Ocala, Fla. – The first combined driving National Championship title of 2016 will be decided this weekend as Live Oak International CDE hosts the USEF Four-in-Hand Driving National Championship. A small, but impressive field that includes all members of the fourth-placed team from the 2014 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG) will contest the championship, taking place February 24-28 at Live Oak Plantation in Ocala, Fla.

Eying his 13th USEF Four-In-Hand Driving National Championship title will be Chester Weber (Ocala, Fla.) with his and Jane Clark’s team of KWPN geldings. The Individual Silver medalist from the 2014 WEG, placed in the top five of every outing in 2015, including four stateside wins. Weber enters the National Championship with momentum, having topped the CAI2*-H4 division at Little Everglades earlier this month, winning all phases of the competition.

Fellow WEG teammates Misdee Wrigley Miller (Lakewood Ranch, Fla.) and Allison Stroud (West Grove, Pa.) have proven to be forces in international and national competition in just a few short years. This will be Wrigley Miller’s first outing in FEI competition in 2016, having had a successful 2015 that saw second-place finishes at four U.S. CDEs. Stroud is coming off a second-place finished with Willow Star LLC’s team at the Little Everglades CDE.

Rounding out the field will be newcomer to the sport of four-in-hand driving, Craig Grange (Delmar, Iowa) who recently began competing a team at the FEI level after a long career in draft horse driving.

Competition gets underway Thursday with the dressage phase for the championship division starting at 2:40 p.m. ET, live on USEF Network. Watch the marathon phase on Saturday live on USEF Network beginning at 8:30 a.m. ET. Competition will come to a close on Sunday with the cones phase.

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