On the Line

Friday March 26, 1:15pm, PBIC: By the time I ran to the rental car for my laptop and made it back to the VIP tent, my hair was curling from the humidity and I was sweating through my black t-shirt. Rodrigo Pessoa was waiting for me, and I was sweating. I said a curse under my breath and ran a hand through my hair. Then I stepped through the doors of the tent and looked around for my idol.

He was deep in conversation with Jimmy Torano. I tried to forget that I’m actually a  starry-eyed girl and went with my best serious journalist look as I walked over to interrupt them. Jimmy made himself scarce and I tried not to flub the first question. As interviews go, it was pretty standard. There weren’t exactly fireworks and stars when Rodrigo shook my hand. Not that I expected there to be (not really. . .)

Mostly, my longtime crush looked tired as he waited for the last class of the day to start. His eyes flicked around quickly from TV screen to ring to the people passing by behind me. I got my quotes and basked in the glow of Rodrigo’s stare, when he took his eyes off other distractions to look my way. His answers, swathed in that vaguely South American, vaguely European accent, were succinct, intelligent and precise. The best of the best live in a big, pressurized fishbowl, but I think they like it that way.

9,000 people showed up to WEF’s final grand prix last night and watched McLain and Sapphire rule the class. A skydiver parachuted into the main ring as the national anthem ended. George Morris shouted at riders during the jump off from his spot near the in gate. Rodrigo and Pablo Barrios held up big oversized checks as the top two riders in the FTI Riders Challenge.

And the starry-eyed girl that lives inside this journalist loved every minute of it.

Rodrigo Pessoa and Let's Fly finished fourth in the GP last night.

At the end of this week I’ll be back in Florida, my home away from home. And thank goodness; it’s been a stressful few weeks of meeting deadlines and planning stories. Have you ever typed so much that every tap causes a little shock wave of pain from fingertip to knuckle? I hope that’s not what they call arthritis?

But instead of blogging about my stress level, I’ll try to look ahead at what will be an exciting weekend. Once my last story is filed, I’ll finally be able to focus on what to ask my next article subject: Rodrigo Pessoa. Along with the rest of the horse world, I’ve long admired Rodrigo’s incredible talent and success, not to mention his deep brown eyes, intriguing accent, the way he looks in a white pair of breeches. . .

Hmmm, “focus” might be hard to come by during this interview. I admit I’m a victim of the Rodrigo-effect. Maybe I rode in a Pessoa saddle for too many years and it seeped into my skin. When I spent a season living in Florida a few years ago, I spent much of my time like this:

Yes, that’s me in the blue baseball hat, circa 2008. Staring at the eye candy in the warm up ring at WEF was a brief but intoxicating hobby (and one that I’ve been resoundingly mocked for ever since.) But my days of staring from afar are officially over. Now that I’m a serious equine journalist, I’ve got to plan my approach and write up a list of questions to ask. Suggestions, anyone?

When I’m teaching lessons in the morning, I’ve got a clear view of the facility’s dressage riders who school right next to our ring. Although I’ve grumbled many a time about DQs and their ways, this morning I looked over at the dressage court with new respect.

Dressage trainer Nicole Perry teaches her clients at the same time I do, with two to three students in the ring at once. I can’t believe I didn’t notice this until now, but all of her students school in their helmets, every day. I was thinking, of course, of Courtney King-Dye when this came to mind. Courtney’s very serious fall off a young horse last week has made huge waves in the horse world because she was not wearing a helmet when she fell, and she’s currently in a coma with a fractured skull.

It’s sad that it takes the hospitalization of a much-loved Olympic rider for people to get up in arms about wearing helmets. I’ve always wondered why the majority of dressage riders seem to be too cool to wear helmets – is it something to do with wearing top hats? Tradition? Or the whole lack of obstacle jumping they do? I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen some dressage horses do pretty crazy things, no obstacles involved.

When Courtney fell, you could almost hear a collective throwing up of hands in the horse world. She became yet another dressage rider without a helmet, another head injury statistic. The outpouring of support for her has been huge, and rightly so. She’s an incredibly talented rider who has worked hard for every success that has come her way. And when she hopped on someone else’s green horse for a test ride, she probably didn’t think twice about grabbing a helmet first. But we ride horses, and horses are unpredictable. Courtney fell because the horse she was riding tripped over its own legs, an accident that could have happened to anyone.

So many riders seem to think that they’re too cool for helmets. I know a trainer who thinks she’s mastered the art of looking cool while riding through the dead of winter with just a beanie and earmuffs on her head. But when people ride horses without helmets, they just look stupid. It’s not only dressage riders – so many A-circuit jumpers and international level riders also subscribe to the “it won’t happen to me” fantasy.

Until it does. Courtney, thank goodness, is stable and making small improvements. Her fall would motivate upper level riders at the Palm Beach Dressage Derby (Mar 4-7) to compete in their helmets, and many more to warm up wearing helmets. Maybe those riders started to feel stupid, too, for not riding in a helmet.

By riding in their helmets every day, Nicole Perry’s students are setting an example we all should follow. In my opinion, they’re the coolest “un-cool” riders around.

I’ve got to follow up on my recent post about the cloning of polo horse Califa. In that post I also mentioned the grand prix jumper – and gelding – Sapphire. The dapple grey Holsteiner earned the 2003 Pan Am Games individual gold medal in show jumping with rider Mark Watring (Puerto Rico) and had an illustrious grand prix career. At shows, Mark would often get breeding inquiries from people who’d seen him go and assumed he was a stallion. Mark always thought it was a shame that he couldn’t breed his superstar jumper, so when he was approached last year by US company ViaGen with the idea of cloning Sapphire, he agreed to give it a try. I wrote an article about Sapphire’s cloning last summer for California Riding Magazine, and posted it on my website (read the article here).

And then the magic of the Internet stepped in. Some months later, I got an email from a woman in Germany who had read my article after it popped up in her google search. The woman, Katherina Tansley, was 14 when her father bought her a newborn foal that she named Lindor. She hand raised Lindor until he was six, and then reluctantly sold him on to a family in South Germany. He then found his way to Mark via a few dealing barns, and in the process was renamed Sapphire. Katherina had been following his career since the Pan Am Games.

After she read about the cloning, Katherina asked me to help her get in touch with Mark. She wrote to me that “when I first read, that there will be a clone, I didn’t know what to think. Right now I think, he must be very loved and appreciated, that they want to clone him.”

Well, he is, and they did. The healthy clone was born in Texas about two weeks ago. I may have come off as a bit cynical in my previous post; a polo team of identical clones is still just so very sci-fi. But that was before I put the following two pictures side-by-side. It’s enough to melt any cynic’s heart.

The Original:

Here is Sapphire as a foal in Germany, circa 1992.

The Clone:

And here is the newborn clone in Texas, just a few weeks ago.

Will you just look at that? Tell me that these are not the most astounding pair of baby pictures you’ve ever laid eyes on. Cloning inevitably begs the question of nature vs. nurture, and there is no sure answer yet. But modern science is well on it’s way to solving that little mystery.