and juggle balls at the same time.
And that was not all. Flying changes immediately followed the pirouettes, first every two strides and then tempi changes every stride. This did not just require strength and body control from the horse, but also enormous focus. Imagine Usain Bolt again, finished with his sprint and his juggling trick, now moving off into a tango. Would Bolt have been able to do it? Gigolo, the perfect athlete and acrobat was, and eventually, with practice, he was able to replicate it very casually. He gave such challenges more than his all. Just like his rider.
When the audience in Mondorf saw Isabell’s Freestyle, some actually sat with their mouths open in amazement. The leading Swedish judge at the time, Eric Lette, pulled out maximum marks and could hardly compose himself. The element of surprise had upstaged all politics. Isabell had parried the Dutch attack for the time being.
The crowd had armed themselves with “Oranje” (the nickname for national sports teams from the Netherlands) hats, jackets, and flags—Dutch colors—as well as a large dose of fanaticism. The attempt had begun to turn the “posh sport of dressage” into a sideshow of German-Dutch rivalry that, traditionally, was enacted in the soccer stadium.
There was a simple reason that Isabell did not have to suffer more from the Dutch front at the Olympic Games in Atlanta one year later. You see, the German team was mainly preoccupied with itself. First, Nicole Uphoff enforced her right to compete as the defending Olympic Champion with the help of a preliminary injunction and followed the team with Rembrandt, who was already seventeen years old. It turned out that the genius bay horse was no longer fit enough for the demands of the arena, and she had to withdraw before the finale, and before the vets did it for her. In addition, there was unease within the team. Martin Schaudt took Durgo to Atlanta, a highly gifted horse with a traumatic past. His previous owners had been unable to manage him and he’d been taken to the slaughterhouse at the age of five, avoiding the “skinner” only because of a mistake. Durgo remained a difficult horse, which, ultimately, was a lucky break for Schaudt. Nobody wanted to buy the talented mover from him, so he inevitably turned into a championship rider himself! But he was the “new kid,” an outsider without a lobby, and he was considered a longshot. So, right up until the last moment, traveling reserve rider Nadine Capellmann tried to replace him and make it onto the team herself. But it was to no avail.
The constant comparison put the young man and his tricky horse under immense performance pressure before they even rode for scores. Schaudt felt picked on, sat on a tack box, and whined that he wanted to go home to the Alps. And all of this happened even though he and Nadine generally got along well and later even dated for a while. Isabell tried to observe these developments and their implications from a distance.
For me, talking with Monica Theodorescu over a glass of beer on the porch of our hotel every night was highly relaxing and entertaining at the same time.
Thus, domestic bliss went out the window once again among the Germans, who had decided to cohabitate once more, despite the stressful and unhappy experiences of Barcelona. This time, they took up lodgings on a farm. Balkenhol was part of the team once again. But even though he was wearing his police uniform, he could not install order.
Cabin fever was predestined to set in again, and the then seventy-two-year-old Chef d’Equipe Anton Fischer was, once again, its victim. He desperately tried to calm down his crew. They, however, released bugs in his room, drank his champagne, and refilled the bottles with water. In Atlanta, there was hardly a break to focus on one’s own performance. But this time, Isabell was not to be flustered. She knew she must remain composed. It was obvious that any tension in her transferred to Gigolo. He did not have a clue what everyone was so upset about, but he tended to be borderline hysteric every now and then. Therefore, Dr. Schulten-Baumer and Isabell rented rooms in a motel close to the horse park entrance for the duration of the competition and did their own thing.
By now, Gigolo had reached the peak of his potential. He was thirteen years old and had been around the block. He performed the movements effortlessly, his body was still full of spring and elasticity, and he was full of energy in his very best moments. He was also at his prettiest. His neck appeared round, now equipped with firm muscles. Nothing prevented him from fully developing his power; he was at his best physical state. His training had, more and more, enabled him to use his own body optimally. His flexibility, carriage, and balance were worthy of a top human gymnast. Experts might even say that such a horse, fully working through his body with optimally molded musculature, could find the ideal peak of physical expression.
And of course, Gigolo had also developed mentally. He now understood exactly when it counted most, which is when he always gave it one hundred percent.
And yet, the entire Atlanta adventure started off similar to Barcelona.
Isabell and Gigolo turned in a fantastic Grand Prix for the team, earning the Germans the expected gold medal once again. But then their Grand Prix Special was full of mistakes. Isabell lost her lead to Anky van Grunsven on the bay gelding Bonfire, giving all of the Netherlands new hope. Had the time finally come? Would the “Oranje” be able to wrench individual gold away from the Germans? There was a good chance, after all, as only the Dutch specialty was still to be ridden—the Freestyle, specifically included in the program to strengthen the Dutch and to make the dominant Germans vulnerable.
The riders had two days off before the finale; two days where Isabell ran around with big question marks in her eyes. What now? She dreaded the psychological effect the results so far would likely have on the five judges. They had seen it clearly: The favorite was struggling. This could change their inner perspective. They would wait for and watch for Isabell’s mistakes in the Freestyle and might even see just how they would juggle decisive points to make way for a sensation and finally award the gold medal to Anky.
I found Bonfire fascinating. He might not have been the ultimate beauty, but his movement was spectacular. He had extreme shoulder freedom. And he was an incredibly honest, athletic horse: He had a lot to offer—besides the walk, maybe—and he did not have to be kept in such a state of tension as Anky’s future horse, Salinero. Those two were real opponents for Gigolo and myself. And he helped shape an era.
Isabell and Dr. Schulten-Baumer went into tunnel-vision mode. In Atlanta, only the two of them and Gigolo existed. And when the day finally came, only one thing was important:
Attack.
I said to myself, We will fight and turn everything around. And it worked. You have these moments when you enter the arena and you are carried by the atmosphere. You feel that something very special is happening around you. And that Freestyle, in those Games, it carried me—everything was perfect, from A to Z. The stadium was full, the atmosphere electrifying, and I suddenly started to enjoy every second of it.
Isabell’s astounding performance in Atlanta can still be watched online. There was no moment in her program when one could breathe; one highlight followed another. Down the centerline, the Freestyle began with a highly difficult movement, the passage, immediately followed by the piaffe, and, during the piaffe, Gigolo turned into a pirouette. It was a movement as rich as a three-tier cake. Naturally, the canter work also included the Isabell Werth Triple. It was an extravaganza from beginning to end, and all the elements were executed perfectly, seamlessly. A golden Freestyle. What else?
After Isabell had saluted and left the arena through a lane of enthusiastically applauding people, after Gigolo had received the obligatory sugar cube from Dr. Schulten-Baumer, after Isabell had dismounted and was surrounded by people, only then did she react, as if from far away. And after she had finally stepped up on the podium during the prize-giving ceremony, after she had received the gold medal, when the German national anthem was playing, then she started to cry. Entire streams, rivers of tears—she could not hold back.
All the pressure of previous years and days dispersed with those tears. I still struggled with the disappointment that I could not deliver the triumph that Dr. Schulten-Baumer had longed for four years earlier. And now, I had made up for this failure. Our great dream of winning an individual Olympic gold medal had come true! The goal had been accomplished. What a relief! I had been riding for Dr. Schulten-Baumer for ten