The Slower Road

Here (finally!) are the promised notes from my conversation with Michael Freund last Thursday.

Germany’s Michael Freund is a twelve-time German national champion and two-time world champion (in 1994 and 2004) in the sport of four-in-hand driving. He was on the world championship gold-medal team four times (in 1992, 1994, 2000, and 2006). In the relatively new sport of World Cup driving, Michael finished the year in first place in 2001/02, 2002/03, 2003/04, and 2004/05 (he was tied that year with Holland’s Ysbrand Chardon). He (Michael) won the 2007 World Cup Final and was the winner of the FEI Top Driver Award in both 2001 and 2004.

He was hired earlier this year to serve as the coach of the U.S. team for next year’s Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. Of course, at the moment, there is no team, so he’s keeping an eye on the up-and-coming U.S. drivers working with Germany’s Peter Tischer, who was hired last year as the coach for the developing U.S. drivers.

Michael also continues to work with his individual, longtime clients: Chester Weber, Tucker Johnson, and others here in the U.S. and elsewhere.

He’s had quite a lot of practice in the art and sport of driving, having grown up in a driving family. He says that he’s probably been driving altogether for a total of thirty-five or forty years. He first competed in the four-in-hand division in 1975, having competed before then in the pony, single, and pair divisions. He retired from competition after winning the team gold medal at the 2006 WEG in Aachen.

I asked Michael whether he focuses on training people or horses. He said that after he won his first world championship (team gold in 1992 in Riesenbeck, Germany), people started to ask, “Can you help me?” and so he was more and more in demand as a trainer of people wanting to improve their driving skills. At that point in his career, Michael still had a regular job, and horses (driving, competing, and training) were a hobby. But from 1992 up through 1999, he was asked to do more and more training. In 1999, he made the career switch to make training his full-time profession. He and his brother, Fred, now run a barn/training facility with twenty-seven stalls. Michael explains that he works with people and horses as a driving unit but that he doesn’t start horses. All the horses that come to him are already broke to drive.

Having heard that Michael’s son, Marco, is also in the “family business,” I was curious to know whether his son competes and how well he’s doing. Michael proudly reported that Marco was the youngest driver to have qualified for his local state (Hessen) driving championships, where he competed last month against eighteen other drivers in the open class. Marco started driving when he was five years old and now drives and competes with a pair of Shetlands. Michael assured me that the ponies are “trained just like the big horses.”

I asked Michael what he thinks has been the most influential change in the sport during the time he’s been involved. Almost without hesitation, he said that he believes the indoor World Cup competitions have been a big help in making the sport more public. (If you’re not familiar with World Cup driving, it’s like a combined marathon obstacle and small cones course, held at high speed in an indoor arena.) Michael said that these events bring a lot of publicity to driving, and they’re easy for people to see and understand, which is one way to sell the sport to those who know nothing about horses.

Michal admitted that one of his gripes with the traditional marathon courses is that, while people can stand by the marathon obstacles and see who goes the fastest, they might not understand when the fastest driver doesn’t place well because of penalty points on the walk section, for instance. He says that the marathon walk section makes little sense anymore. “When the marathons were very long, it was a ‘relax’ section but now it only causes stress.” He explained that driving attracts so many different breeds of horses, and many of them simply can’t walk fast enough to make the correct times.

Going back to the World Cup competitions, he said that for many of the shows that hosted World Cup events, those nights were sold out, and attendance at the “regular” driving events (the CAIs) increased as well.

Looking forward to the Lexington Combined Driving Classic (the WEG test event), which will take place here at the KY Horse Park the first weekend in October: Michael will be here to help a few clients and to observe the developing U.S. drivers. He said that he’s not been to either the KHP or this event before, so I hope to catch up with him during or after the event to see what he thinks of the WEG preparations.