Elusive Ones

I know there are those of you out there who believed that the Aachen dressage this year would be more interesting than WEG, but I beg to differ. I think Aachen has been a fantastic appetite-whetter for the battles to come in just over a month. By the way, contrary to recent hype and hyperbole, you can still get tickets to every single moment of the dressage. This is the deal of the century. For just 177 Euros (or around 250 bucks) you can see every single test of the GP, GPS and Freestyle. You can also still obtain tickets to all the Show Jumping. I’m frankly slightly amazed, given how cheap the seats are.

So onto the topic alluded to in my title today: Charlotte and Valegro redeemed themselves yesterday in the GPS, but not entirely. The test overall was up to their usual standard, except for the one tempis. Blueberry had a small mistake in the ones on the diagonal (didn’t change behind on one left-to-right change), and then a rather bigger mistake in the ones between the pirouettes. I have no idea how their freestyle went today because I just wasn’t up for yet another wake up call in the dead of night. But looking at their winning score of 87.9%, which is about the same distance short of their usual form as yesterday’s second placed GPS result of 83.157, I’m guessing something didn’t go perfectly, and if I had to pull something out of a hat as the likeliest culprit, I’d say it was probably the one tempis again (Astrid, feel free to correct or confirm in a comment at the bottom of this post).

Regardless of whether you saw it or not, today’s Freestyle competition suffered in excitement due to the withdrawal of Totilas from the class. Would he have won again? We’ll just have to wait for Normandy to find out.

Back to one tempis. They were definitely yesterday’s weak movement for almost half of the final nine horses and riders that I got up in time to watch (at four am). Grandioso had a miss in the ones on centre line, and as I’ve already mentioned, Valegro didn’t get either of his lines clean. Half Moon Delphi had a mistake on the centre line set, as did Eremo del Castegno. The final five – Tinne, Helen, Adelinde, Matthias and Isabell – all pulled off the ones, with Helen winning my ‘class act’ award of the day for huge ones on the centre line between the pirouettes, which did not suffer for her courageous pace on the tempis. When I watched Parzival’s test, I wondered if I had imagined how good he’d looked the day before, because the GPS resembled the old open-jawed leaning of the past. When the score came up a good four points lower than the day before, I decided I was seeing exactly what the judges saw.

The one test I was very sorry to have not woken up in time to watch yesterday was that of Laura Graves and Verdades. How exciting is that for the Americans, who so badly need more shooting stars, to see this young pair rocket their way to an eighth place result in Aachen?

Of course I watched Totilas with every cell of my body, because I’m finding it really, really hard to figure out whether the scores correlate to the actual performances. The piaffes were much more on the spot yesterday, so much so that at least one had a backward tendency to it that Matthias did a good job of correcting. But he was positively galloping through every short side in the canter tour, reminding me of when Anky used to show a younger Painted Black, who was perpetually behind the leg. All I can say is I hope that Valegro and Totilas both show up in Normandy with their A game on. Let’s make it good and tough on the judges.

I really love seeing Isabell on a horse that can put her back in the running after such a dry spell. I’m going to wager that Bella Rose has the best piaffe Isabell has ever sat on in competition. Now, when I say ‘best’ I don’t mean ‘most correct’. The mare does one of those passage-on-the-spots, but ever since Anky perfected that variation on piaffe, passage-on-the-spot is usually rewarded just as much as a proper sitting piaffe. I do love this mare though, and I expect she’s on her way to being in the mix for individual medals – if not in Normandy, then at next year’s Europeans and onward.

One thing I noticed with Isabell is that she’s ditched the brain bowl. Nothing but top hats for her these days. I think this is the first time I’ve seen a helmet reversal in dressage. And I have NO OPINION on her decision other than to say the top hat is undeniably more attractive.

Aachen’s ground jury represents the WEG ground jury to a person, plus the extras for a seven member jury in Normandy. I think I’ll be frequently referencing the Aachen results against WEG while sitting in my seat in the D’Ornano Stadium in Caen…

I’m headed off for a little break before the madness of WEG begins, so I will not be posting for the next ten days. Happy summer!