PrintAny hope for a close race for the gold medal between Isabell Werth and Anky van Grunsven slipped away tonight, Aug. 19, when Satchmo resisted again in the piaffe, as he’d done three nights earlier in the Grand Prix Special. The mistake opened the door for van Grunsven, who specializes in freestyle with her Salinero, and she welcomed the opportunity.
Heike Kemmer finished third aboard Bonaparte, just ahead of Steffen Peters and Ravel.
As the last rider in the ring, Van Grunsven didn’t disappoint her Dutch fans, scoring 82.40 percent for her freestyle, performed to “Dance of Devotion” by Wibi Soerjadi. She earned a 10 for piaffe-passage transitions and 9s on her passage and piaffe, and her combined Special and freestyle scores put her first on 78.68 percent.
“Her piaffe-passage transitions were unbelievable,” said Gotthilf Roexinger, president of the ground jury. “Her harmony and music were fantastic.”
The only low scores she received were for her last halt, which came shortly after her last piaffe, and Salinero never stopped moving his feet. Van Grunsven had already ridden that last piaffe with a huge smile, and although she waited a moment for him to halt, in the end she just dropped her reins and wrapped her arms around his neck, knowing she’d already won. “I thought, ‘oh, he doesn’t have to do this,’” she recalled with a laugh. Her scores for the entrance and final halts ranged from 5 to 7.
She said she felt more relaxed today, knowing that Salinero could do a good freestyle. “I knew I still had to do a good test [after Satchmo’s mistake], but I didn’t have to take all the risk. If I didn’t feel safe, I wouldn’t have done my changes on a curved line.
“It’s unbelievable to win a third individual gold medal in a row on two different horses,” she added. “I’m the most spoiled person in the world with two good horses.”
Germany’s Werth couldn’t explain Satchmo’s resistance, except to say that he’d been frightened in the Special during the piaffe and remembered that again tonight as she began a piaffe pirouette. He stopped the piaffe, backed up, spun, and lifted his front end, earning marks of 5s and 6s for the piaffe and the transition that followed. Her second-placed freestyle score of 78.10 percent resulted in a combined score of 76.65 percent.
“It started really good, but maybe I took too much risk,” she said. “It’s a shame, but I can’t change it. In the last three years, no other horse has had so few mistakes in so many competitions. The whole atmosphere made him a bit sensitive. The rest was super; nothing was wrong with it. Without this mistake, I’m sure it would be very exciting between Anky and me.”
She said her test, performed to “Hymn Of Emotion” by Markus Lehmann-Horn and Michael Erdmann, was as difficult as it could be, including two-tempis straight into one-tempis, a pirouette, to extended canter and back to pirouette again.
Now she will focus on getting Satchmo’s confidence back. “This horse is outstanding, and my emotions for him have not changed because of two mistakes,” she said.
So Close For Ravel
