I agree that those pictures are bad. But I’ve experienced that, and I feel for her. Trying to get a horse sufficiently warmed up and settled to do a GP, while also not too tired to do the whole thing in that heat, is a feat unto itself. Add the atmosphere of that stadium and you can end up sitting on a powder keg. The bell rings so you go in and do your best to channel the energy. She was clearly trying to open him up and settle him the whole time - and after the trot half pass it really started to work.
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I agree, it should be the apex of competition. Yet for some riders it IS a stepping stone. There was controversy. at the 2004 Athens Olympics when Anky competed an immature 10 yr old, Salinero. He didn’t have the experience, and he was clearly there to get mileage for the future. But they won the individual gold, which created even more controversy about the judging.
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posted a video of him in 2020, pretty much the same carriage. Around #230. Conformation? Training? I’m not an expert here…
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unpopular opinion; some horses like to go that way and try everything they can to do it. Not saying that’s the case here but I have ridden those that prefer to go BTV.
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Not an unpopular opinion. I mentioned earlier conformation may be a factor. Short neck, closed throatlatch. Horses like that are hard to get in front of the vertical. I have seen quite a few. Lovely movers, but difficulty with the neck/head connection.
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There is a reason those horses (Helix, Lars, and also Bohemain) were for sale and were not snapped up by Europeans.
I have a feeling Helix and Lars would not have been Adrienne’s first choices for international dressage had she had other options with the kind of star power needed at that level (and/or with the kind of very deep-pocketed owners needed for that level). But they were/are the horses she was given to ride, so she had to try to make the best of it. Now that the pressure of the Olympics is off, it will be interesting to see if she takes the horses back to basics to try to fix training gaps, or if she moves on to other mounts.
It will also be interesting to see what happens with Bohemian. From all public accounts, Endel Ots is besotted with him and the two seem to be forging a good partnership but that horse has an inner demon. I hope Endel can soothe his soul enough for them to become a reliable team for the future.
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Horses who have a tendency to go short in the neck and close up can be fixed, but it takes a long time to address that issue, and requires going back to the basics.
However that is incompatible with buying a horse and taking them to the Olympics in under a year.
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You are so correct. Horses like that can be fixed to a point, but it is hard! This particular horse has a neck short in length. I have seen him go in a better, more open frame, though.
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Looking through her IG account, I see that she’s only been riding him about 6 months or so? And in that time she’s posted some competition tests where Helix is not btv, not bottled up. There are training videos where he’s lovely. There are only so many competitions one can do with a horse in such a short amt of time to help them carry themselves in a more open and relaxed way.
These 2 aren’t old partners, they are still relatively new to each other. And nothing in her other videos shows that she rides around shoving them into a overly tight frame and ramming them forward. Nothing at all like that. Her horses look happy.
And I loved how gently and kindly she stroked his neck after the final salute. She knows he’s up and tight and the right thing is a loving and supportive stroke.
You may see this as me making excuses and having lower standards. I see it as me evaluating what’s there for what it is.
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Yours downloaded for me - I opened it and am copying here. It’s great to put a face to the voice! So cool that you met up with her at Landrover and had a bit of history. I’ve been enjoying her commentary immensely.
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FWIW - I have seen comments from multiple riders that their horses were spooked or made tense/anxious by:
- Spectators - not just clapping and cheering, but also sight and sound of them going up and down through the stands
- Videographers - more than a few of them spooked at those scary looking cameras and their drapes, esp. as the cameras moved
- Microphones - the microphones hidden in the letter boxes to pick up the sound of the horse’s hoofbeats occasionally made a humming or crackling noise.
- PA system - made characteristic humming noise most human ears cannot detect, but horses can
And as mentioned - some horses were fairly young and many had never had exposure to that kind of environment before, with tall stands on multiple sides, and the kind of electricity that permeates the atmosphere at an event of that magnitude.
I don’t blame them for being tense or “undone.” Even the most reliable of horses are sometimes overwhelmed by the atmosphere at a show. Anyone remember Brentina at Hong Kong?
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It is possible to desensitize horses to expected problems such as cameras and flags. Sometimes I do think Dressage is just a liiiittle bit precious. And if you know you are going to ride in the largest atmosphere any rider is ever likely to meet - work on it.
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For sure there is a lot folks can do to help desensitize their horses but how many people have Olympic stands full of spectators, flowers, moving cameras, multiple judges stands, matrix boards, loud PA systems in their training yards?
As was mentioned in another thread, there are very few venues in the US that come anywhere close to that kind of environment - and none anywhere except maybe Aachen that approach the scope of atmosphere found at the Olympics.
Those kind of issues will continue to be problems for many horses, esp. those who do not get repeatedly exposed to big-show atmospheres of that sort.
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Yes! The piaffe-to-jambette-to-passage! It was stellar. Really. Like he was showing off, and too bad we weren’t scoring for pure freestyle (pure = not even choreographed). He won the day in my book. 
Let the dancers dance. 
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The only Olympic discipline that might regularly be able to see these conditions, I would think, would be show jumping.
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One huge issue at Tokyo was from the giant ringside cameras that had some big fabric piece around them.
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There were several riders who reached down during their tests to pat their nervous horse which was nice to see as well.
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During her ride, I actually came on here and asked if Helix is normally that tight in the neck.
But I will say screenshots can be absolutely horrible and not remotely reflect how the horse was going overall. I remember some screen grabs posted here of Michael Barisone during his trial made him look like a total pyscho, and while he did not look great during the trial, he never looked as bad in motion that he did in the screen grabs.
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Shelby Dennis has been annoying since day one. Since before she “saw the light” and started preaching about R+ and how everybody but her is abusing their horse. Annoying people are gonna be annoying. 
After the Charlotte thing and some of the riding I’ve seen at the WC shows and recorded freestyles in Europe and FL over the winter season, I was worried about the riding that was going to come out of the Olympics this year. With a few exceptions, I was honestly pleasantly surprised. I mostly saw concentrated but content horses ridden without being overly constricted. There was some errors which were marked down fairly by judges but riders seemed sympathetic, at least in the moment. Adrienne had a bad ride. Carl Hester’s ride was underwhelming for what we have seen from him in the past. We shall see as things progress and horses/people get tired.
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