Just a picture of my best boyfriend

We had a professional photographer come out to the barn. He spent all day there, taking photos of everyone's horses. He wasn't cheap..oh, my, no, but he got some incredible shots.
Here's one of Raven, who seemed to enjoy the entire process:

Look at that balanced trot!!

Dare we hope that the FEI has come to its senses?

Perhaps the FEI has gotten a fad out of it's system.

     That fad being the huge trot (but forelegs only), as seen in the performance in the 2010 WEG by Moorlands Totillas.

2010 World Equstrian Games, Moorland Totilas and Edward Gal

    I didn’t get to watch anything more of the 2018 World Equestrian Games than the team dressage and the Grand Prix. 

    The sponsor of the Games didn’t quite come out and say it, but many of the events were rained out, and I do mean RAIN. Hurricane Florence, while having been downgraded to a tropical storm, brought FEET of rain to all of North Carolina. Entire towns were flooded. 

    Having witnessed natural disasters before, I often feel it’s rather rude to carry on with something as specious as a horse show when there are people drowning or clinging to their rooftops. 

   But, as is so often the case, when there’s money to be made, the guy whose pockets are the ones filling up say, damn what happens to others, let’s continue. 

    Of course, the televised dressage mentioned none of this. In fact, the skies were , for two days, ominous but dry, save for one poor Dutchman, who was caught in a cowpissing downpour. 

   (an American saying is ‘it rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock”) and only when you see that actually happen do you get the idea. 

    The freestyle dressage was cancelled, the cross country postponed, the endurance race (I can’t call it real endurance) was canceled in the middle of the race, and an endurance horse was put down due to heat stroke (it gets HOT and humid in North Carolina). But I digress.

   There were amazing performances in the individual event. 

    Of course..well, of COURSE, Isabel Werth won it. She’s won it so many times, and in most cases, deservedly so. Sometimes I wonder if it’s given to her because she’s, well, y’know, Isabel.

    In both competitions it was a tight, tight race between the Germans, the Brits, the US and the Swedes. Scores were high and differences between points were razor thin, on the order of .1 or .2. There was tremendous talent out there and fantastic horses.

  

     Which brings me to this post.

     At the 2010 WEG, Moorland Totilas and Edward Gal swept the boards. Totilas apparently blew the judges away with that HUGE trot...his forelegs virtually vertical at the trot. 

     But his hind legs? Wellll, unless a trot has changed since I was a kid learning what a balanced trot was, it wasn’t balanced. With Totilas it was all foreleg, and a bit of hind leg.

     This apparently so wow-ed the judges that, in the last 8 years, it seems as if

one’s dressage horse simply could NOT win if he didn’t kick his forelegs out like a can-can dancer. Flashy? Yes. Dressage? No.

     If you read of what happened to Totilas (as he was later re-named) after the Games, he literally burned out. He is no longer competing.  His new owner/rider could not get out of Totilas what Gal had demanded and received. Totilas said in so many words, eff it, I hate this shit, I’m DONE. 

    His refusal to work tells me that all that flash and dazzle was forced.  His huge trot wasn't natural, it was commanded.  Once he had the ability to say 'no', he said No, I mean it. I'm done.

     Remember Fuego XII at the 2010 Games? (now named Fuego de Cardenas). Fuego was a grey, PRE stallion, ridden by Juan name name name Diaz, representing his Spanish homeland.

    Fuego started dancing the moment he entered the ring. It was noticeable right from go that he was a horse who loved what he was doing. He was a ham, soaking up the cheers and adoration of a crowd that loved him solely because they could see what he was: a gorgeous stallion performing with so much brio and bravado, let's say it: joy.  Did you see that look on his face? The controlled power, the swagger, the machismo oozing from every pore of his snowy skin,  the bounce to his trot? It was added by the HORSE, not asked for by the rider. 

   Horse and Hound Online magazine has a video of Fuego dancing at the 2010 games. If you can watch it without chills going up your spine, maybe...well, maybe that’s just how I felt about what was, to me, an incredible (if not quite technically correct) performance. 

https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/european-championships-news-spains-fuego-injured-and-withdrawn-403482

As a complete aside, someone noticed..and wrote about his unusual shoes:

https://hoofcare.blogspot.com/2011/10/dressage-fuego-style-its-whats.html

    When Fuego and his rider got low scores, the crowd BOO-ed. “Official” videos of the event edited the boo’s out, but it’s real. We boo-ed. Dressage people simply do NOT do this. I think we scared the judges. I was ready to put them to the stake. Couldn’t they see that this was a horse who was doing dressage out of love for it? Whereas Totilas was..let’s put it mildly...obeying his rider. 

    In retrospect, I admit that Fuego wasn’t quite as good as the other horses, but still, which would you prefer? A horse doing something out of love for the activity? Or a horse that is doing what he’s told?
If Totila's trot wasn't quite a true trot, then how could the judges not allow the same for Fuego? 

 

Fuego de Cardenas, snipped from Horse and Hound Online Magazine

Edward Gal and Moorland Totilas by DigiShots.

     The reason I bring this up is because at this years’ WEG, I watched Edward Gal ride out on Glock’s Zonic.

  
    A KWPN, Zonic could be Totila’s twin. Gal rode him the same way he rode Totilas in 2010. Zonic’s forelegs were in the next county. It was high school, circus horse stuff. He had the same huge,booming trot in front, with so little action in the hind legs that it was as if they were there solely because FEI regulations demand that a dressage horse must have four (4) legs.

   By all appearances, Gal's plan was to win the same way as he did in 2010. Not with the same horse, but with a look alike and the very same way of riding.

Edward Gal and Glock's Zonic snipped from Pinterest.

    This time, though, the judges saw past the high kicks and scored him low enough to keep him out of the winnings.    


  Perhaps the FEI judges have begun to sober up from their Big Lick of Dressage binge. Throughout the entire test(s), it wasn't the high forelegs that won...it was good riding, harmonious and balanced.  With a few copycat exceptions the top three horses were all ones with a balanced trot, even in back and front. 

     Those horses won because they deserved the win, through excellent horsemanship and proper dressage.

       Grey baroque horses  aren't what the FEI believes to be the "ideal" dressage horse.  Dark bay or black Northern European warmbloods are the 'ideal". We boo-ed the judges decision on placing Fuego's 2010 performance because we saw what was obviously a double standard.

    Fuego's performance might not have been technically correct or 'within regulation'-but neither was Totila's.