This is the day all the dressage fans have been waiting for, as the individual medals will be decided on the basis of this one test – the freestyle. The other performances here don’t count for those 18 horses who have made it to the final. It’s all or nothing today and the day is a hot one, the hottest yet in Rio.
Of course by now you will know the result. The magical Valegro won after a near foot-perfect performance and Charlotte has the gold medal. She is the first British woman to retain an individual Olympic gold medal, and it will be Valegro’s last Olympics.
We now bring you a horse-by-horse description of what happened. We even have guest commentary from none other than Andrea Raves and Julie Brougham for some of the tests.
With freestyle there is no scoreboard giving you an idea of the judges’ marks. You have to wait until the end to find out what the score is. This is all very well for the stalwart dressage fans here, but not very entertaining to anyone new to the sport. The crowd are a little bigger than the last dressage competition but nowhere near as many as at jumping.
Legolas, ridden by Steffen Peters from the USA is the first to go. He gives the wave and the music starts. They enter at the walk and halt immediately. Collected trot Hey, I’m Legolas says the music man in rap-style, to the beat of Ice Ice Baby. It’s into passage for Steffen and then canter pirouette, which didn’t look like it was held on the spot to me. Half-passes, flying changes, they keep coming. The classical-style music is unrecognisable to me but works for the different movements the horse is doing. More pirouettes, this time a double and it seems to work okay for them. A little piaffe and then into the extended walk. He looks a bit hesitant at the walk. I briefly wonder if my friend Andrew Bennie, who is one of the writers, has time to message me with his judge’s scores. More passage, and then piaffe but again not held that well. I don’t think this will be rolling in 9s. Steffan seems happy and the American supporters give him a big cheer. We have to wait a few minutes before his score comes up. 79.428%. The big screen flashes up the individual judges’ scores so fast we can’t read them all in time.
The next competitor is Anna Kasprzak from Denmark on DonnPerignon. He looks a bit tense and breaks into a canter outside the arena instead of trotting like the rider wanted. She settles him and enters at collected trot, halting about a quarter of the way down the centreline and then into canter. Pirouette twice, flying changes, and then into piaffe again. That looks quite good. Trotting now, she unleashes a lovely extended trot. Piaffes and half-passes. Her music is a Genesis compilation, and I especially like the In the Air tonight part. Score: 76.982%.
Allison Brock is next in on Rosevelt, representing the USA and I am joined by Andrea Raves, respected New Zealand dressage coach, here with Julie Brougham and Steiny. The quality of the reporting immediately improves markedly. Alison’s entry could have been a bit sharper, to get a better mark. Her horse’s carriage could be a little bit high perhaps; the piaffe shows a bit of resistance against the hand, the horse is not quite through over the back. Rosevelt’s canter is good, Andrea likes this canter and so do I but neither of us are fans of the music. Andrea concedes that of course this is a personal thing, and perhaps neither of us are violin fans. There is a mistake in the change, but she recovers to do a fair pirouette although it was a bit too fast. Allison then elects to do the more difficult challenge of two-time changes on the curve and she executes this well, so should pick up a few marks there. Now the onesies. There is a bit of tail-flicking, and they could be a bit more forward to get a better mark. We both agree her extended trot is lovely. It is a good strategy to do these after the canter work, when the horses can often have more energy. He is rounder now and better, which is good, as at the beginning of the test he was a bit hollow. Allison is doing a good job, and the crowd are delighted with her. 76.160%. One judge gave her a 80%! Andrea is amazed at that. Afterwards, Allison tells us a bit more about the music. “For the canter I used Mr And Mrs Smith, this waltzy thing that suits him. It does not annoy the audience but draws you into the horse more.” She hadn’t done a lot of practice for the freestyle, however. “We were focused so much on the team stuff. It was all about the team, the team, the team. I am really embarrassed to admit that.”
British rider Fiona Bigwood is next in on Orthilia. She’s been doing some good work and that is a nice passage to start her test. She’s doing some quality work but then a big mistake when she cantered when she should have been passaging. The submission won’t be a great score as a result. The passage is very nice and the trot is fabulous at the extension. Andrea is now most impressed with Orthilia’s passage. Fiona just pushed too much the first time. It’s very nice now, has to be 8s says Andrea. A very good double pirouette, and Andrea thinks Fiona is doing a great job. Passage is pretty and the pirouette is good again, balanced, and two rounds of it should get a good mark. The mare is not as expressive in the canter as she is in the passage. Extended canter and then another good pirouette and flying changes. She was going to go straight into passage but there was a bit of a hesitation; Andrea says that’s a hard transition to pull off. She fans on to the centreline and that is “pretty bloody good,” says Andrea. One more mistake when she canters instead of doing extended trot and then it is the last halt. 76.018%.
