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Thursday 9 August 2012

Dotlympics 2012: Day 12


Imagine you are a horse. You are sat there - well actually standing there, as horses are such massive freaks that they can't sit down - when all of a sudden a minor member of the Dutch royal family sits on your back. Oh well, it could be worse I suppose. The Dutch royal family are wealthy enough to keep me in oats and sugar lumps and other assorted horse chow.

So, I'm willing to go with it even after they stick me on a slowboat to England. Now I'm in Greenwich Park. There's something of a crowd gathered, which isn't ideal. I'd rather be back in my field. But hang on, what's this? I know this song! I know the dance for it and everything.

So, I do the dance. The crowd go wild! But then they all start congratulating the horsey woman sat on my back and give her a gold medal. This seems rather unfair.

It does rather, doesn't it? I'm pretty steamed up about the whole business and I'm not even a horse. I know that moral opposition to things usually lasts only up to the point that one's ability at it catches up to the requisite level, but I'm willing to make an exception here. In spite of the Great Britain Olympic team's excellence in the Dressage competition, I cannot and will not accept that this unending, horsey, in-bred, shoot a fox in the face, bankers are a good sort, burn the Welsh, open the grounds to the plebs during the summer, cavalcade of titnonsense is worthy of an Olympic medal.

That a man old enough to have once heckled Ramsay McDonald at an NUS rally is able to perch himself on a nag and win the same medal that Usain Bolt gets for being the fastest human being who has ever walked the earth is damn near obscene. I'm not against horse dancing. Let the horse set train their horse to bump and grind to that Take That song from the Morrison's advert. Each to their own. Then gather all the horse people and all the horses to have a big horse dance off. Give the funkiest horse and rider a cup, too, by all means. But an Olympic gold medal? For goodness sake.

I'm sure there's a lot of skill. But most things that look deceptively simple are just that. And not all of those are deemed Olympic-worthy. I'm fairly sure the equestrian events are all a relic of the early years of the modern Olympic Games. It was like Grand Prix motor racing for them, then. But shit the bed, enough with the horses already. Show-jumping and cross country are only a sport if you happen to be a horse, and with dressage the odds are even longer.

Olympic dressage? Fuck right off. You horse.

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