Ella’s been in my life for 10 years, and she’s not really a spooky horse. She’s very, very simple minded, not a Rhodes Scholar, and that’s an asset. I tell her what to do, and she does it.
She can heat up, but usually in a very fun and useful way, and while no one can go in the CDI Grand Prix ring and piaffe 15 steps with no whip on a 100-degree day without having a pretty keen horse, Ella usually makes me inspire her, not hold her back.
Also know this: In the course of Ella’s life there has not been one day where she was malicious, wicked or unkind. She’s not wired that way. She’s never been aggressive, vindictive or cheeky.
So when, as we were trying to go around the outside of the arena for our CDI4* Grand Prix in the Omaha International last night, and she stopped and twirled and twirled and stood up and ran backwards and twirled and inched forward and then nope, not doing it and over and over and over again, it was because she was desperately, desperately afraid.
Sometimes I wonder if we ask too much of them. I am madly and passionately in love with my sport, and I want the world to see it and love it as I do. I want competitive dressage to draw huge crowds, to garner national media attention, to hold big, fantastic shows at cool and impressive venues and to inspire the next generations of Olympians in the form of little girls standing in rapture ringside.
But in order to do that, I have to bring 1,300 pounds of flight animal into an enclosed space full of predators and ask her to dance.
ADVERTISEMENT
Ella didn’t want to dance last night as we started going around the ring, and somehow, in the time allotted, I convinced her that I would protect her and keep her safe, and after a mighty hairy first few movements, she settled in enough to let me get a word in edgewise, and by the halfway point I had one helluva ride. Experience is the thing you get 30 seconds after you needed it, and Ella and I both earned lots of experience last night. And even with all that, she still let me ride into her enough points to place fourth. What a girl.
This evening is the freestyle, and I’ll make the most of it; I’m hoping to expose Ella to the big scary ring one more time this morning, but there’s no way to introduce them to the space with 5,000 fans until there’s 5,000 fans, which is the number of tickets they sold to today’s show—can you believe it?!
Speaking of freestyles, let me finally say a few words about what’s going to happen tonight that’s never happened in a recognized show before. Dressage freestyles are judged both on the Technical side (i.e., how well you did those changes/that piaffe/your half pass right), and on the Artistic side (including your choice of music, harmony between horse and rider, and a score called Degree of Difficulty).
That Difficulty score has been a bugaboo, because it seems to be more subjective than others. It’s not just how difficult your pattern is, but how well you pull it off; that said, riders on super skilled horses who put together a relatively conservative floor plan seem to still get solid marks, whereas those of us on LBHs (“Little Brown Horses,” a term we use in the barn for the nice solid creature without powerhouse gaits, but who can clock around and do everything) who have wicked hard patterns never seem to get the love.
So there’s a computer system, super easy to use, into which we riders entered our floor plan. Riders are given 6.5 to start. Then, difficult movements (things like doing more than 1.5 times around in a canter pirouette, or passage in half pass), difficult transitions (like extended walk to passage, or halt to extended canter), and difficult combinations of movements (like one I do, extended canter to a 1.5 pirouette to one tempis), are given incremental increases to that 6.5 baseline.
Judges aren’t completely committed to the number the program spits out. Say I bungle something or don’t perform a difficult pattern well. The judge isn’t required to give the number that the program has assigned me. There’s also some wiggle room; there’s the possibility of something called a “joker” line, which lots of people will incorporate into their floor plans that leaves room for a repeat of a line of changes or extended canter, should something go wrong in the first attempt.
ADVERTISEMENT
I’m obviously giving a simplistic overview of this software, and I’m sure there will be more media coverage of the process, particularly after tonight, it’s first implementation in recognized sport. But here’s what I’m excited about: my pattern is wicked hard. It’s got some stunners in it that, when I’m on, are super, super cool. And I’ve been averaging around 7 in my Degree of Difficulty box. What does the system say I should get, when I execute it well? 8.61. That’s a game changing number.
And by the way, in the design phase, the FEI’s team on this went back and retroactively played with some tests that had already happened. There are top riders succeeding on the international level who, with this system, will be getting LOWER scores on Degree of Difficulty than they’ve been getting in actual competition. Pretty neat, huh?
Just another cool thing to help level the playing field, to make judging and competition more transparent. And assuming it works well, it’s available to us riders, which means we can PLAN our freestyles knowing what scores we can achieve.
Of course, if I can’t get in the damn ring, it won’t really matter what marks I could get. But I’m holding out hope that my LRH (that’s Little Red Horse) stays with me tonight and lets me drive. Because when she’s on, she’s one amazing dance partner!
