Dujardin And Valegro Break Their Own Olympic Record In Dressage

Charlotte Dujardin won the Olympic gold in freestyle dressage today with a near-record score of 93.857, besting Germans Isabell Werth and Kristina Broring-Sprehe who took silver and bronze respectively. Just to show how dominant Dujardin was, Werth’s score was 89.071 and Broring-Sprehe’s was 87.142. This is the second gold in consecutive Olympics for Dujardin and her horse Valegro as they bested their Olympic record score from 2012. Dujardin and Valegro hold the current world record score in dressage with an unheard of 94.30 from an event in 2014. Dressage is an event for the wealthy as the horses alone cost tens of thousands of dollars. However, Dujardin does not come from a well-to-do family but has succeeded due to her remarkable talent nonetheless. She simply is able to communicate with horses in a way that other humans cannot. Her talent was spotted early on when she took a horse that an experienced dressage trainer had worked for months to get to piaffe, that is, jog in place, and had the horse trained in two days. And her connection to Valegro and the excellence of their work has taken the sport of dressage to a whole new level, just as Simone Biles has in gymnastics or Usain Bolt in the sprints. She is a revolutionary in a sport known for its staidness and conservatism. And even an untrained eye such as mine could see how superior her performance with Valegro was today. There was a wonderful piece on Dujardin and Valegro in the New Yorker that is well worth a read in order to get a flavor of dressage and what the pair of them has done for the sport. You really should check it out.