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Ribbons, blue, red, yellow and white, are show horses' traditional prizes. Last week competition for the largest number of blues was close between Atlanta's Judy King, whose harness horses took three the first day and two more the second, and Frances Dodge of Rochester Mich., who moved into the lead the third day when her collection of three harness horses shown in single harness took first and Miss King's three were second. The following day they were tied again at six blues each. Surprisingly enough, no ribbon at all went to the oldest horse of the 450 in the show. She was Kitty, bought for $85 thirteen years ago by the Essex Troop of Newark, N. J., whose members used her to pull the harrow in their riding ring for nine years before they discovered by accident that she was an expert jumper. Last week, the winner of innumerable minor prizes, unpredictable Kitty, aged 26, was entered in the military and police jumping class, rapped several fences, was unplaced.
For horsemanship of pupils and instructor, fourth prize went to the Paradise Riding Club: three chorus girls from Manhattan's famed Paradise Restaurant.
Dressage is to riding what Picasso (see p. 44) is to painting. Until the automobile placed riding of all sorts in the realm of pure sport, few horsemen in the U. S. had ever even heard of such a thing but by last week it began to look as though they might eventually cease to be absurdly inferior to European horsemen in this refined equestrian abstraction. In dressage, the rider, without apparent movement, sound or use of the reins, guides his mount through a set program of maneuvers far more complex than those accomplished by a circus horse under stimulus of shouting, gesticulation and whip cracking. No. 1 U. S. exponent of dressage is currently Major Hiram E. Tuttle who introduced it to the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden last year. Last week, nothing else in the show so fascinated spectators as the spectacle of this phlegmatic, white-haired officer seated imperturbably on a horse which, apparently on its own initiative, pirouetted, trotted for ward and sidewise at the same time, galloped backwards, galloped forward with a change of lead first every four steps, then every two, and then every step, trotted in place and otherwise comported itself like a creation of cinematic trick photography.
Recognized abroad as the quintessence of horsemanship since 1700, dressage made its formal debut in the U. S. at Los Angeles in 1932. Eager to be represented in every event on the Olympic Games program, the U. S. Olympic Committee set out to find someone who could do it. At Fort Riley, Kans., where Generals Short and Henry had introduced it to the U. S. Cavalry School in 1912, they found Major Tuttle, who had been interested in dressage since the War. He and two other officers set out to school three horses. In the 1932 Olympics their mounts made a creditable showing but in the Olympics at Berlin last summer they were hopelessly outclassed. Finishing 23rd, 25th and 27th in a field of 29, they got the U. S. 9th place in a field of nine.