COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - Oliver Broholmgard is a big horse - 17 hands tall - and a muscular one, too.
It makes sense, as he’s spent the better part of the last 16 years doing what his owner, Liz Hotchkiss, 82, wryly refers to as equestrian aerobics, the Missourian (https://bit.ly/2rOU52x ) reported.
Most people know it as the sport of dressage. Together, horse and rider represent decades of experience in an ancient sport.
Dressage translates from the French word for “training,” and it’s Hotchkiss’ passion. The sport has been the body of her life’s work, and those who know that work best say it’s the soul of her legacy in Columbia.
Continuing to practice dressage as an octogenarian is important to Hotchkiss, too. Late last year, Hotchkiss fell asleep at the wheel on her way home from a friend’s house one evening. Her car veered off Old Plank Road South in Columbia and struck a tree. The impact dislodged her hearing aid, which flew into the backseat. When a passing driver came along and tried to help her out of the car, she found she couldn’t stand.
Hotchkiss had sustained a compression fracture to her lower back. Her recovery included vertebroplasty injections - a procedure that requires acrylic bone cement to be injected into the fractured vertebrae. About 14 weeks later, she was back on the horse.
“I mean, how many people are able at that age to still pursue the sport they first got involved with during their childhood?” said Beth Hussey, her former student and president of the Columbia Association for Dressage and Combined Training. “It’s an amazing thing, and I think a testament both to the person who does it and the sport itself.
“If you do this properly, it doesn’t break you down, it doesn’t destroy your joints - if you’re lucky you should be able to ride dressage for your entire life,” Hussey said.
The riders that dressage does attract tend to skew older, too. That’s because it requires a patience many young people lack, Hussey said. Although jumping, for example, may be more exciting, dressage is less physically taxing.
“It has the advantage of being a horse sport that requires a great deal of skill and dedication and talent but does not usually involve the possibility of you breaking multiple bones when you fall off over a fence or something like that,” Hussey said.
Hotchkiss first encountered horses when she was 7 years old. She opened Stony Hill Farm in south Columbia shortly after moving to town in 1989. Mid-Missouri’s dressage community was still in its infancy, and Hotchkiss quickly emerged as an experienced, knowledgeable trainer.
She had taught dressage in Connecticut and Long Island, for decades before moving to Missouri. Once here, her work proved to be instrumental to the growth of the Columbia Dressage and Combined Training Association, an organization she helped found. The Columbia organization is under the umbrella of the United States Dressage Foundation.
Hotchkiss bought Oliver during a trip she took to Florida in 2001 after the death of her second husband. She’d gone to see her daughter and spend some time away from her day-to-day duties but certainly wasn’t planning to come home with a new horse.
“He was a much higher quality horse than anything I’d ever had,” Hotchkiss said. “So recognizing that I was not up to his level, I took him to Florida every winter for about five or six years and really worked on it every day with a trainer. We ended up at a fairly high level.”
At their peak, Hotchkiss and Oliver rode at the Prix St. George level of dressage showing - the first level of internationally competitive dressage as defined by the Federation Equestre Internationale, or FEI. Hotchkiss received a silver medal from the The Dressage Foundation in 2006 and a bronze medal in 1994 for scores she had accumulated throughout her career.
Hotchkiss did the work to train Oliver to that level, but as a Danish Warmblood, he was predisposed to success.
As Hussey explained, warmblooded horses have the desired temperament for dressage - a blend of ferocity and tranquility. That came from decades of strategic breeding between temperamentally hot- and cold-blooded horses.
Hot-blooded horses, by nature, are excitable and fast. They’re primarily trained to race. Thoroughbreds are hot-blooded.
Cold-blooded horses, on the other hoof, are plodding and laid-back. They’ll happily plug away at whatever menial task they’ve been assigned to for all eternity. They can be a great help on the farm. A Clydesdale is a cold-blooded horse.
Warm-blooded horses fall somewhere in between. They’re good for dressage.