Patrik Kittel, on Deja is in for Sweden next. The music starts, and sounds dramatic and Patrik enters with a passage, which is slightly uneven behind. Good halt and straight into extended trot. The half-pass could have had a bit more bend on the way back but Andrea still rates it. Only suggestion for the piaffe was that it could be a bit crisper. The extended trot was nice, and nicely back to the passage as he had the energy from behind for that. Deja paddles and weaves a bit in the piaffe: if it was straight towards the judge they would get marked down but that was good use of the arena as the judges don’t get the view we had. Andrea thinks there is a bit of unevenness in the walk, but likes the canter work. There is the suggestion that perhaps the contact is a little bit too high and the changes are not this horse’s thing. Patrik regroups and tries it again – they get a bit long and she gets away from him slightly, but with some good riding, he uses his “spare line” to execute the changes. The counter canter into extended trot was nice. Passage and then a fan on to centreline, but all a bit too forward now and then they couldn’t get out of the passage well, so a bit of a hesitant moment. Halt and big pats for Deja. We anticipate that Patrik should score less than the others as there were some mistakes. 76.018%. We hear afterwards that Patrik had originally planned to use other music, but found out three days ago that he couldn’t get the rights to use it so had to make a last-minute change.
Judy Reynolds is in next, she’s the first Irish dressage rider to get to the final of the Olympic dressage competition. Andrea says Judy has had a great campaign, been to lots of shows and put herself in front of these judges again and again. This is important; judges need to see you out and about on the international stage. Judy enters the arena in a strong passage but while she rushes the halt, she does manage to keep him there just long enough. The music is jaunty, and Vancouver K crosses his front feet a bit at piaffe. Sometimes horses find a balance and then it becomes hard to change them, and often you just have to accept it, says Andrea. The canter and tempis on the diagonal go well but they won’t get added scores for the degree of difficulity. Extended canter – she’s going for it – then one-time changes now, and they are good. Well done, but again a straight line rather than on the curve, so not as difficult as some of the others. Half-pass at canter was good. Here comes the other piaffe, and that got too fast and he changed legs behind, so that wasn’t good. She’s run out of time to do another pirouette to the left. That’s going to affect her marks badly. Into piaffe-pirouette and that goes well. The horse is getting a bit strong now but she is holding it together brilliantly. Good on her. 75.696% for Judy.
There’s another break and then it is the turn of the Netherlands’ Hans-Peter Minderhoud with Johnson. Andrea and I both agree that he is a lovely horse. He enters at passage but it is not a great one. He moves from the halt into more passage, and that’s better. Nice piaffe but the front leg and back leg don’t quite match. A lovely extension, however, but another sticky piaffe before a reliable half-pass. The trot work is looking good. Those extensions are lovely, just lovely. Even Andrea is impressed. In the piaffe the right hind is stepping back/out a bit from our vantage point. Now the walk. It is a bit of an uptight short walk and extended walk and you can see the tension in his body as he holds himself a bit ready for the next transition. Into the canter work now, a little tail-swishing but not enough to trouble the judges. Relatively big piaffe but it is balanced. Extended canter is very good, very expressive and then into the pirouette, which is hard. His onesies are good, but not great, just on the diagonal, but perhaps it is better safe than sorry. Canter to passage is not easy but he gets it okay. Good piaffe-pirouette. Straight into extended trot. We are liking this test and we pick that it should go into the lead, we cross our fingers. Yes; 80.553%. Well done Johnson! High fives from Andrea. We might start a Johnson fan club.
Cathrine Dufour from Denmark is being led into the arena on Cassidy but released just before the judges’ boxes. This is a pretty chestnut horse. Andrea thinks that she wanted to be a bit more in the spot for that pirouette, but the flying changes come nicely. It’s a smooth test, with some degree of difficulty – for instance, she does tempis on the curve. We decide it is not as good as Johnson’s test but perhaps there may be some bias creeping in. Good transition walk to canter and now into pirouette, then into a half-pass and that went well, and that’s a pretty hard movement! Pirouettes – his rhythm is quite slow for those but effective enough. His score is 78%.
