Freestyling

by Francesca Prescott

Riding a freestyle to music is something I’ve always wanted to do. Apart from one unofficial competition years and years ago, and the hastily improvised program I did with my friend Josephine last November for our stables’ internal competition, I’ve never had the opportunity to ride one. Also, until last September I wasn’t allowed to ride an official freestyle test as I’d never passed an exam required in Switzerland to move up to a level where freestyles, aka Kürs, are offered at competition level. 

So I’ve decided that 2015 is going to be the year of the Kür for Qrac and I. I’m probably completely nuts, as choreographing a freestyle, finding the right music, and riding everything at the perfect moment has to be one of the most difficult things to do on horseback, apart from maybe…well, actually I can’t think of anything more difficult to do on horseback, but I’m sure there is something. Polo, maybe? I’m hopeless with balls and clubs and stuff like that.

I think I’ve found my music. I’ve spent hours and hours (and I seriously mean HOURS AND HOURS) going through on my computer, listening to the gazillion tracks I have on it, listening to samples of music online, buying tracks and albums that I think sound promising. I’ve watched umpteen freestyle videos of superstar riders on Youtube (oh the beauty, the perfection!), and pulled up recent videos of my horse and I during training or at shows (oh the evading quarters, the imperfection!), watching them over and over while playing various tracks.  I’ve been convinced I’ve found something perfect many times, only to change my mind because I like something else better. Also, depending on how “big” Qrac moves in trot, the tempo changes, making it hard to decide on a specific track. A friend filmed my lesson this morning, and Qrac was moving with far more scope than the previous time my lesson was filmed, so the track I thought too “big” for him last week seemed perfect today.

I guess I should aim for big, right? I mean, bigger is better. When it comes to trot, less is definitely not more.

As far as the style of music for my freestyle, I honestly thought I’d go for something poppy and Latino. When my friend and I rode our pas-de-deux to the new Ricky Martin track, Adios, late last year, I was sure I’d choose something in the same vein for my freestyle. But then I started to feel that using Latino music with a Lusitano horse was way too cliché, and that it had probably been done to death. Also, when you take the lyrics out of many top 40-type tracks they tend to sound a little bland, kind of like elevator or supermarket music. The mega high energy David Guetta/Avicii -style stuff is cool, but it’s not really Qracy and me. I tried tracks from musicals, but felt that none-Anglophone judges just wouldn’t connect with the likes of “Oklahoma!” or “Hair”, and French musicals really don’t do it for me.

Coldplay seemed like a possibility for a while; I think their riffs are great, but nothing really made me think “that’s it!”, and surely the judges are sick of Viva la Vida, and Clocks? I liked Princess of China for the canter, and also because I always feel like a princess when I’m riding Qracipoo. But I wasn’t totally convinced. And considering how often I’m going to be listening to this music, I need to be sure. I need to really love it.

And then I remembered a track I’d seen Carl Hester ride to at Olympia in London, when I went there just before Christmas with a girlfriend to watch the Grand Prix and the Freestyle. The particular track is Heart of Courage by Two Steps from Hell. Carl Hester wasn’t the only rider to feature this track in his program, and both my girlfriend and I had commented on how fabulously electrifying it was. I knew it wouldn’t work for Qrac; it's far too “big” for him, but I thought I might find something that felt similarly inspirational and epically elevating without being so overpowering.

So I bought a few Two Steps from Hell albums and had a good listen while fiddling with my training and show videos. Of course, ITunes helpfully intervened, suggesting that if I liked music by Two Steps from Hell, I might also like Audiomachine, and being a sucker for their helpful suggestions, I bought some of those to see if they were right, which they were to some extent, especially a couple of tracks on the album they composed for the movie Tree of Life. Still, Two Steps from Hell seems to work best, and after faffing around on the computer for another gazillion hours I’ve managed to narrow it down to one track for the canter, three for the trot, and one for the walk

Anyway, now I need to ride my freestyle while someone films it, see if the timing is right (not to mention whether Qracy and I can actually do what we intend to do!). Next, from what I’ve gathered, I send the video and my music choices to a professional who will lay down the tracks and edit the music according to the choreography, and then send me a CD.

And then we ride it to see if it works. If it does we ride it over and over and over again until we get it all beautiful and perfect, and we stop falling over our outside shoulder, and losing the quarters and the bend in the half passes, and the flying changes go through on cue, and the extended trot flows and we don’t fall on our nose, and we don’t mistake the wheelbarrow for a giant green fire-breathing dragon.

