Heidemarie Dresing describes her love of equestrian sport as follows: “It’s like a virus that sits inside you,” said the oldest participant at 69 years old the Paralympics in Paris: “Then you just can’t stop doing it.”
Dresing, who only discovered para-sports eight years ago, made her Paralympics debut in 2021 at the Summer Games in Tokyo. There she competed with the mare La Boum and took fourth place in the individual and freestyle competitions, and seventh in the team competition.
La Boum has now been retired for breeding. Dresing has been riding the gelding Horse24 Dooloop for a year now, with whom she will compete in the Palace Park of Versailles this year. It was not love at first sight between the two, as “Dooly” was not the type of horse she was actually looking for. However, the two are now a well-rehearsed team and have already secured several national titles.
The rider from Rheda-Wiedenbrück caught the horse virus at the age of eight, when she was still at the pony farm with her grandmother. In regular sport, she was successful in both dressage and show jumping. Later, she also went into horse breeding and training, where she trained over 120 horses alongside her job as an architect.
Medals are possible. Definitely.
Heidemarie Dresing before Paris 2024
For Dresing, correct communication with the horse is very important. “I talk to my horse a lot,” she says. She has a command for every task – Dooloop reacts to every little help and starts trotting when she clicks her tongue. “That’s also what I criticize: not talking to your horse, just using the spurs or the whip.”
Dresing, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2011, rides primarily with her right leg and lower back, as she has difficulty controlling her left leg. Her horse also has to be able to compensate for dizzy spells and sitting unevenly. “Physical perception therefore plays a major role,” she says.
Heidemarie Dresing competes in Grade 2, in which only short lessons are ridden. “But I still have to think about so much.” Not only the tasks, but also yourself and the horse have to be taken care of. “So it’s mentally exhausting – it’s Grand Prix,” she says.
Her gelding, nicknamed Dooly, who also competed in the Grand Prix in regular sport, also masters the very advanced lessons. But the higher the level of training, the more buttons the horse has. “When I rode out to the awards ceremony at the European Championships, Dooly showed a great piaffe. He just did it on his own, I couldn’t stop him – he wanted to show what he could do,” the athlete says with a smile.
This is how Dresing and her horse want to impress this year. However, it is not just the performance of the two that counts, but also that of the other three pairs. “The German equestrian team is better positioned than it has been for a long time,” she says. Since 2023, the team has been supported by the Rhineland Grand Prix rider Silke Fütterer-Sommer, who followed in Bernhard Fliegel’s footsteps as national coach. “She is very committed and ambitious. That is something completely different from before, I can already see an improvement.”
This was already evident at the European Championships last year, when the team took second place in the team task. Heidemarie Dresing even secured first place in the individual task and freestyle, thus significantly raising expectations for her start in Paris.
And what are the athlete’s expectations for the games? “Medals are possible. Definitely.” However, nothing can be planned – especially not when the team partner is a horse. “They are not machines. A horse can get scared, you immediately lose points and then things look completely different,” says Dresing.
Dresing finished fourth at the start
The rider is a favorite for gold, which she herself believes is achievable. But she is also happy if she can “take part and then stand on the podium.” At the start of the dressage competitions on Tuesday, she narrowly missed out on a place in the top three. Dresing opened the competition and landed in fourth place with Dooloop. She was 0.311 percent points away from bronze.
Dooloop was nervous and towards the end of the test the gelding galloped instead of trotting – a costly mistake that robbed the pair of necessary points. Dresing had previously named the USA as the biggest competition – this assessment proved true right from the first competition: The 25-year-old rider Fiona Howard was a full three points ahead of Germany and thus won the gold medal. Denmark fought its way into second place, closely followed by Great Britain.
But Heidemarie Dresing still has further chances of winning a medal. She can prove herself against the competition again on Friday in the team competition and on Saturday in the freestyle. The 69-year-old is not thinking about ending her career after these Paralympics. She already sees her eight-year-old mare Poesie as a young horse for the 2032 Games in Brisbane.
