Rescue Heart

Chapter Seventeen

C h a p t e r . S e v e n t e e n

“Everybody, quick, it’s Helen’s shot now!”

Hearing Mum shout, I abandoned my task of sweeping up on the yard and ran as fast as I could up to the house. Ollie and Sorcha were already there, crowded round the laptop at the dining room table with Mum, and I slipped in beside them to get a good view of the screen. Thankfully we were able to see the live stream of Helen’s Grand Prix Freestyle even though we’d unfortunately had to miss the Grand Prix. Espoir had done well in a difficult competition to place seventh the day before on a score of 69.38% the day before, having had a few faults with tension and some problems stemming from a lack of impulsion, but for his Grand Prix debut it wasn’t a bad score.

I had every hope that today he would be better though with his music to dance to, and a routine memorised perfectly by him and Helen. Helen herself admitted on the phone that her nerves had gotten the better of her, which did come as a surprise. She was always so self-assured and boldly confident that I struggled to imagine her being scared of anything. She held her own all the time in social situations, so it was even harder to imagine her shying from the limelight.

In silence we watched as Helen signalled for the music to begin and she and Espoir set off at a canter, heading down the centre-line. Already I could see Espoir’s tension as his nose ducked behind the vertical a little due to the tension in his neck. Helen allowed generously with her hands and briefly patted him after they executed a rigid square halt at X. The tone of the music changed drastically to the pizzicato of high-pitched strings, their trot music. The choppy rhythm of the music matched the rhythm of Espoir’s trot, and he flowed in unison with the music into a gliding half-pass zig-zag back and forth across the arena. Helen appeared to be working hard for the energy, and he was backing off to her leg at points but with lateral work being one of his highlights he still had excellent reach. He perhaps could have had a greater degree of bend and been more parallel to the wall, but with so much tension in his body it would have been difficult to do much better.

In his extended trot, he had an explosive rush of power, and really reached out with an expressive foreleg and energetic hindleg. His entire frame lengthened, and he looked a little more relaxed when Helen collected him back.

The real test of his attention came for the piaffe and passage work. I held my reservations about how well it would go given that he was behind the leg and napping at every opportunity, but Helen managed to salvage the piaffe work for a points boost which brought her above the 70% boundary momentarily.

In the canter work Espi was much more relaxed, but it looked as though Helen was fighting hard to hold him together. Being so big and lightfooted, he looked bizarrely floaty, but I was waiting after every collected stride for him to fall into trot. He was being lazy, and she wasn’t managing to get the best out of him.

In his defence, he had never performed such a demanding routine in such an intimidating atmosphere, in a large open indoor arena surrounded by towering grandstands filled with people. And if Helen was as nervous as she was the day before, that wouldn’t be helping much either.

His canter pirouettes were large and bounding – not very collected and not very smooth, and with an extra rushed stride at the end of the last one. He redeemed himself in the walk, with his long, languid, ground-covering strides. After the final salute, Helen showed no signs of disappointment with her score that hadn’t managed to finish above 70% like she had aimed for. She grinned like the Cheshire cat and she gave Espoir an enthusiastic ‘thank-you’ neck rub as they wandered out of the arena.

“Well, what’s your verdict?” Mum asked me as she closed the lid on the laptop.

“She’ll know herself that there’s a lot to work on. He can do it all beautifully in the arena, she just needs to find a way to bring that out in him in the arena. Who knew that they could both be so shy? They didn’t make many technical errors, it was just the napping, lack of impulsion and silly mistakes that cost them again today. She’ll be pleased with his effort, but she’ll know they can both do better,” I answered honestly.