For decades, Chester Weber has been polishing and perfecting his horses and his driving skills.
All that effort paid off Friday in Aachen at the FEI World Championships, as Chester not only won the dressage phase of the four-in-hand driving competition, but also set a new world record in the process.
His score of 30.40 penalties powered the U.S. to third place in the standings before Saturday’s marathon.
After the dressage, in the individual rankings, Chester was just 1.46 penalties ahead of Australia’s perennial driving star, Boyd Exell, who is looking for his eighth world championships title.
Germany leads the team standings on 79.31 penalties with its father/daughter team of Christoph and Anna Sandmann (as well as Anna Meier), while Australia’s two-member team of Boyd and Tor van den Berge is at 81.17, and the U.S. is on 81.84.
Chester raved about his Dutchbred harness horses, especially Amadeus, his 21-year-old right wheeler.
“He’s super special. He has a huge piece of my heart. We went to Windsor this year. He’s in super form.”
He added with a smile, “It’s super nice to have that sort of PhD in knowledge right next to you.”
In addition to Chester, the U.S. team consists of championships first-timer Taren Lester, seventeenth on 51.44 penalties, and James Fairclough, who first drove in a world championships in 1980 and was on the gold medal team at the 2018 World Equestrian Games with Chester.
James had to deal with pouring rain that made things uncomfortable during his dressage test. He is thirty-first with 60.83 penalties.
Click here for team standings. Click here for individual standings.
