‘The greatest dressage drama to be seen in Britain’: the 1996 Horse of the Year Show dressage freestyle that descended into fiasco

Heiner Schiergen shook his head.

His freestyle music had barely started when the German rider, last to go, signalled that something was wrong.

“When the 27-year-old rider entered the arena and gave the signal for his music to start, it commenced at the canter section,” wrote Richard Davison, who was riding in the class and covered the drama in his H&H column at the time.

It was the Sunday of the Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) at Wembley, and the freestyle finale of the Volvo dressage World Cup qualifier. Carole Mortimer’s H&H report at the time called what followed “the greatest dressage drama to be seen in Britain”.

Heiner wasn’t there to make up the numbers. He was riding the nine-year-old Hanoverian gelding Without A Doubt, and the pair had become firm crowd favourites after taking second place in the earlier grand prix – which then, as now, acted as a qualifier for the deciding freestyle.

“Amid scenes of great confusion, Heiner was left standing in the arena as chairman of the judges Eric Lette ran over to the technicians to be told that the first three minutes’ music were missing,” Richard wrote.

A race against the clock

The judges put the clock on and gave Heiner two minutes to fix the problem. Fellow German rider Frank Lamontagne, wrote Richard, “sprinted back to the horsebox for a spare tape.”

An H&H news report continued: “There was an agonising wait before his compatriot Frank Lamontagne came running into the arena with a duplicate tape.”

Frank’s return turned what was really a fairly minor mishap (what dressage rider hasn’t had trouble with their music, or doesn’t know one who has?) into something much more fun: a fiasco.

For a proper fiasco you need two things. High stakes – check. And a complete upending of the normal social order.

As Frank ran back into the arena clutching the spare tape – imagine that happening at the London International Horse Show where the World Cup qualifier is held today – that happened.

A crowd from a sport with a reputation for polite applause cheered him in like a returning hero. They were firmly on Heiner’s side, and they weren’t shy about showing it.

Frank, Richard recalled, was “greeted by cheers befitting the bearer of the Olympic flame”, and Heiner then “performed a good, lively test”.

Carole wrote: “He finished to immense applause and cheers from the enthusiastic supporters who were convinced his test could have won."

But that was only the first act of the fiasco – as the crowd began to settle, no score was forthcoming. Instead, it was belatedly announced that despite being allowed to perform his test, Heiner had been disqualified.

“The news was greeted with an even more vocal audience booing, jeering and stomping their feet,” Carole wrote. “A reaction more reminiscent of continental counterparts.”

The H&H news report described how “booing and foot-stamping turned to cheers as the rider entered the arena to debate the issue with chairman of the FEI dressage committee Eric Lette and Joep Bartels, the Volvo World Cup Dressage director” (pictured above). The uproar, it added, lasted “a full four minutes, continuing as organisers struggled to stick to a programme of presentations.”

The result got lost in it all. "The somewhat overshadowed victory belonged to Canadian Penny Rockx and 16-year-old Winsome,” Carole wrote, with our own Richard second on Askari.

The explanation

Despite the chaotic scenes, Eric Lette’s reasoning afterwards was quite straightforward. "After the bell has sounded, the rider has one minute to enter the arena," he said. “We gave him two minutes, but the final wait was nearer eight. The tape is the responsibility of the rider, and I must be fair to all the riders.”

In other words, Heiner had overshot the time allowed to start his test by some distance.

Richard said in his column that, as Eric explained at the press conference later, the decision had already been made before Heiner rode.

“As seven or eight minutes had elapsed before Heiner’s music began,” he said, “he was only allowed to ride on the understanding that the incident would go before the independent appeals committee. In the end, he decided not to appeal, no score was given and the disqualification stood.”

Heiner, for his part, saw it rather differently. “I think it would have been better to have been disqualified rather than letting me ride the whole test,” he said.

“A lot of time was wasted as I did not realise what the problem was. It was stressful waiting, but once I started riding my nerves disappeared, although I felt the horse had gone over.”

What happened to the tape?

Nobody could say. It was revealed afterwards that “somehow, part of the music programme had been blanked out.”

The show’s technicians insisted “the professionally-produced tape could not be tampered with,” but Lamontagne “claimed to have checked the tape three times before handing it to the technicians.”

Richard wrote: “Inevitably, rumours of sabotage circulated the arena. It was unpleasant for the technicians, and produced a most unsatisfactory end to what was otherwise an excellent competition.”

Richard’s verdict was that it was a “mix-up just waiting to happen”. Heiner and Without A Doubt were “the victims on this occasion”, he said, but “it could have happened to anyone at any show”.

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