the performance brought tears to his eyes—Isabell’s results with Gigolo dropped in the Grand Prix Special, and the Freestyle to music was not yet part of the Olympic program. The performance showed that while Isabell was not lacking the desire and ability to win, she still lacked the experience for such big moments.
Nicole reached the final halt in the heat of the arena with a crimson face. Her groom and fiance Otto Becker had to pour an entire bottle of water over her head as soon as she was out of the saddle. Isabell and Gigolo, on the other hand, were boiling over mentally. This manifested itself as mistakes in the ring. Many very atypical slipups happened. Gigolo got muddled in the flying changes, a pirouette failed…they “screwed up everything,” according to Isabell. She had been flying high, participating in the Olympics at age twenty-three on her only-nine-year-old horse, team-gold-medal-winner in her first attempt with a brilliant performance—the world seemed to stand wide open for Isabell and Gigolo, the shooting stars of dressage. But then they did not shine as much during the finale as they could have, and, at first, the silver medal she won did not seem to be any comfort to Isabell.
The young German rider took away a new experience from Barcelona, which would be useful for coming shows and championships: She already knew how to win. She still had to learn how to lose. The magic of the first year had ended, and she was no longer walking the tightrope with a laugh—she had unexpectedly fallen off. To remain at the top, where the ride for gold medals took place, she needed more than easygoing overconfidence.
I definitely learned the hard way. I would argue now that we were completely overambitious. I had to learn first what I needed to ride my tests just as optimally under pressure and that I must always meet the performance standards.
Isabell’s defeat in the Barcelona duel with Nicole upset her extremely. Not so much because she could not satisfy her personal ambition; she was mostly ashamed that she had disappointed Dr. Schulten-Baumer. He had done so much for her, and it had been possible to repeat the coup at the European Championships in Donaueschingen on a much grander scale at the Olympics…but she had messed it up. Isabell was quite hard on herself and came to the decision that she must grow from the experience. Perfection became the goal once and for all. It was as if dark clouds appeared over her, and she decided to work harder than ever.
In Barcelona, the German team won all obtainable medals: gold for the team and individual gold for Nicole, silver for Isabell, and bronze for Klaus Balkenhol with his feisty police horse Goldstern. Anton Fischer delivered the maximum that was possible to the German Equestrian Federation. Warendorf could let the champagne flow.
However, on the international dressage committees, officials were frowning. They racked their brains about how to break up the German dominance. Their reasons were sound: A sport in which the winning nation can be determined ahead of time and where competitors only have to fight internally for rankings is strongly suspected to be a minority program. It becomes the opposite of what the International Olympic Committee means when it talks about “universality.” It is also lacking the excitement that interests people outside the inner circle. The qualitatively superior continuation of a traditional culture is not enough for a sport to survive long-term, next to others such as tennis, cycling, or rugby. The “wow-effect” was missing. If the balance of power during competitions did not change, it was made clear to the Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI), the continued existence of dressage in the Olympic program would, sooner or later, be at stake. As a result, this sport, the foundation of all equestrianism, would collapse into irrelevance.
So what was to be done? The emerging Dutch riders offered some competition but still needed a bit of propulsive power from the outside to be ready to attack the Germans. The entire sport had to be modernized, with possibly more latitude in the scoring system. A solution was found: a Freestyle to music.
Audiences wanted to see something like that, especially the non-horsey folk in front of the television: Beautiful horses “dancing” to saucy tunes, a little bit like pairs figure skating, with one partner in fur and the other in tails. Show and entertainment. For the traditionalists, music was thought to be unnecessary background noise in the dressage ring. This quiet sport, enjoyed by insiders in the early morning hours—where the jingling of bridles, the snorting of horses, and the chirping of birds in the trees was all you could hear—had turned into an ear-piercing opera or a disco. But, now the audience was able to tap its feet to the beat of the music, which was easier than noting petty comments about a not-perfectly-cadenced canter in the program. The Freestyle represented one step out into the world but also away from reliable scoring criteria based on a classical code of values: Performance with the aim to do the horse as much justice as possible and to maintain his health and long life. In retrospect, though, there is no doubt that with the implementation of the Freestyle and by riding on the wave of Dutch fan enthusiasm, the FEI ensured the survival of the Olympic dressage program and opened it to a lot more publicity worldwide.
Dr. Schulten-Baumer and I did not argue against the changes outright. However, we were already afraid that medals would be awarded for just the Freestyle, without incorporating the scoring of the “classical” classes. Similar to what it is like in the Olympic individual ranking today, where you start again at zero after the team competition. After all, for the first time, the Freestyle opened the doors for non-equestrian criteria, such as artistic expression, choreography, and music. The clear comparison of athletic performance was blurred by effects—the components of technical difficulties have not yet been objectified by a transparent basic score, even today. In addition, the Freestyle made it possible to highlight the horse’s strengths through repeated movements and a clever positioning of these movements in the arena, and to hide weaknesses, or even make them disappear behind the atmosphere created by the music.
The result: Those who could handle music, atmosphere, and creative choreography now had a chance to position themselves against the dominant German dressage riders who had been, so far, untouchable in the saddle. And that is exactly what happened. More and more emphasis was placed on the Freestyle, and the Dutch riders, with Anky van Grunsven in the lead, waged a longstanding, resourceful, but also bitter attack against the competition from the country next door. They dragged more and more judges onto their side. The Dutch, one of the strongest equestrian nations in any case, developed into Freestyle specialists, mainly within the World Cup, an event championed by Dutch dressage promoter Joep Bartels.
This meant that, from now on, Isabell not only had to be better than her competition, she also had to be so strong that the judges could not get past her, despite their tendency to want to break up old hierarchies.
These new duels, now between Isabell and Anky, two strong-willed riders—both highly talented, determined, and ready for anything—became symbolic of an entire era. These two, who grew as riders with each other’s mutual competition, who each took a deep breath before entering the arena, who loaded up on adrenaline, and who gave each other nothing. These two, who goaded each other, who gained more brilliance every time they rode, ultimately became bitter rivals.
I had to try to notch up my performance in order to compare to Anky, in order to be back in front. I had to be particularly creative.
The result of Isabell’s strategic considerations was a Freestyle the world had not seen before. This Freestyle’s premiere took place at the European Championships in Mondorf in 1995, the place where she had her international debut six years earlier. The music played along lightly, playfully, similar to how Gigolo was supposed to be on his feet (as the result of hard work): “Just a Gigolo,” combined with “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” This Freestyle was an unprecedented sensation. The highlight of the performance actually deserved to go down in dressage history as the “Isabell Werth Triple.” Never before had a rider shown such a series of difficult movements with her horse: Isabell rode in canter with full extension through the diagonal, to a certain point, where a switch flipped for Gigolo. Instead of pushing forward with impulsion, he, all of a sudden, had to shorten significantly, bringing his hind legs far under his body to perform one-and-a-half pirouettes on his hind legs. This required absolute body control, so that the rhythm of the canter movement was never interrupted. It was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole in the sport of riding. As if Usain Bolt, after a one-hundred meter sprint, had to keep