2004 Olympic Games - Dressage

Dancing To The Music: Olympians Show They’ve Got the Beat

Guenter Seidel and Aragon Are The First of the Americans to Ride

Guenter Seidel was next to go and for some reason I felt like I was watching the music to Ben Hur. It just brought me back to that era. His music was extremely powerful yet classical or so I thought. Afterwards I found out it was from the movie Back Draft and in fact was firefighter music. Well, I guess that is powerful too and it certainly was. One thing I don’t claim is to be able to identify the exact tunes that I was hearing, except on occasion. Guenter’s horse seemed to get more powerful the louder the music got. At the end he did a piaffe passage tour down the center line which was one of the best I saw that day. Guenter later commented, “he always gets the last centerline because he’s heading home.” Guenter had some problems in the tempi changes but overall his test was good.

After coming out of the ring, Guenter said, “It’s a pretty electric atmosphere. I was always concerned if he could handle situations like this and now I know that he can.”

However, what Guenter did say, albeit rather quietly, was, “I think we are a year early.” Aragon just needs a little more seasoning before he catches up to the top horses but after this experience Guenter is feeling more and more confident that he has the potential to get to the top level;

Guenter explained that experience has shown that those that win are not necessarity the riders who include the most difficult moves in their test, but rather “those that don’t make mistakes, have everything fit in their program, and have great music.” It’s also important for the horse’s rhythm and the music to sync.