The Indoor Carriage Driving Co. Ltd.

Indoor Trial Organisation

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Have we managed to wet your appetite and persuade you to organise an Indoor Carriage Driving trial in your area?

Here are some thoughts and advice which may help to make the Trials in your area easy to organise and trouble free on the day.

The venues have been booked and have been promoted in Carriage Driving along with the date of the event and your address. Some response will no doubt ensue, we are looking for 25 entries for each event so it may well be necessary to approach clubs and individuals locally to make up the number.
25 ENTRIES makes a good competition across three classes and should allow a spread of open, novice and junior drivers to compete. The competition will take from 9am to 4pm approx.
JUDGES who are prepared to declare their scores movement by movement are required for the Precision and Paces, 2 stewards will indicate the scores to the audience and the scorers.
We would like to use local judges wherever possible. Do you have knowledge of two people who would fit the bill, one to judge paces the other to judge the figures.? They might be qualified BHDTA judges but exceptions have been made for suitably qualified and experienced people.
On the day WE WILL PROVIDE THE OBSTACLES, CONES AND Precision and Paces MARKERS for the course which will be driven, the CHIEF STEWARD, who will need an assistant, and 2 STEWARDS / SCORERS / COMMENTATORS who will lead a team of 6 local people and will ensure the smooth running of the ring in all three phases, Precision and Paces, cones and marathon obstacles. We will also supply the T.D. who will be in overall charge of the event on the day. So as you see there will need to be approx. 9 local helpers and the Judges plus the travelling team
Once the esquires are received, schedules and information, which we supply, must be sent out Entries are normally acknowledged and Precision and Paces times given.

Assuming you now have your entries, you have booked your judges and you have your venue sorted out, what happens on the day itself.

The first phase, Precision and Paces, marked as described earlier by two judges. Its very important that competitors are on time and that there is no gap between competitors, one entering the ring immediately the previous entry has left it, approx. every 4 minutes.
CONES, the competitors remain in Precision and Paces order to do this the next phase, against a bogie time , penalties being incurred, one per second, plus or minus the time. These are then added to the cone driving faults, all scores being relayed to the scorers and announced the audience as we go along. Not all the obstacles need necessarily be pairs of cones, some other elements and obstacles may well be introduced to the course.

Cumulative scores will be announced at this point and the positioning within a class will be used in reverse order as the running order to the final phase of the competition, Marathon Obstacles.

Obstacles 1&2 are set up at opposite ends of the ring with a common start and finish gate between them. The competitors are then allowed to walk and learn them. During the competition the competitors are allowed to circle obstacle 2 once before going through the start to do obstacle 1 , every commenced second taken before leaving obstacle 1 counts as 1 penalty point. That score is added to any driving penalties incurred, knockdowns etc to produce the final score for the first obstacle.
The competitor then circles obstacle 1 once before tackling obstacle 2 on exactly the same terms. The 2 scores achieved are added to the standing score of that person, the positions in each class will be reversed , i.e. first going last, for the final two obstacles.
Everybody in each class will do the first two obstacles at which point the obstacles will be changed for the final round marathon obstacles 3 & 4 and everybody will have 10 minutes to walk them to refresh their memories Before driving them in the same way as obstacles 1&2.
Again the penalty points thus gained being added to the running totals to produce the final results.

QUALIFIERS; The three class winners , the next lowest scorer plus the best novice and best junior in the whole of the competition, are guaranteed positions in the regional finals. The organisers reserve the right to invite other competitors if all the places are not taken up. The qualifiers for the National finals from the various regional finals will be the three class winners plus the next overall lowest scorer in the competition, the best novice and the best junior ( 6 in all )..

This is how the competition should unfold on the day , we must run tightly to time the ring never being empty, otherwise it just take too long and isn't half as much fun. Assuming with your help we get the required entries and judges and stewards, we are confident we can do the rest.

Any questions?
Anything we have forgotten?
Anything you want to know more about?

Please contact us. We will be able to get the answers or help you need.

As for the day itself, where the event is more than 150 miles (2 hours travelling) from our base in Sussex, we will be travelling the day before and staying locally to event so we will be on hand from first thing on the morning to ensure we get off to a good start.

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