Horse dancing (also known by the far more boring name of "dressage") is one of the stranger Olympic sports, right up there with duet synchronized swimming and race walking. Like the women's gymnastics floor routines, dressage is set to music as horse and rider perform a series of complicated steps that look to the uneducated eye like a joyful little jig. Mostly this music is kind of dull. Not so for Spain's Severo Jesus Jurado Lopez, though, who on Monday broke out an instrumental version of "Smooth" by Santana (featuring Rob Thomas, of course):
The Chronicle of the Horse, which was live-blogging the event, broke the performance down for those of us who call this sport "horse dancing":
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Really nice jump in the double pirouttes and then straight into extended canter. He does the two tempis on a circle. They go from piroutte right into piaffe, which earns them a whistle from the crowd! They're also getting claps on the final centerline as Lopez goes one-handed. Big cheers! They might be crowd favorites today. He earns an 83.55 percent, and right now that'll hold them in third. The crowd actually boos the score! They wanted him to be higher. [The Chronicle of the Horse]
Later in their routine, horse and rider transitioned to dancing to Bon Jovi's "It's My Life." While ultimately the team didn't get the gold in horse dancing, the pair certainly finished first in musical taste.
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