Carl Hester is next on Nip Tuck for Great Britain. Carl has been busy as he also coaches his three team mates. We’ve been joined by David and Julie Brougham who are relieved to be able to get into the shade in the press tribunes instead of the baking-hot unsheltered stand for competitors. Carl gets a lot out of this horse, he is a great rider and Andrea likes his style. The wave and then the music. Come on Carl, let’s dance! Into the halt from trot, only just in the arena and then into passage down the centreline. A piaffe-pirouette is nice and slow and well balanced, perhaps could have been a little more forward but it is well executed. Carl’s passage is lovely and then he is into canter and then pirouette. That’s different and that is a good idea, says Andrea. He pulled it off well. Andrea says she hasn’t seen that very often – so, well done, Carl. He does the more difficult movement with the tempis on the curve and he does that well too. We could be looking at a new leader if he keeps this up. The pirouette is great, two complete rotations and gets a “very good” comment from Andrea. Extended canter, but first he waited for the music to change – so, well done there again, Carl. He’s quite the operator. We are liking this test. Passage to half-passes are really good, doing a good job. The choreography is beautiful and he gets a big clap. We are predicting that he will go to about 83%. Brilliant, amazing, says Andrea. Well done, Carl. 82.482%. That’s great. Carl was delighted with his horse. “The mark actually matched my feeling, which is nice because sometimes you do not know what you will get. He was just so relaxed today. He just came in there after five minutes of walking, I picked up the reins and round he went. It was a great feeling.”
Beatriz Ferrer-Salat from Spain on Delgado is next. Her long skinny legs are perfect for a dressage rider. Beatriz waves and the music starts and it is a lovely collected trot into the arena, nicely forward and a good halt. Dramatic music, and goes well with the passage. Now we are into the extended trot and that looks good. Passage again, and really goes well with the music. Delgago breaks in his extended trot, just tried a bit too hard, what a shame. Canter now and into the tempis across the diagonal and then up the centreline, so that makes it a bit harder. The extended canter is lovely. The one-timers are a bit short to the right, says Andrea. Piaffe to passage; we like her passage and it is quite forward. The piaffe-pirouette also rates well in Andrea’s opinion. A full pirouette and then a halt. First extension was fabulous but that little blip in the second will lose marks. Overall a quality test but we don’t think it will top Carl’s. Sure enough, 80.161% for Beatriz.
Arlando is next in, with Diederik van Silfhout of the Netherlands. The test is kick-started with a passage, and a very flash extended trot. There is a bit of tension, however. The walk is not very big, because he holds himself a bit too much. The horse is a bit hesitant. There were some nice pirouettes, he’ll be pleased with those. The two-time changes on a curve came off well. The canter is lovely and into the half pass – okay, not marvellous and made a bit of a mistake in the one-times. The choreography is not that easy to follow. Extended canter could have had more power but he is giving us the impression he doesn’t want to let go. More one-times now, using his spare line so he gets a better mark for them and this time it works out. Tick the box there! The passage looks a bit tense, and he is finding the piaffe a bit hard. Andrea and Julie both think the score may be low, but because he is later in the draw he might be lucky. Once judges start giving 80-plus, they seem to find it hard to go back down to the 70s. The score comes through at 79.535% and Julie and Andrea are very surprised; they really didn’t think it was that good.
The stands are filling up now. Tinne Wilhelmsson Silfven and Don Auriello from Sweden are our next competitors. Her halt was not maintained, so a bit of tension being shown there. He’s not going that well behind, and here’s a good extended trot to Good Vibrations from the Beach Boys but we feel it doesn’t fit that well with what we are seeing in front of us. The piaffe didn’t keep the rhythm, and my experts say the horse is not ‘pinging behind’; he needs to pick up his hind legs more. Suggestions are that he perhaps needs a bit more bend. More flashy extended trot, those front legs are flicking out well but he is a bit lazy behind. He lowers nicely in the piaffe. Onesies then into a one-handed pirouette, and it went well. He’s good at pirouettes so our experts think it is well worth the risk of doing these one-handed and scoring the extra points on offer. Another one-handed one – now she is just showing off! Canter work is the feature of this test but he ‘fell on his face’ at the extended trot. Tried too hard, and not forward enough in this pirouette. There’s a big cheer from the crowd but Julie and Andrea don’t think she will score over 80 despite those lovely pirouettes. But the judges disagree with us and they give her 81.535%.
The final break for arena grooming is on and we all have to move. Andrea and Julie have to go and meet some others, and I have to go and do some interviews. Andrea and Julie both are predicting Valegro will win, and they are also mighty impressed with the previous work from Showtime and Weihegold OLD.
Kristina Broring-Sprehe’s test with Desperados is lovely for Germany, and there are lots of hugs and kisses in the kiss and cry zone among her team. After the test she told us she was very proud of her horse, who scores 87.142% and rockets into the lead. “He wanted to work the whole time. I love this horse. We needed a little more power today but it was difficult with this heat. After we won the team gold the pressure had gone down a bit. We tried our best and I am happy with whatever we will get.”
