I cried and cried; I cried the awful tension away, the exhausting days, the daily stress of practicing perfection.
And with every tear, something else seemed to become ever more tangible: that the pain of the next failure was already at the doorstep of the grand triumph Isabell was just now celebrating on the podium in Atlanta. The bond and the harmony that had prevailed between her and Dr. Schulten-Baumer during the past days also gave her an inkling of the potential frustration to come. And, of course, she knew even during the moment of her greatest success that the Dutch would not give up. Their weakness, not to be able to demonstrate their team’s potential to its fullest during championships, distorted the picture. Someday, as much was certain, they would succeed. But Isabell and Gigolo would make sure they fought in vain for a long time. They had to be patient until the very last act of the drama.
The animosities between teams became more and more disturbing; aggression clouded championships. It reached a point where the aggression would have been too much in a football game, let alone in the conservative world of dressage competition. There was a time when Isabell went to pick up her detailed result sheets at the show office after her win at the 1997 European Championships in Verden, Germany, but they were missing. Every rider had a right to these result sheets before scores became available digitally. Isabell’s missing results reappeared in a Dutch equestrian journal, annotated with paranoid comments about the scandalously and allegedly “biased” scoring. Isabell was then subjected to boos from the crowd at Dutch competitions for the rest of the year. Agitated fans shouted questions about the “German judging conspiracy.” She was made aware of any small weakness when it was highlighted by the press in an overblown fashion: Gigolo had started to occasionally wiggle with his hind leg in the piaffe. He was swishing his tail during the test. Petitions against individual members of the ground jury were collected.
Isabell may love competitive opposition, but she needs a harmonic social environment and found these experiences very unpleasant. They took the joy out of her beloved sport. She complained that she now had to justify every good performance. She became more and more thin-skinned, while inwardly clenching her fist at the same time.
Isabell’s morale hit rock bottom during the 1998 World Equestrian Games in Rome. Isabell’s usual smile disappeared, and Anky van Grunsven’s face froze in contempt. Asked about Isabell’s scores, the Dutch rider said snarkily, “I really don’t care, but it is bad for the sport.”
The tension that both riders were under was appalling. Their coaches positioned themselves on either sideline of the dressage ring; just their looks meant business. The two men also came across as a clash of cultures: On the one hand, there was the conservative Dr. Schulten-Baumer, no longer so young, in a suit and tie. On the other hand, there was Sjef Janssen, a former cyclist with a blonde rockstar hairdo, whom Anky was to marry later in Las Vegas.
Busloads of Dutch fans poured into the stadium and stirred up opinion against their favorite’s German rival. And indeed: When Anky’s score was announced after her Freestyle, Isabell had withdrawn to the barn to not have to witness the hatred in person. She knew, when boos and hisses echoed across to where she stood with the horses, out of the spotlight, that she had become the new World Champion. It was a poisoned victory, though, as she had to defend herself against nasty allegations from now on. From a nationalist standpoint, this might have been the darkest day in dressage sport ever. Even when Isabell and Gigolo entered the arena for the victory ceremony, they were exposed to humiliating hoots and slurs. Her sport had always been a question of mind over matter for her, but now it took a turn for the worse. It took all her willpower to be able to even feel a little bit pleased about her success.
I have always been driven by the competition, the positive fight for the best performance. I find that fascinating, and I get a thrill out of it—to be on par with the best in the world. But during that time competing against Anky, everything was so heated up and nationalistic. It seemed as if I had to fight against a wall of orange in every arena. I even heard the word “Nazi” on more than one occasion.
When Isabell won a Freestyle over Bonfire at the show in Geneva with Amaretto, the young horse who was to be Gigolo’s successor, things got out of hand. Anky lost her composure in the foyer of the press conference and snapped at Isabell. It became clear to Isabell that Anky believed Isabell had only won because she called up the judges regularly and worked to influence them.
“What do you want from me?” Isabell asked. Anky just huffed.
The truth was, while Isabell was now supposed to justify her success all the time, Anky was also under immense pressure as the figurehead of Dutch paranoia. So much for “horse-girl idyll”…the tension got to both of them. This was no longer about having fun.
Isabell’s aim was to not be drawn into a bad movie by Anky’s fan club, entitled: “Two Drama Queens in Tails.” That night, the Swiss show jumper Willi Melliger, who passed away in 2018, came to Isabell and said something to her that sounded a lot like Clint Eastwood, and which she recalls clearly to this day: “Punish your enemies through victories.”
Willi Melliger’s advice connected me even more to Gigolo, the horse that gave me his all and carried me to my triumph. I owed it to him to defend his honor against any allegations.
The truth was, Gigolo was always a better horse than Bonfire with regard to quality. Bonfire was an extremely elegant bay with exceptional potential for the higher movements, specifically passage and piaffe, which are crucial movements in determining whether a horse can become a star or not. But Bonfire had serious problems with the walk. He was lacking class in one of the three basic gaits. His Dutch rider, indeed, managed to compensate for her horse’s major weaknesses with a fireworks display of accentuated movements that wowed the audience and the judges. Gigolo, in the meantime, remained a model example for clean and serious performance. Back then, a considerate debate about dressage fundamentals and the contrast between the two horses might have done the sport good. But it was not possible: Two irreconcilable sides stood opposite each other, and the riders’ relationship only began to relax a little when Gigolo and Bonfire eventually ended their careers.
But that comes later.
It was 1999 when Anky van Grunsven left the German elite behind and became the European Champion in Arnheim, the Netherlands. However, this feat was accomplished without Isabell’s challenge. The German rider followed the competition in jeans and t-shirt from the bleachers, for her situation had rapidly changed. She was no longer invulnerable. On the contrary: She had to realize how swiftly luck can sometimes turn the other way.
I’d often thought it, that unhappy possibility at the back of my mind. It was all going too well. At some point I had to expect the bubble to burst. But I got a tragedy.
First, her next Olympic hope, Amaretto, died painfully, during a severe colic episode.
Then Gigolo hurt himself.
Isabell did not quit without a fight and started in Arnheim with her reserve horse, Antony. But when he had a fever before the Freestyle, she had to withdraw. Just to be on the safe side, the organizers prepared new music to play during the awards presentation: the Dutch national anthem.
Isabell, her European Championship title lost, sighed and expressed the hope that, surely, her bad luck had to be over. A little bit of dark humor rang in her words, since Gigolo stood in his stall with a tendon injury, and no one knew if he was to ever fully recover at sixteen years old.
And the worst thing? Secretly, she was consumed by feelings of guilt.
The question of whether I could have prevented Gigolo’s injury, or at least the full extent of it, tormented me. I saw the images of the show in Aachen go by in my mind, again and again, of this fatal Saturday in June 1999, when I tacked up Gigolo for the Grand Prix Special. I clearly felt that something was wrong during the warm-up, and I said to Dr. Schulten-Baumer, who stood on the sideline of the warm-up ring: “Something is not right.” But he refused to accept this. “You always have an excuse,” he complained to me. “It’s because your hand is not quiet, just ride correctly for once.” So, I sucked it up and entered the arena, rode the customary loop around the ring, and once again, I had