2024 Paralympic Games in Paris Where One Truly Sees "A Bond Like No Other"

2024 Paralympic Games

-- by Silke Rottermann for Eurodressage - Photos © Hippofoto

It is just about one week ago that the Paralympic flame extinguished. Its warmth still seems to glow when thinking back to fantastic days of para-dressage in the park of Versailles. There this sport experienced its finest hours in front of thousands of spectators who waved instead of clapped and still expressed an enthusiasm which mirrored the performances and the outstanding horsemanship shown in this magnificently located dressage arena. One month earlier the able bodied competed for dressage medals in the same venue.

Royal Setting for Para Dressage

More than 70 years ago a disabled woman became the first of her gender to win an Olympic medal in dressage: The Dane Lis Hartel, paralyzed below her knees after surviving polio, had no other choice but to compete with the able bodied in Helsinki 1952 and Stockholm 1956 as para-dressage was still decades away.

Her name reappeared repeatedly during the Paralympic days in Paris to remind the posterity of Hartel and her mare Jubilee's outstanding feat. Both mastered the challenges of an Olympic Grand Prix with a special kind of understanding. The equestrian world of her days looked up with utmost admiring…to her success and the tremendous finesse of her riding which appears almost centaur-like to us today when watching videos.

Force Is No Option

Germany’s double bronze medalist Heidemarie
Dresing presented Dooloop in an exemplary frame.

Since Atlanta 1996 dressage is part of the Paralympic Games, now classified into five different grades depending on their disability. And it is exactly these disabilities which can lead to a kind of equitation Hartel had shown many moons ago. In para dressage and particularly in the lower grades (the more disabled the riders), force is no option and one has to look for a true dialogue with the horse. Negative tension and „hot“ horses would mainly be counterproductive. Para horses have to react to the most refined of aids, have to be relaxed, positively submissive and level-headed.

In Paris it was the rides in para sport that quite often brought us back to the origins of dressage riding in which relaxed horses with content expressions moved in a natural rhythm.

More Beauty in Para Sport?!

Demi Haerkens (NED) was unbeatable in the Grade IV
classes with the exceptional Daula

By way of contrast able-bodied dressage recently seems to be slipping from one scandal into another. The FEI has intensified its efforts on social media to correct this negative picture through slogans and promotions for the unique bond between human and animal, making it a likewise unique sport. However with each new scandal, each new high resolution photo on social media channels showing unpleasant details, the efforts of the FEI rather appear a sheer mockery.

So while the able bodied dressage remains in the firing line of animal welfarist groups, most of the para-riders in Versailles delivered pictures of harmony and of extraordinarily and voluntarily cooperative horses. This became particularly apparent in the lower grades in which horses have all possibilities to refuse this cooperation.

It reminded me of an interview which German para rider Noah Kuhlmann gave to Eurodressage this spring, in which he mentioned that the „happiness of the horse is a very essential criteria in para-dressage“ and concluded that „in my very own personal opinion para-dressage is on a better way than the one of the able-bodied."

Triple gold medal winner in Grade III, Rebecca Hart
and her mare Floratina

Indeed: Para-dressage often shows positively different pictures and it also did in Paris.

Breathtaking

Those who saw the heavy bodied Latvian warmblood gelding King of the Dance draw his laps in the sand of Versailles, with ears pricked and incredible purpose, were not missing piaffe and passage in this program of Grade 1 which only foresees walk. He has a the truly breathtaking connection with his long-time rider Rihards Snikus.

Isn’t it what we seek for when watching dressage, way above spectacular movements? Those who saw the slender looking US American Fiona Howard becoming one with the powerful Hanoverian Diamond Dunes in Grade 2, were equally touched and became aware again that riding has nothing to do with physical strength. They are just two gold-medallists of so many we could admire in Paris, on and off the podium.

Harmony Pure

Fiona Howard (USa) showed her extraordinary talent and
finesse as a rider on the powerful Diamond Dunes.

The beauty of the discipline of para-dressage neither comes from High School movements nor necessarily breathtaking basic gaits, but from the very individual partnerships horse and rider form: the degree of harmony, the mutual understanding and the lightness that results from it

"Para sport is so important as it gives you the possibility to be happy," the Italian Grade I double individual medalist Sara Morganti told the Paralympic channel during this Games in France.

The volatile delight, tears of happiness, and palpable deep gratefulness towards the horse made the ever professionalising para dressage sport in Paris something which displayed true Olympic spirit.

Para-dressage riders and their horses: truly "a bond like no other."

Thank you, King of the Dance. Rihards Snikus couldn’t
take his arms off his double gold medalist on four
hooves

Lisa Martin from Australia on Vilaggio in Grade V

Italy’s double medalist in grade I, the petite Sara Morganti and her tall mare Mariebelle are a true match.

The Grade 2 medalists: A bundle of sheer happiness