My take on the Olympic Games

We’ve just witnessed an incredible week of dressage sport at the Olympics.

Some of you may have seen the live stream, some of you may have even been there.

But I was incredibly excited, one, about the level of competition.

It was an extremely high level. Many riders having their personal best, riding the tests of their lives right at that moment when it counts at the Olympics.

Many riders at their first ever Olympics and having an incredible experience being positively proud of their horses and their achievements.

And of course, there was a great deal of improvement overall in the competition when it comes to the harmony between horse and rider.

If I compare that to just the last championship in Herning at the World Equestrian Games, that was for me a great improvement.

Open mouth?

But still, I get emails, phone calls and comments from journalists about, for example, one particular horse that showed he had the mouth open a little bit.

“What are your thoughts of that? What does that mean for the horse?”

And I think it’s a shame that we are continually focusing on the negative.

We can argue until the sun goes down what it means to have a horse’s mouth open. Just because a horse has its mouth open doesn’t mean that there’s something terribly going wrong.

We all know that horses, in some stages, have the mouth open for focus. I have horses ridden without a bit at home that slightly have the mouth open. Purely for focus.

Of course, we all know now, if there is backward holding tension, a sharp angle on the curb, tight chains and blue tongues, that this is a clear moment where the horse and rider are not in harmony and that is NOT what we want to see.

Performing under pressure

But I think it’s very important that we remember to focus on all the things that are going in the right way.

We’ve witnessed riders that have progressed to a level in their relationship where they’ve come to a very unnatural environment for a horse. You have a massive stadium with a huge public, and of course, all the human elements that come into that.

You have the pressure of the build up to get there and to qualify and to be on the team.

You have the expectation of some riders being in their first Olympics and some riders being in their sixth and seventh Olympics, but there’s that human element where all stakes are very high.

I think with all the pressure that’s surrounding what happened to some riders in the lead up to the Olympics was of course going to create a lot of expectation, a lot of pressure for the riders thinking that all eyes are on them.

And then still to perform in the way that the majority of the riders did, I thought was incredibly inspirational.

The uneducated person

And I think it’s important for the media also to realize that they are living from this sport and it’s very easy for a journalist to just point out, without much thought, without much education, without much knowledge: ‘oh that horse likely has his mouth open’.

Without seeing what is actually going on, without seeing the true connection and the degree of difficulty and the harmony which is being created in that moment, in that environment between horse and rider.

And that they don’t see the rest of what’s going on between the horse and rider and what’s going on within the horse’s body, within the horse’s physiology that he’s there performing, showing all of himself.

And then the uneducated person says: “oh but did you see the mouth opened?”

Going in the right direction

Of course, we can go into detail and arguments about what does the mouth open mean?

And we all know what we don’t want to see, but just focusing on the old cliche line is not going to help the sport to progress forward and I think that’s where we need it to go.

So I’m incredibly positive about what we’ve witnessed in this championship.

I think horse sport is going in the right direction and I think this is something we all need to celebrate.

We had an amazing championship with some amazing stories, some inspirational tests and some real connection between riders, between horses and riders, between competitors, between nations, between the equestrian community and between equestrians worldwide.

I think that’s the gift in which horses bring to humans and that we can give back to our horses.

– Tristan Tucker