Corner C


By Judy Wardrope Curios – A Driving Dynamo


urios held a very important position on champion Boyd Exell’s winning four- in-hand team at the World Equestrian


Games in France: right leader. According to Boyd, who is from Australia and based in the U.K., the KWPN gelding exhibits as close to ideal conformation as any driving horse out there.


Lumbosacral gap (LS) – Since a top


driving horse must produce power from the hindquarters and transfer that power forward, we would expect good LS placement. In this case it is excellent. A line drawn from the point of one hip to the point of the opposite hip bisects the gap just in front of the high point of croup for maximum transfer of power.


Rear triangle – Given the demands of the


sport—excellent movement, superior flexibility, ground-covering stride—we would expect the driving horse to be endowed with considerable dressage ability. That is what we find here. His ilium side is the shortest side of the rear triangle, which is definitely a dressage trait. Boyd says that the type of movement


exhibited by horses with a shorter femur (hocks trailing behind and lack of reach under the body but with hock action) will fool judges at lower levels, but will fool fewer international judges. In addition there are the soundness issues that correspond to the short-femur construction. Stifle placement – Due to the advantage a ground-covering stride creates in this sport, we


80 January/February 2015


Conformation


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