SASKATOON – When Hilary Clayton took a closer look at the videos, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The dressage horses at the Barcelona Olympics weren’t following the rules.
During the piaffe, a fancy elevated movement, the horses are supposed to stay in one spot and have a trotting motion with all four legs.
She found the horse moves forward about 10 cm with every step. And instead of trotting with four legs, they were trotting with their hind legs and walking with the front.
Not following rules
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“The traditional dressage masters are not doing what they think they’re doing,” said Clayton, head of veterinary anatomy at the University of Saskatchewan Western College of Veterinary Medicine.
Clayton was giving a presentation at Vetavision ’94, the college’s open house which ran Nov. 3-6.
During the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, Clayton was given permission to study the dressage horses and jumpers. Using video cameras, Clayton and her crew taped the horses to study their movements.
By interpreting the information, Clayton can help trainers improve the horses’ performance.
Already some dressage rules have been changed because of the information. Dressage is the guiding of a horse through a set of maneuvres by the rider’s imperceptible body signals.
Clayton is not trying to blow the whistle on these Olympic riders. Instead, she has discovered the horses aren’t capable of doing what they’re supposed to: “The expectations are unrealistic.”
To help her interpret the judges’ decisions, she requested a detailed set of judging marks. Her request was refused. The judges didn’t want to publicize how their final marks are tallied.
Politics involved
“I got the impression dressage is a very political sport.”
In the jumping events, Clayton concentrated on the difficult water jump, which many horses never complete. While studying the videos, she found the horses that jumped higher at the beginning of the jump were successful.
“If they go up higher, they will spend more time airborne,” she said.
Clayton is hoping to continue her research at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga.
