Freaky coincidence: My cat woke me a little after 3am today and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I turned on the TV, which I had left on USA. Imagine my amazement to see Karen doing her final salute! And I have BrightHouse’s DVR, which records an hour’s worth of whatever channel the cable is on automatically, so I hit the record button and got not only Karen’s entire ride (such tact, such confidence, such style), but the ride that I think will stick in my memory the most because of its poetry: Ingrid Klimke’s. However, I was a little disappointed because when I watched Klimke’s ride on my laptop, the audio balance was different: ambient sounds were louder than on TV where the announcers mics were up. The music was very clear and lovely on my laptop.
Klimke happened to ride to my favorite piece, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, and the smaller laptop screen blurred a lot of her horse’s crisp, highly articulated movement, so it seemed softer and more flowing (well, even more flowing). It couldn’t have been planned better to epitomize, in my mind, what dressage (as an endeavor, not a sport) is all about: elegant, soft and flowing–like a special “peace” or maybe “peacefulness” or perhaps a special “unity” between horse and rider. It was just the thing to quiet my nerves and take the day well beyond the harshness of business and competition (I had had another tough morning). Indeed, it seemed all the more special because the horse was, of course, an eventer, ready to attack its fences the very next day. I used to be a real dressage fanatic, but the sport changed and so did my feelings about it. The conditions and qualities of that ride brought a lot of the positive feelings back.
