If you’ve never seen freestyle dressage, check out this link – you’re in for a treat. Horse and rider perform to music of the rider’s choosing, and in the best performances you’d swear the horse is actually dancing to the rhythm of the music.
And you’d be right. The top horses in these competitions love their work and really do key into the music. The mare in this video has happy ears and she never misses a beat. The announcers are blown away, they’re stunned speechless by how superbly she flows from tempo to tempo, from collection to extension, from – oh, heck, just watch it!
Horse people: You’ll be dropping your jaw. Non-horse people: Try it, you’ll like it. As one comment on the page said, “All that horse needs is a pair of ice skates! er, 2 pairs…”
Wow, that was incredible. It brought tears to my eyes. There’s nothing like a horse that loves to work. It’s a fantastic feeling when you pull off a performance like that (not that I ever did so well) in front of the judges and you *know * that you’ve delivered your very best.
I don’t have sound but even without it, it’s apparent that horse is enjoying itself. The tail swirling, the lightness of step, everything suggests a bit of euphoria. Also, that bit from :30 to :36 where it alternates the forward foot… just wow.
The alternating front feet is called one-tempi changes, which means the horse is changing leads at the canter with each stride. That takes long years of training and developing the horse’s strength and suppleness to the level where it can do this very difficult movement. To make it look so effortlessly floating, well… :eek:
I love dressage and try to watch it every chance I get (which isn’t often because I rarely find it on TV), and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performance like that.
This makes me just want to go hug this horse, she’s that amazing.
Phenominal pair, those two. I got all teary as well.
I know how to dance a fair bit, and often give ad hoc lessons at a local country bar, but I don’t know a damn thing about riding dressage. A thoroughbred that we used to have had had some dressage training, but we rode him western and bareback. Sometimes while riding him, I got the distinct feeling that I imagine some folks get when I first get them out on the dancefloor.
It’s my dream someday to ride an upper-level dressage horse and once, just once, know what it feels like to ride passage (floating trot) and piaffe (trot in place). The closest I ever got was riding my daisy-cutter Quarter Horse through knee-deep snow; when I asked him to trot he pumped those knees up to his chin till a few strides of that tired him back to a walk.
CTTDSWHCookies, I bet your TB did treat you to some collected gaits that felt marvelous. I once owned a TB with a very big trot, so big I called it a rocket launcher trot. With a LOT of work on my part, I could get him collected enough to float and then, oh… Wow. All that power and energy no longer working against me, now working with me, lifting me into the dance. Just the most amazing feeling.
I recall many years ago seeing Anky van Grunsven on Bonfire ride a test (was it in the 1996 Olympics? Or the World Equestrian Games?) that just blew me away. THIS is dressage, I thought, as I watched them. I believe it was fairly early in their partnership, as Bonfire wasn’t quite so polished then, you could see Anky had to keep him from blowing up at some spots – but the fire! the brilliance! the fluid athleticism! Man, it gave me the chills.
Never saw any other ride that so grabbed me, ever again – until this. I doubt I’ll ever see its like again.
That was absolutely breathtaking. I had horses for many years when I was younger, mostly just western pleasure and barrel racing though. I was sitting here frantically pointing at the computer, almost yelling at my boyfriend. “Look at this! Two separate gaits between the front and back legs! Do you have any idea how hard that is? DO YOU?!?!?”
-foxy
Thanks so much for posting that. Just beautiful. I am just beginning to learn a bit about dressage because so many of the TB’s at our rescue/retraining farm end up as dressage horses. I had no idea they had an event like that. It looks like so much fun for the horse.
I watched it again to see what the rider was doing. I can’t tell at all that he is guiding the horse. In fact even when meaning to watch the rider to see how he was communicating with the horse, I found my eyes just kept going back to the horse and easily forgot anyone was on him.
The World Equestrian Games are coming to Lexington in 2010 and I was surprised to learn what a big event that is. People are already booking rooms! After seeing that video, I can why people around here are so excited about it.
