BOYD Exell is a six-time FEI World Champion and 10-time FEI World Cup Indoor driving champion in the sport of carriage driving, and he recently returned to the region for a clinic, which is becoming an annual event on the calendar.

As carriage driving is not a mainstream sport, very little media attention is garnered by the sport and its athletes are not household names.

Exell is based in Europe, where the sport is much more popular, compared to here in Australia, and has returned to Australia for several years to conduct clinics for the growing number of participants here at home.

Last weekend Exell was at Warrayure conducting his second clinic at the property after holding his first there last January.

Exell cast his eye over talented young (and the not-so-young) drivers and their teams of horses, offering advice and imparting his amazing knowledge to one and all.

“I was first exposed to the sport as an eight-year-old by my mother and a school teacher friend of hers, when I thought I was going to pony club and going to be riding over the jumps,” he said.

“When I got there, there were only draft horses which I fell in love with, and within two days I was hooked on carriage driving.”

From this inauspicious start, Exell fell deeper in love with the sport, as he grew and he claimed the Australian Pairs Championship at the age of 16, while at the age 21 he headed off to Europe to live and compete.

“I spent 25 years living in England and the last eight years based in Valkenswaard in The Netherlands,’ Exell said.

As the oldest equestrian sport, carriage driving has ancient origins, however, it wasn’t until the Duke of Edinburgh formalised the rulebook in 1968 that it became the sport that is recognised today.

Carriage driving is made up of three disciplines just like the more widely known Equestrian eventing that most of society knows from seeing it at the Olympics.

It begins with a dressage round, in which competitors perform a set sequence of moves in a larger arena than the riding equivalent.

Next is the marathon, which is an exhilarating timed course of up to 22km, like the cross-country round in three-day eventing.

Obstacles such as water, mazes, gates, steep slopes, and tight bends test the endurance and accuracy of both driver and horses in a feat that demands sharp judgement from the driver.

Finally cone driving, where competitors must weave nimbly through a set sequence of up to 20 pairs of cones that form a timed course of up to 800m.

Balls are balanced on each of the cones, with penalties given for any dislodged by a carriage wheel or horse.

So good was the younger Exell as a driver that while he was competing for Australia, he also was training the British driving team at the same time.

Drivers come from all over the world with competitions mainly held in Europe and the USA which attract regular crowds of 9000-10000 spectators.

While the sport is professional overseas, it’s not lucrative by any means, and Exell has been able to bolster his income from his world class training facility where he has 70 horses under training.

“I have 35-40 of my own horses but the rest belong to customers, and we also have five grooms working full time looking after the animals,” he said.

It is not a cheap sport to be involved with as a competition carriage is worth upwards of $14,000, then there is the cost of the horses with their training and upkeep.

When you consider that it takes up to five years to train a horse to international standard, competitors are highly committed to the sport at the top level.

It is a sport that requires parents to support their children wholeheartedly when they start out, but many go away from the sport and come back to it later in life.

“At present a junior driver has a starting age of 40,” Exell said.

“Many people take up the sport when they are children and as they grow older, they tend to drift off to higher education and careers plus have families, but once they have settled into well-established careers and kids have grown up, they come back to driving.”

Boyd Exell 2024 Australian Clinic event coordinator, Peter Lee, was extremely happy to have Exell back in Warrayure for a second year running.

“To have Boyd come here again is magnificent, considering he was in Belgium last weekend and only arrived in Melbourne on Tuesday and was whisked out here where he started coaching straight away,” Lee said.

“The carriage driving community is relatively small in Australia compared to overseas, but there are clubs in all states and also in New Zealand.

“New Zealand participants would have been here, but they had a competition at home which they all attended.

“It’s a great opportunity for people to come and meet Boyd and gain knowledge from him about driving and the sport.

“When he leaves Warrayure after the clinic, he will head to Queensland where he will conduct another clinic then flies out to the Netherlands on Monday and he has a competition on the following Friday, which is an incredible contribution to the sport back here in Australia from Boyd.”

With no World Cup events held in Australia due to the prohibitive costs involved in having horses and equipment shipped to Australia, local competitors compete in events across all states and from there they may earn their way to driving overseas by being selected to represent Australia.