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THIS is the move Nuno Oliveira was famous for many decades ago that Rubi did in the London Olympics I was telling you about. I'm poring through my thousand or so Lusitano videos to find the one where Nuno is doing it, and this one is not him, but that is a spectacular stallion and I don't know/care who's riding him.
It's a bummer because it's slow motion, but the horse is so marvelous you shouldn't miss him.
Piaffe is trotting in place... well, strictly speaking, passage, which is the fancy collected trot they do in dressage. Pirueta [Portuguese spelling] is the turning in a circle in place, almost always done at the canter, but so rarely while trotting in place... which is VERY difficult to train and to do, especially if you don't have a Lusitano.
Scoring is always higher marks on difficulty of transitions from one gait or maneuver to the next.
Those pill judges in Europe are ENVIOUS snots.
If I finally find the video of Nuno Oliveira training it, I'll add it here.
[And here's Carvalho doing it again on the mare, Batuta not as well, but still GREAT for coming directly off a canter at the end. No wonder everyone's trying to get that in their routines suddenly!]
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Many, many videos and hours of scrolling, and still have not found that wonderful video. I think, actually, the woman who got the snippet from the family may have shut down her channel, or taken the video private.
Best I could do was this one, where you see him, very near the end, starting to train it. It's extremely poor quality, of course, so I cued it up for you.
So, Nuno Olivera was in business with Luis Valença in Portugal training horses. I think they were brothers-in-law. Nuno's son Joao went into business with his cousin, Luisa Valença, Luis' daughter. My favorite horse, Vittorio, was the last one Joao trained before he died, and Luisa took Vittorio with her to Indonesia where she and her bullfighter husband lived, and where that great video was shot.
There's more'n a thousand lusitano videos on my YouBube history. I've been at it for twenty years... and I'm only through twelve of them as of 2am. I'm pretty sure the great video of Nuno showing off the full piaffe pirueta came somewhere within the twelve years I've scoured. So maybe the reason I can't find it is that it's not even there anymore. Goddammit.
Anyway, yer probably bored to tears by it already and I'm only trying to soothe my vexation now.
pipe up any time....
