A dancing horse at the Olympics won the internet and showed us all how cool dressage is
This is the Morning Win. For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be writing each weekday morning about the Tokyo Olympics. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.
Late last week Rory McIlroy – one of the greatest golfers in the world who was in Tokyo competing for Northern Ireland – was asked which event he would really love to go see at the Games.
His answer?
Dressage.
For real.
He had this to say, via Golf Digest:
“The one thing that’s on tonight that I would love to go to, the one thing I’ve always wanted to go and see is dressage,” McIlroy said. “Always. I just, I it’s mesmerizing and it’s on tonight at like 7:30. I’ll watch it on TV. I just think, I watch it once every few years, obviously and it’s like, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s mesmerizing and it’s really cool. I don’t know.”
I remember being surprised by that answer and also confused by it, too. I know next to nothing about dressage and, with no offense to the dressage community, thought it was something where horses just come out and do some tricks and stuff.
Well now, thanks to this horse that went viral over the weekend for it’s incredible, what I guess we can call dance moves, I totally get what McIlory was talking about. Dressage is mesmerizing and wild and incredibly fun.
If you haven’t seen this video of Team USA’s four-time Olympian Steffen Peters and his horse Suppenkasper doing their thing in the dressage event then stop what you’re doing and watch it.
"OMG THEY'RE PLAYING MY SONG." – the horse at the club pic.twitter.com/xRNJ5N6acE
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) July 31, 2021
Incredible, right? The music also takes me back to some really smelly bars from college but whatever, that’s not the point.
The point is dressage is incredible and that horse is now rightfully a viral internet star for having the time of its life in Tokyo.
That’s what’s fun about the Olympic Games – random sports and events can steal your hearts for a bit and make you look forward to watching them again in the future.
I just never thought dressage would do that for me, but here I am.
Quick hits: High jumpers share gold in awesome moment… MLB fans crush Mets owner… Ump’s horrible strike call… And more.
(Photo by Christian Petersen / POOL / AFP)
– Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamber had an awesome moment when they decided to share the gold medal in the high jump. They also had a pretty special reason for doing so, too.
– MLB fans destroyed Mets owner Steve Cohen over his tweet about not signing the team’s first-round pick, pitcher Kumar Rocker.
– How did a Major League Baseball ump, who is supposed to be among the best of the best, call this a strike?
– Reds outfielder Jesse Winker had a perfect response to a Mets fan’s rude sign.
– Urban Meyer broke down the one flaw he sees in Tim Tebow’s skills at tight end.