Olympics Dressage photos

[Miss Z]

A few of you will have already seen these on Facebook but as promised I'll post them here too!

As well as being fortunate enough to live in London for the Olympic Games (and the Royal Wedding and Diamond Jubilee - my grandmother thinks I have impeccable timing!) I managed to get tickets to one of the team dressage events at Greenwich Park. It was by far the best equestrian event I've ever been to, and in fact I'd go as far to say the best sporting event in general. Despite the fact the heavens opened half way through and thus suffering an absolute soaking, it was a day to remember! Dressage never gets an awful lot of coverage compared to eventing and show jumping - so it was nice to see our riders, who picked up the team gold and individual gold for Charlotte Dujardin, featured more prominently on the BBC.

I had planned to go to more of the free events, such as the marathon, etc, but as usual found myself tied up with other commitments. I did get chance to catch some of the men's 10km swim in Hyde Park, which I also have a couple of pics of.

These pictures don't really do justice to the brilliant display of horsemanship that is grand prix dressage. My camera is really on its last legs, which doesn't help, but I just invested in a Macbook so a new one will have to wait for now!

The stadium itself:



A beautiful Iberian-bred horse competing for Spain:





A few shots of the various trots produced by dressage horses, including the incredible 'bouncing' passage and stationary piaffe:
















More to follow...

[Karen]

So cool! Your grandmother is right - you have great timing, being in London for all this! Thanks for sharing the photos with us! Until I saw the coverage on TV, I had not realized, somehow, that the horses get little uniform hats for their events - that must take quite a bit of training, and a special horse for them to allow anything covering their ears like that, but it was awfully cute!

[Miss Z]

Onto the canter!













Canter pirouettes have to be one of my favourite elements. They are fiendishly hard to perfect, requiring a lot of precision from both horse and rider. The ideal is that the horse picks up and replaces his inside hind leg on the same spot as he spins around.




More to follow

[Miss Z]

This guy is well worth an inclusion: this is Hiroshi Hoketsu of Japan and his horse Whisper. Hiroshi is 71 years young and still competing at the top level!





And this is veteran Olympian and the face of dressage, Anky van Grunsven of the Netherlands, here riding Salinero. I think she finished 6th overall, but she's been at the top of the sport for a very long time and I grew up watching her training videos.







If you're unfamiliar with dressage and are string to imagine the stills in action: here's a couple of videos I took of Anky's test:






More to follow...

[Miss Z]

And the ones we cheered on: here's GB's Carl Hester and his mare Uthopia doing us proud:









Looking pretty pleased with himself - and deservedly so: he finished top that day on a score of 77.6%!





And here's Laura Bechtolscheimer and Mistral Hojris. The pair went on to win an individual bronze medal.









Couple more left!

[Miss Z]

These are a couple of miscellaneous ones really

The Olympic torch visits Islington:





A few friends and I pushed the boat out and had a home-made afternoon tea in honour of the Olympics!



Fancy some scones?



Or perhaps some brownie and clotted cream truffles - golden of course!



And here's the men's 10k swimming event in the Serpentine at Hyde Park. It was such a glorious day out! Now the games are over and the athletes are heading home, seems they're taking the sun with them...







That's all! Such a shame they're over now. From Britain to the rest of the world, hope you enjoyed the show!

[Karen]

We did, I promise! Hats on horses and all!

[Alysser]

Great pictures, Zara! I am so glad you and your country enjoyed these olympics. You didn't disappoint. I really enjoyed the swimming, crew, and kayaking events. Dressage was great too, thought I didn't catch much of it. I'm glad you posted these photos. Thanks for sharing.

[Freckles]

Enjoyed all the pictures. In the dressage, do the judges sit in the little booths?

[phesina]

Thank you so much for posting all these amazing photos and videos, Zara. Wonderful viewpoints, right on the spot!

I've never known a thing about the sport of dressage. It's fascinating and eye-opening to see all the pictures and imagine the horses parading around with such precision. I never even realized it was possible to train them to such exactitude.

[Karen]

By the way, although I watch and enjoy the dressage events, I always - every time - find the "bouncy" steps silly looking! Why do that? It's not you are ever going to ask your horse to walk across hot coals or anything? The pirouettes, the other gaits, I "get" but what the origin of the bouncy silly one?

[Asiel]

Fantastic pictures -- thank you for sharing them. It made me drool , had to look at them over and over and will probably keep looking at them again. You're so lucky to have been able to be there in person.

[chocolatepuppy]

Thanks for sharing all of these wonderful pics and videos! I'll bet it was fun to be there! Oh and pass me the brownies please.

[smokey the elder]

It's amazing that they can train horses to do such things.