Hotchkiss and Oliver were certified as members of the United States Dressage Federation’s Century Club in 2013. Club membership can be earned when a rider and horse’s combined age is greater than or equal to 100 (Hotchkiss was 79 and Oliver was 21 at the time. They are now 82 and 25). The horse and rider must perform in front of a certified judge, as Hotchkiss did at the William Woods Spring Dressage Show in Fulton. Although one can be granted Century Club membership for performing at any level of dressage, Hotchkiss and Oliver did so at the USDF’s fourth level, which is the most advanced bracket before the FEI’s Prix St. George and international competition.
“It’s an impressive achievement no matter how you get to your century club ride, but I think it’s especially an achievement to be proud of if you can, at that age, still get you and your horse to perform a credible fourth-level test,” Hussey said. “That’s asking them to do some pretty significant, difficult stuff.”
As accomplished as she is as a rider and competitor, Hotchkiss actually dedicates most of her time to teaching at her farm and stable. She said she likes to focus on fundamentals.
“I concentrate on teaching the basics rather than higher-level stuff,” Hotchkiss said. “Because a lot of higher level riders don’t have the basics down. I think the more talented the horse is, the more people tend to bypass those things.”
Hotchkiss has taken on fewer students as she has grown older. She has maintained a stable of schooling horses for new students in the past but now only offers lessons to those who either board with her or have their own horse. She has about 13 horses boarding at her stable, though she has had as many as 20 in the past. About half of the boarders take lessons, and she gives approximately 10 lessons each week, she said.
Hotchkiss tries to find time to do dressage with Oliver, too. The pair practices roughly three times a week between lessons and farm chores.
She also tries to stay involved with the Columbia Dressage and Combined Training Association. There has been a steady increase in public interest in the association, Hussey said, as it continues to offer educational opportunities to members. Speakers are invited to association meetings to speak about topics ranging from event etiquette to horse dentistry.
Although most people are introduced to dressage through watching the Olympics, it is not tremendously well-liked as a viewing sport. In fact, according to a social media poll conducted by FiveThirtyEight, it’s the “worst” Olympic sport in terms of popularity. Even Hotchkiss admits it can be “pretty boring,” though she said understanding what you’re looking at helps.
“It’s certainly not as exciting as football,” Hotchkiss said. “Most people say it looks like grass growing. And, anyway, most of the events are written about in horse-related publications, so the public never sees anything about it.”
To the uninitiated, dressage can look a little like horse dancing, Hotchkiss said. The horse travels around an arena in intricate, rhythmic patterns, taking fluid steps in a choreographed or freestyle routine set to music. Competitors are scored according to not only the intricacy of their movement but also how in-tune horse and rider are overall. For example, the less the rider moves to indicate a command, the better. Riders at the highest level of dressage, the Grand Prix, can appear motionless atop their horse.
“The rider has to be quieter and not show any signs of doing anything - it takes an awful lot of body control,” Hotchkiss said. “Most of the press says the horse does all the work, but it’s not so.”
Hussey took lessons with Hotchkiss at Stony Hill Farm for 12 years, and over that time she grew to appreciate Hotchkiss’ skills as a communicator.
“I felt sometimes like there was this triangle between me and Liz and the horse where we were all kind of riding together,” Hussey said. “She would get in our skulls and tell us what to do, and it would be the right thing.”
Another one of Hotchkiss’ students and friends, Holly Rice, praised not only her teaching style but also her character.
Rice was amazed by Hotchkiss’ determination to get back on her horse after last year’s car accident.
“You know, a lot of people her age would have just given up at that point,” Rice said. “But as soon as she was able she was exercising, keeping her mind and body fit with the goal of being able to ride again.”
“It’s a part of Liz,” Rice continued. “You learn certain people have horses in their blood, or they have a sport that - it’s just who they are. Much of who Liz is is because of the horses.”
Although her demeanor couldn’t be more modest, Hotchkiss’ contribution to the development of dressage in mid-Missouri cannot be overstated, friends and former students say. Her talent for sharing her passion with others has helped bring the pleasure of a time-honored and global sport to the Columbia community.
“She has, in her own kind of way, really helped build the sport here in central Missouri,” Rice said. “She’s provided quality lessons and guidance for years. Whether people realize it or not she’s always been quietly guiding.”
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Information from: Columbia Missourian, https://www.columbiamissourian.com
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