The Girl on the Dancing Horse by Charlotte Dujardin

Author:Charlotte Dujardin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

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The Girl on the Dancing Horse

EACH YEAR THE ‘Horses and Dreams’ show at Hagen has a theme, and in 2012 the theme was Britain, in honour of the London Olympics. During one of the prize-givings, the music from The Great Escape was playing in the background. ‘That would be really good music to use for your London Freestyle,’ Ian said to me – and that’s how it all began.

I’m probably more picky than some riders about their music, but I don’t want to ride to anything that I don’t like or that I feel doesn’t do my horse justice. Everybody’s got their own personal preference, but good music is fitted to the type of horse you’ve got, and because Blueberry was so powerful, I knew I wanted something dramatic as well as something that told a story.

Tom Hunt had come and recorded me riding so he could work on Blueberry’s previous music: having seen his footfalls, he could then work on finding rhythms that matched. Having music that exactly fits a horse’s particular movements is what makes for the best Freestyles, and that’s Tom’s specialty. Even so he’d go away and do something, send it back to me, and some bits of it I’d like and some bits I’d hate. He must have wanted to pull his hair out the first few times we worked together, because he’d get halfway through and I’d tell him to start again.

It was the same with my music for London. ‘I need more definition in the piaffe, Tom, and I really want to hear the difference between my extended trot and my normal trot. Oh, and can I get the Big Ben bells for the pirouettes?’

Off he’d go and work on it some more, and it would come back with some bits that I loved and some bits that still weren’t right. Carl and I had decided that the international at Hartpury on 6 July would be my test-run for London, but with a week to go, Tom was still making tweaks. Two days to go – nothing. One day to go – no CD. He finally drove down with it on the day of my test, so the first time I heard my Olympic music in full was as I rode in to compete in front of a sell-out house.

People often think I’ve practised to perfection before I go in to ride my Freestyle, but I honestly haven’t. The Grand Prix and Special are what count in terms of qualifying and team results, so those are the ones you work on. It might sound odd, but thinking about music for a Freestyle is something that a lot of us tend to leave to last.

The Olympics opening ceremony was now exactly three weeks away and, wouldn’t you know, the weather for Hartpury was torrential rain. I got soaked right the way through and the arena was so wet and disgusting that I thought if Blueberry and I could get round on a day like

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