Will we be ready by April? All we can do is try. And it’s a fun, exciting, motivating goal to work towards.

Have you ever ridden a freestyle? If you have, or if you would like to, what type of music would you choose?

Sit Tall and Think of Carl Hester

A funny thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago while I was having my lesson with Marie-Valentine. I hadn’t seen her for a week or two, and I was having a little moan about what my other trainer, Greg, dscribes as my "problematic left hand". I don’t know why but I can never seem to keep it as stable as my right hand, and it’s something that bothers me, because how can it be possible that after all these years something as basic things as that this still eludes me? I wasn’t having a full-blown melodramatic meltdown, more of a jokey self-disparaging poke, which, when I think about it, is probably linked to my Britishness. It’s typical of me, and I’ve been trying for years to remind myself to lose the self-disparaging comments and replace them with positive affirmations to boost my self-esteem. Let’s just say it’s a work in progress. Anyway, that afternoon, as I struggled with keeping my hands level while working on the canter, Marie-Valentine interrupted my “oh-sucky-old-me” soliloquy with a smile-infused “sit tall and think of Carl Hester”.

Immediately, I straightened my spine, raised my head, lifted my hands and put them together, sat deeper into my saddle, pushed my heels down and pulled a mock-posh face. Haha! Carl Hester? Me? Yeah right!

However, beneath me, for a few magical seconds, 490 kilos of horsepower floated up to meet my comic impersonation of one of the best dressage riders in the world. The contact softened, Qrac’s back came up as his hind-leg stepped under a little more and he went into a fabulous, flowing self-carriage.

Stunned by Qrac’s reaction, after a few strides I Carl Hestered my horse back into walk using little more than my stomach muscles and turned to look at my trainer who was grinning from ear to ear. “Et bien voila!” she giggled. “Carl Hester!”

Amazing!

The funny thing is, I’d never seen Carl Hester in action until this year’s European Championships in Rotterdam in August. I’d heard of him of course, but only vaguely. We don’t get much dressage on television here, and the only dressage magazine I get is US publication “Dressage Today”, which he might have been featured in at some point, but I’ve no precise memory of reading about him. Not that I’m much of a reference in who’s who in dressage; a couple of years ago Marie-Valentine and one of her clients went to Holland to look at some horses and came back practically hyper-ventilating because they’d touched Totilas. “Who’s Totilas?” I asked, innocently. Yep. Oops. Granted, it was slightly prior to Totilas mania, but still… I felt a bit silly.

Anyway, on the day of my lesson with Marie-Valentine during which I had my “Carl
Hester moment”, before I picked Qrac up to start work, I’d been walking around the arena on a loose rein, chatting with her about this and that, and happened to mention Carl Hester‘s phenomenal performances in Rotterdam on his ten-year-old stallion, Uthopia, telling her how blown away I’d been by this exceptional couple. Personally, from what I saw, I prefer Uthopia to Totilas, I think he looks more smooth and floaty, and that the movement in his hind legs matches the movement in his front legs, which isn’t the case with Totilas’, but that’s just me. I’d never discussed Carl Hester with Marie-Valentine, but I must have spoken about him with sparkly eyes because it obviously stayed with her, and she was smart enough to get me to visualize his impeccable seat and try to channel it, if only half-jokingly, and if only for a moment.

Ever since my “Carl Hester moment” on Qrac (pff!), I’ve become a true fan of Carl. I’ve watched umpteen videos on the Internet, and thanks to Stacey Kimmel’s wonderful blog, “Behind the Bit”, found out that he’s released a DVD, “At Home with Carl Hester”, which I ordered and am in the midst of watching (incidentally, while I mentioned earlier that I’d pulled a mock-posh face the first time I tried to emulate him, I’m delighted to report that Carl comes across as a lovely, down-to-earth person and not posh at all!). Now, whenever Marie-Valentine comes to give me a lesson she invariably shouts out “Carl Hester” at one point or another in order to get me to sit up straighter and carry my hands; it’s become something of a Pavlovian reflex. I’d love to do a clinic with Carl Hester! Dear Mr. Hester, if ever you read this, why not consider a nice little trip to the shores of Lake Geneva sometime next year?

While Carl flips through his agenda to see when he can fit me in, let me ask you. Do you have a role model? Someone you admire and aspire to emulate, no matter what discipline you ride in? Tell me about them, I’d love to hear.