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April 2008 • VOLUME 32 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
The History of the Classical Dressage Underground
Dateline 2058: In the last fifty years SuperPrix! has gained a huge international fan base with teams fielded from nearly every major country around the globe. Lately however support for SuperPrix! seems to be wavering due to efforts by terrorist groups whose express aim is to undermine the very foundation of our illustrious sport. As early as the 2010’s rumors had arisen hinting of a secret society of riders, trainers and breeders who stubbornly adhered to the ultra-orthodox principles of the Old Masters. Not only did they eschew the staggering advances made in riding theory and training devices, but they reviled the obvious progress achieved in breeding technology (actually forbidding the use of gene-splicing and cloning to their breeder members!). What started as a scattering of disgruntled middle-aged amateurs turned into a vast global network of subversive cells known as El Cadence. Despite censure and threats (both financial and legal) from the FEI and the global Union of Rollkur Practitioners (URP), El Cadence condemned SuperPrix! as a perversion of their archaic sport of dressage, even going so far as to suggest that riding a horse in the familiar and elegant silhouette of the typical SuperPrix! horse was detrimental to the animal’s soundness, both mental and physical. It should be noted that the Union of Rollkur Practitioners had been founded by FEI president Bengt Fleckchen and would, in time, become an equal player with the FEI in guiding the future of SuperPrix! URP had been established with the express purpose of revealing the miraculous advances achieved with the Bengt Fleckchen Training System. Herr Fleckchen selflessly traveled the globe to share his discoveries with riders and trainers hungry for ways to maximize their competition results while minimizing the time and effort it takes to produce a SuperPrix! athlete. Those who completed a 3-hour Bengt Fleckchen Training Course (for the modest fee of 10,000 euros) were admitted into the Union of Rollkur Practitioners and were granted certain privileges as due-paying members. In the case of judges, for instance, this included prime judging assignments at prestigious competitions that often paid significantly more than the going rate. Naturally, a ten-fold increase in their judging income was welcome since it helped offset the not-inconsiderable cost of URP membership. Competitors, too, were delighted to see URP-member judges named to the ground jury at SuperPrix events because this practically guaranteed that their efforts would be appreciated and rewarded. Truly a win/win situation! Early protests by El Cadence were confined to discussion boards with members constantly sparring with forward thinking individuals in a tedious rehash of the same old complaints: that SuperPrix! was bad for the horse, that “horses are made to be horses” (whatever that means!), that horses should be encouraged to work in harmony and relaxation with their riders (the latter term in particular being antithetical to SuperPrix!), and on and on. In an effort to spread their seditious beliefs to a wider audience, ancient classical texts were clandestinely passed between El Cadence members. One enterprising affiliate even wrote a children’s book, Sprinkles the Dressage Pony, to expose young riders to their heretical beliefs. Do these people have no shame?! URP had quietly brought up all the publishing houses that specialized in equestrian books, deleting all classical literature from their publishing lists. Since electronic communications were stringently monitored by URP the subversive books were disseminated by hand by members disguised as traveling saddle fitters and feed deliverymen. The catalyst that prompted El Cadence members to become activists in the fight against SuperPrix! was the FEI’s long overdue revision of the Training Pyramid. As early as 2007 the term relaxation had been deleted from the scale. One classicist proclaimed, “I can only hope this will trigger a worldwide flood of protest to correct this terrible omission, because it opens the door to all kinds of abusive training methods.” Predictably, no flood arrived, just a few ripples in that stagnant pond of classical horsemanship.
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