Olympic team selections often are a surprise, but in the case of the U.S. dressage squad for Paris that was announced Tuesday, it seemed an easy choice. (At least even I could figure it out; you can read what I wrote here or here in my weekend stories after the final observation competition.)
Marcus Orlob, who started as a longshot, wound up as a star with Alice Tarjan’s Jane, winning both the Grand Prix and the Special at the last competition to make the team.
“I’m in shock, but not totally surprised, because it’s a really good horse,” was the reaction of the trainer from Annandale, N.J., who just began riding the 10-year-old mare in March. His Special score of 75.930 on Sunday was the highest mark in the discipline for any U.S. rider this year.
Also selected for the three-member team is two-time Olympian Adrienne Lyle and Helix, a horse she began riding this year for Heidi Humphries’ Zen Elite Equestrian. Although the two are a new combination, the horse had experience on Swedish teams with Marina Mattison. The U.S. traveling reserve rider is Endel Ots on another of Heidi’s horses, Zen Elite’s Bohemian, who was fourth in the Tokyo Olympics with Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour of Denmark.
Steffen Peters, a five-time Olympian, was always presumed to be on the team with Suppenkasper after ranking number one in the standings for Olympic candidates since last year, and that’s the way it worked out.
He did the first observation event in Hagen, Germany, but was able to skip the others and planned to ride as an individual at Aachen next month.
Steffen Peters and Suppenkasper. (Photo © by Nancy Jaffer)
Alice trained Jane, who had no schooling when she arrived as a three-year-old, up through Grand Prix, but handed the ride over to Marcus, her trainer, because she felt the horse was too strong for her.
“He’s stronger, basically. I was like, `Just have at it and see where you go.’ He got further than I could this year,” said Alice.
“I think we ride very differently. I think it’s a great thing he’s able to get on and show the horse off. She’s not the biggest mover of all the horses I’ve got,” Alice noted, “but her head is super and she’s very classical in how she does things, so it’s worth a lot of points. She’s got a beautiful outline.”
As she noted, “Seeing potential and actually realizing it are two completely different things.”
For his part, Marcus emphasized, “I always believed in this horse.
“My biggest concern was always that time was against me, and I wish I had more time. I believe in eight months, this will be a completely different picture.”
However, he added, “Obviously, it worked out in this time to do great things.”
Speaking about Alice, he pointed out, “To pick a baby, to do the training, I guess the most credit goes to her. She selects so many fantastic horses. This is just one of them. I got lucky enough that at this time it was a little bit too much horse for her and she allowed me to ride Jane. I guess I was at the right time at the right place.”
Alice groomed for Marcus in Germany and will be helping in Paris, where Allison Nemeth is the official groom.
If everything goes to current form in Paris, you could figure the team medals will go to the British and the Germans (I think it will be the British who get top billing), along with the Danes.
Form tends to be more reliable for predictions in dressage than in eventing and show jumping, where you can’t always count on the fences to stay up or making the time (among other things) on cross-country.
Marcus isn’t taking anything for granted, however.
He said of Helix and Suppenkasper, “those horses are totally capable in my opinion to do good things and score well, and nobody would have thought I would score 75 in the Special. I think honestly everything is possible. Other people maybe have a bad day, and maybe we have a good day and maybe there is something possible. For sure it won’t be easy, but I guess that’s what makes the sport interesting. Everybody has to get through the test.”
Marcus Orlob and Adrienne Lyle were named as two-thirds of the U.S. dressage team for Paris.
At the moment, Marcus also is on the team for Aachen; he was named for that squad before the Olympic observation events were finished. The question is whether he will be taken off that team because of his Olympic team status.
He knows it’s good for Jane to see new places (the showgrounds where she competed during the spring were all relatively quiet.)
“At the same time, I don’t want to run her into the ground,” he pointed out.
While Aachen would give Jane crowd experience, the fact that spectators are so close to the arena means it won’t be the same as Versailles, where equestrian events are being held for the Olympics and fans are further back from the field of play.
“They are completely different showgrounds,” Marcus pointed out.
“But I think I do it very smart, I’m always in contact with Alice” for suggestions.
Jane has taken it easy for a couple of days, Wednesday she will go on a hack, Thursday she will stretch, Friday and Saturday she will be worked a little bit and Sunday take it easy, then Monday go to Aachen.
“I try to be smart because in this short period of time, I can’t change anything in the training, I just have to keep her happy and sound,” said Marcus, a skillful horseman who has the professional qualification of bereiter from Warendorf, the German riding school that emphasizes a classical equestrian education. A native of Germany, he is a naturalized American citizen.