RIO: Dressage – The Kur

Story – Christopher Hector and Photos – Rebecca Ashton

It’s time for the Kür – the individual final – can Valegro makes it to back to back gold?

Finally we are getting to the business end of the competition, Hans Peter Minderhoud and a horse I really love, the stallion Johnson – even if he is consistently out behind. The music is good for a mature stallion. Super double piroutte, great expressive changes. Huge extended canter into passage would have been great, if it had come off. 80.533

Hans Peter Minderhoud and Johnson

Carlo and Barney fired up today, what the heck, they have nothing to lose. The score is on a Charleston Theme, and they can concentrate on the stuff they do well, like changes and pirouettes and big bold canters, great passage and okay piaffe. Go Guys Great Test, now get going out the back to fire up Princess Charlotte. 82.482

Carl Hester and Nip Tuck

Beatriz Ferrer-Salat’s Delgado is so much better, stronger than he was last year in Aachen Euros when he was a trifle over scored. With good work, the chestnut is much more engaged, super walk, canter lovely so light to the ground, choreography flows it has its own logic, it unfolds to great music by Edgar Guttierez. 80.161

Beatriz Ferrer-Salat and Delgado

Arlando is really about the nicest style of Dutch dressage, you get the crispness, the electricity but there is always the tendency to be out mincing along behind while the front ones wave extravagantly. Nice relaxed walk, the horse can lengthen his neck. There’s more nice stuff and a few whoopsies for a score of 79.535.

Diederik van Silfhout and Arlando

Tina Broring-Sprehe’s Desperados looks freer, more rhtyhmic today, perfectly in synch with the music composed for her by Ralf Roder. Superb piaffe pirouette and without hesitation into walk, love the rest, taking risks, but the black stalllion sweetly relaxed. Maybe there are one, two, or maybe even three too many canter pirouettes. Fab final extended trot, passage, piaffe 1/4 turn, passage another quarter piaffe. Just an amazing test – 87.142

Tina Broring-Sprehe and Desperados

Now Charlotte, time to get serious. Her music arranger Tom Hunt has taken his inspiration from a cartoon – Rio – suddenly someone has the nous to recognize that we are in Brazil and serve up music that reflects the fact. That must be a 10 trot diagonal, half pass into 180 piaffe, superb piaffe and wonderful transitiion to passage. Medium trot into perfect double pirouette, she nails the changes – huge ones, another sublime double pirouette and the carnival in the background is hotting up for bending line of 2s, piaffe pirouette one way and then the other, not a single mistake. 93.928. Sublime.

Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro

Dorothee Schneider and Showtime enter the arena: Voice over on her score – ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s SHOWTIME’. She has chosen Queen’s The Show Must Go On, but the show gets a little messy today. Still they score 82.946.

Dorothee Schneider and Showtime

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Spain’s Lorenzo is ridden by Severo Jurado Lopez who has the awful lean back, drive into the reins and throttle the horse ‘style’,  that is the Helgstrand stable trademark – still I guess he will become pinup boy for all the little thugs who ride just like him. Severo tries lots of things, most of them don’t come off, finishes with the crowd clapping along the centre line, to Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life. They love him, I don’t. When the score of 83.553, whistles and boos, they think it too little, it was way more than he deserved.

 Severo Jurado Lopez and Lorenzo

Laura Graves and Verdades – it’s really a bit of a normal horse, and when flashy brilliance is required it is not really there. They try, doing tricky things like a circle of twos, into a line of ones, but the test never takes flight. The horse is more impressive in the GP where he just has the movements to master. Score 85.196

Laura Graves and Verdades

Isabell Werth has an original score by Michael Erdmann, and while the music swells the canter is flat. Weihegold breaks in extended trot. Can Isabell hypnotise the judges a second time? The music is becoming too choppy, my feeling Laura should be bronze behind Tina Sprehe, but I guess that won’t happen. 89.07.

Isabell Werth and Weihegold

Silver to Isabell, Bronze to Tina.

Later Charlotte confesses that the pressure of everyone’s expectations on her got to her: “Today was the first time I felt nervous going in, but as soon as I trotted around the arena, Valegro gave me a great feeling. I smiled and we were on our way. It was a partnership, the bond, the connection, the test was effortless.”

“He’s a banana, bless him, we’ve been together for nine years, it’s definitely time now…”

PS.

On my way to our press tribune I run into the usually media super friendly High Performance Manager, Chris Webb.

Can you tell me when you got the results from the Australian vets blood test at Rotterdam?

“You know I can’t make any comment, you have to go through the AOC.”

Well no, Chris, team managements are regularly briefing the press on a whole range of issues without going to their Olympic authorities – and how on earth would the AOC know who the Australian equestrian vets told, and when? Seems the pressure is getting to him, and having his job advertised at the weekend probably didn’t improve his normally sunny disposition.