UPDATE: Here. Last month’s Ecco FEI European championships in Herning were the biggest sporting event of the year for Denmark. Hundreds of riders and thousands of fans came from across the continent for dressage, paradressage and show jumping competitions. But amid the clear rounds and medal ceremonies there was a groundswell of discontent with the …
Continue reading “Rollkur, the FEI and Byrialsen: An Interview with Julie Taylor of Epona TV”
Have you recovered from the emotional rollercoaster of the Olympics? I think I nearly have. If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that my dressage experience is nugatory. It’s not something I did as a child and I certainly wasn’t interested in watching it beyond the first phase of the three-day event. Boring! But …
Continue reading “Post-Olympic Thoughts and the War of Hyperflexion vs. Harmony”
When we see pictures of dressage horses with extremely flexed necks, are we looking at moments in time? Random split seconds where a horse is tossing its head or biting a fly? In the week of the 2012 London Olympics, photos were released of dressage horses being hyperflexed or ridden in so-called “rollkur”. The defense: …
Lee McEver, groom to US showjumper Antares, completes his round at Greenwich. How many of you were doing something similar? I go up on my toes every time a British horse jumps – movement restricted by the small clingy cat who likes to stay in my lap all day. Haven’t caught myself doing a home …
Can you imagine trying to rollkur the neck on that horse? I can’t… This combo scored 71.520 in the first test at Greenwich, below Mr Kittel and Scandic, who got 74.073.
UPDATE: EPONA TV’s OLYMPIC WARM-UP ARENA FOOTAGE. It’s the second day of dressage at the 2012 Olympics, and although the mainstream media has largely ignored the fact that the UK are currently in team gold and individual gold and silver positions thanks to Carl Hester and Laura Bechtolsheimer, they should pay as much attention to …
Everyone has jumped in to say something about Rafalca, the Romney’s contender for the 2012 Olympics. The Romneys are rich and they run their hobby as a company, meaning that their spending on dressage is public domain information, so of course when it was widely reported that they were claiming $77,000 in tax deductions on …
Continue reading “The Romneys, their Dancing Horses and a Fraud Trial”
At the 2010 World Equestrian Games, the Dutch stallion Moorlands Totilas swept all before him with his rider Edward Gal. They took all three gold medals, capping a four-year partnership in which the pair had shattered dressage records around the world. Here’s their freestyle kur at Lexington in autumn 2010: Only days later, the stallion’s …
British rider Carl Hester and Uthopia perform their last freestyle to Tom Jones at the World Dressage Masters at Hickstead earlier this summer. Sadly the fuddy-duddies complained, and now the pair are accompanied by something a wee bit more classical. Carl and Uthopia just led a British team to gold at the European Dressage Championships …
Continue reading “It’s Not Unusual [To Turn Out Your Horse]”