When her score is announced, Valegro and Charlotte are just coming into the arena, so there are cheers for Kristina’s score from the Germans and more discreet cheers for Valegro from his British fans. Valegro doeesn’t bat an eyelid and goes on to do a foot-perfect test, to take the lead and then win the gold medal on a score of 93.928%, a new Olympic record. He beat his own score from London which was 90.089%. I liked the music, it had a slight Brazilian theme and suited the movement of the horse.
But there are still some competitors to come and they are all good, and capable of posting great scores. Germany’s Dorothee Schneider on Showtime FRH had done some beautiful work in her earlier tests. Her entrance was dramatic. “Ladies and gentleman, it is showtime!” the music announced and Showtime must have been a bit put off as he didn’t quite hold his first piaffe. The Queen-themed music was great and he got better and better. Even Freddie Mercury was heard; they were one of the few who had lyrics to any of their music. Showtime made another mistake when he didn’t come out of his pirouette properly, but got it the next time. He looked strong at his extended canter and even better at his extended trot. His last passage to The Show Must Go On was sheer brilliance, but unfortunately he mucked up his last piaffe a bit and scored 82.946%. Dorothee was disappointed and described her test as: “Not that good, as he lost power. In the warm-up he was good, but in the arena he was not what I expected. He has done three big competitions, the weather is so hot and the power was not there. He made mistakes at his pirouette and his flying changes. But he is a wonderful horse and he has done a good job here.”
Severo Jesus Jurado Lopez, the handsome young Spanish sensation really got the crowd going to his snappy Santana music with Lorenzo. His extended trot was wow. The movements were real crowd-pleasers but his passage was technically not as good as the others, and generally the degree of difficulty of the test was not equal to those of the eventual winners. However, he became a firm crowd favourite at that point, helped by getting them clapping and singing as he did his final one-handed passage up the centreline. “He’s a gold medal in my heart,” said our young Olympic reporting team member, Jessica Coates, whose job it is to collect quotes from riders for general press releases. When his score was announced, 83.553%, the crowd booed. They thought it should have got more.
The young man himself was grinning from ear to ear. “It is really amazing. It is a lot more than what I thought I would get. When the music is feeling good to the horse and the horse is in good shape, you just have to concentrate and listen and make the horse follow. I chose Santana because I come from the South, I like the music and it is good music to bring to international people. The horse is young, he is 10 years old. It is his first year on Grand Prix. He has a lot to improve, but I am 100% sure that he will end up a top, top horse.”
Laura Graves from the USA with Verdades comes into the arena looking great and delivers a very good test, with an excellent degree of technical difficulty. When her score is announced (85.196%), the crowd boos even louder than they did for Severo and it goes on for some time. It isn’t just the American spectators, it is throughout the stadium. Talking to Andrea afterwards, she said she too joined in the booing, which is not like her, but she thought the test was the second best of the day and that Laura should have gone into silver medal position. Laura herself didn’t express any disappointment, however. “I do not feel like I had quite as much horse as I have had the past couple of days. It is obviously very hot, and we have been here now for a day over two weeks. So, it has been a long time to keep our horses going like this, in peak form. I think if I had had a little more horse we could have snuck in a few more percentage points. I believe in having a system. I believe in following a routine, finding a trainer that you trust and staying with them.”
There is one horse to go, and Germany’s Isabell Werth has been impressing all week with Weihegold OLD. She makes a mistake early, and also looks a bit heavy on the last day. The horse is obviously a bit tired but still performs well. The judges definitely like her and give her a 89.071%. “It was hard for the horses to deal with the different temperatures here but fantastic how they can try and worked with it. In April I didn’t expect to win a medal, so to come here today is special. When I went in I knew Charlotte’s score, and knew I was not the next world wonder, but went in and tried. We gave it 100%, couldn’t get more. Charlotte really deserved the gold medal.”
Isabell has known this horse for four years, but has only been her partner for a matter of months. “It was really great to get to know her. We have had eight months to come together. I had to use all my experience to get her on top when necessary.”
Charlotte now becomes Britain’s joint-most-successful athlete in terms of gold medals. “It is a huge privilege and honour to do that for your country,” she said.
“Today was magical. At London I had no expectations or pressure on me. Today was the first time I got nervous before coming in. I felt that pressure and expectation but as soon as I got around the arena, and felt how good Valegro was, it put a smile on my face and I knew it was going to be okay.
“It was effortless and easy. That last centreline I really got emotional. He couldn’t have done any more.”
Of course there is a lot of talk about the horse’s retirement and Charlotte signalled that he will be hanging up his competition shoes, but they haven’t decided exactly when. She needs to discuss this more with Carl but confirms that Rio was his last Olympics or big championship event. “I owe it to him to finish at the top. We will still do demonstrations and things.”
