Dressaged to kill the blues

Andrew Baker enjoys watching some peculiar sporting festivities at Olympia; Lorenzo the flying Frenchman displays the lighter side of equestrianism at traditional Christmas show

THE MOOD at Olympia was of showbizzy bonhomie, and it extended even to the car park attendant. He wore a burgundy velvet jacket and a snazzy tie, and greeted each car with a twinkle. "Are you here for the matinee?" he asked. "Or both shows?"

Backstage in Raymond's Bar (named after the late director of the show, Raymond Brooks-Ward, and no relation to the Raymond Revuebar), the scene was more pantomime than puissance: Friar Tuck queued up for a second helping of sandwiches, Chicago hoods mingled with merrie men, and little children got up as badgers, robins and squirrels capered among the tables.

The festive spirit had engulfed the stables, where stalls were hung with decorations. Bemused horses wondered what to munch on next: hay or tinsel.

In the shopping arcades under the grandstands small girls in jods and sweatshirts dragged their mothers from stall to stall seeking the perfect Christmas gift: a pair of pink socks adorned with Thelwell ponies, perhaps, or a copy of Milton - Simply the Best, a video dedicated not to the author of Paradise Lost but to the celebrated grey horse. This year's essential accessory was a pair of scarlet reindeer horns. They cost 99p and were waggling on little heads all around the huge arena as the show got under way.

Olympia is a show: the sporting element - on Thursday the Christmas Candle Stakes and the Father Christmas Stakes, first prize for each pounds 1,500 - are just part of the entertainment.

This goes some way towards explaining the lacklustre performances of some of the sport's biggest stars - at least on Thursday, the first day of the competition. The organisers had made much of the presence of Ludger Beerbaum, the Olympic champion and world No 1. But in the Christmas Candle Stakes Ludger and Avion, his grey gelding, seemed jaded, lazy, as if they had entered too far into the spirit of things and consumed turkey, pudding and cake with all the trimmings shortly before cantering into the arena. They finished 20th. On Friday, however, Ludger won everything in sight: perhaps he had a lighter lunch.

Michael Whitaker made a much better start. He was second in the Candle on Everest Magic Carpet, and he won the Father Christmas with Everest My Mesieur. You don't have to search hard for the source of Whitaker's inspiration: he was seeking to impress would-be sponsors. Everest, long- standing backers of him, his brother John and their British team-mate Nick Skelton, are to pull out of the sport at the end of the month.

The news has depressed the British show-jumping community: most of those at Olympia seemed convinced that substantial sponsorship could only be found abroad. But Whitaker refused to be downcast. "There are a few people interested, but I'm not going to rush into anything," he said. "If you sign with anyone it will be for three years and you need to be sure you've got the right sort of sponsor."

But enough of such dour matters. In between the show- jumping came more entertaining stuff. Lorenzo, the Flying Frenchman, for instance, whose title may be naff but is certainly accurate. Lorenzo, his blurb says, is "full of Gallic charm and dressed by Christian Lacroix", and they don't come more French than that. As for the flying, he rides two horses at once, standing with a foot on the hindquarters of each. The audience were impressed - and amazed when, thus mounted, he popped over a couple of jumps. Then he came back with three horses, and performed more extraordinary manoeuvres, including one where he did the jumping, over a bar that the horses galloped under. Lorenzo puts the show in show- jumping.

The other innovation - passing over the Shetland Pony Grand National and the Barcelona Mounted Police - was Rock to Dressage, in which Angie Rutherford and three other top-hatted riders trotted around in a cloud of dry ice to some unremarkable music composed by Mrs Rutherford's husband Mike, once of Genesis.

This was a mistake, albeit well-intentioned. The idea, as usual in these mismatches between sport and the arts, is to broaden the appeal of the sport. This presupposes a large audience of rock fans just waiting to discover dressage - it would be economically pointless to introduce dressage fans to rock. Anyway, as Mrs Rutherford revealed, it nearly didn't happen. "It could have been rock without dressage," she said. "When they started the smoke machine, the horses went galloping in the opposite direction." Horse sense.