a positive response and soon the family and horses were on their way.

Bennie is still at university, taking business studies, so carriage driving is very much a sport as far as he is concerned albeit one that he takes very seriously. Coming from a family background such as his, it is not surprising. Bennie's father, Pieter, had taken up carriage driving during the mid 1980s and competed at Royal Windsor on his own account, winning the Pairs Competition in 1993 and 1994. Bennie stressed that he was trying hard to win it too!

I enquired how Pieter rated his young successor. He replied "He has better 'hands' than I have - I can't deny it. He has prepared these horses himself and they go well for him." Pieter Gosschalk had a particularly good horse called Latino that he planned to keep to help Bennie in his early days. However, an American made him an offer that he 'could not refuse' and Bennie had to begin from scratch. On reflection, Bennie feels that this was a good thing. He began with Kingstone - now an 8 year old, and one of the pair that had pulled the carriage around the Park, the other horse being Cezar, a 16 year old.

Matching strides.......

In order to compete in the three day competition Bennie has a team of three horses, the third being Ewaild, a 14 year old, who Bennie planned to use in the marathon section, replacing Cezar. Bennie manages to arrange a 'long weekend' most weeks when he travels home from university in order to train his horses, and he has had to make the best of them - not having unlimited funds! He explained, "In Holland, the horses that are not good enough for dressage or show jumping are the ones that go to carriage driving." Some rejects! Especially when you consider the record of Dutch teams in world-class carriage driving competition - usually using their warmbloods.

Carriage driving really does seem to function on a sporting level, with friendly rivalry of course, but it is still an amateur sport. Bennie said "We do this for the glory, not money! At the end of this competition I might win a cup!" (There is prize money but even the winner would hardly cover the expenses of travelling to and attending the Show.) I enquired about the apparent friendliness among the carriage drivers and Pieter Gosschalk said that drivers would always warn each other about oversights that could lead to a fellow competitor's elimination, e.g. forgetting to remove the horses' protective boots used in practice before entering the arena. He said, "We all want to win, of course, but not because someone else loses for some trivial reason."

Continues........