‘He’s a goofball who enjoys training’ – meet this Olympic rider and her new equine partner

US rider Adrienne Lyle describes her Paris Olympics partner Helix as “a goofball”.

“He’s in your face, he’s in your pocket – you walk down the aisle and he’s looking where you’re going and he wants attention all the time. But because of that, I think he really enjoys the training process,”she said after her Olympic dressage test yesterday.

“If we leave him in the stall and he sees someone walk by with a saddle, he’s pounding on the door, like, ‘Come on, my turn.’ He’s very active in his brain and he likes to be engaged at all times.”

Adrienne and Zen Elite Equestrian Center’s 12-year-old Apache gelding Helix are a new partnership, with the 12-year-old bought as a Paris prospect just before the deadline for Olympic horses to change hands following the retirement of the rider’s Tokyo team silver medal-winner Salvino.

“He arrived in the US on 17 January and my first ride on him was on 21 January,” said Adrienne. “It was a challenge for sure to build a partnership that quickly and not something I’ve done before. It was learning to speak each other’s language.

“It takes years of patience and work to get a horse to this level, so I give huge credit to Marina Mattsson, the Swedish rider who produced him to grand prix, and everyone else in his life who brought him to this point.”

Riders here in Paris are well prepared to answer mainstream media questions about horse welfare and how horses are treated, with horse sport in the spotlight after Charlotte Dujardin’s suspension.

“If I’m really good in this life, I might come back as one of my horses,” joked Adrienne Lyle.

“But really, these horses are top athletes – picture an NBA [National Basketball Association] player. The horses have every therapy, every nutritionist, every person there to make sure mentally they’re in a calm place.

“We don’t let people be loud in the barns, we make sure it’s temperature controlled, we do everything like you would for an athlete because they have to want to perform for you to be really good at this level and they have to be a partner. The goal is to keep the most amount of stress out in their lives because that’s when they perform.”

Speaking more about Helix’s personality, Adrienne added: “[If he was human] he would go to the spa and lay back with cucumbers on his eyes. He loves having people’s hands on him – like the more people in there massaging him and feeding him the better. Some horses want to be left alone and he really wants attention. He’s quite a people horse.”

Adrienne Lyle and Helix at the Paris Olympics. Credit: Peter Nixon

Adrienne Lyle scored 72.593% in the grand prix yesterday, which she says is “right about dead on our average in qualifying competitions”.

“That was my goal – I know there’s a lot more in there, he’s a very talented horse, but when you add in this environment, I thought if we could just reproduce what we’ve been doing I would be really happy,” she said. “He was really excited at first and the fact that he settled down and trusted me was everything, being a new partnership.”

Adrienne added that in training she is always focusing on trying to make Helix longer in the frame.

“In the test I’m trying to balance where I can, soften where I can, to show the self carriage and it’s a definite work in progress,” she said.

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