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This particular performance has a number of booboos in it, yet you can tell very well this is a very special horse. Rubi was very, very close to flawless in London in a performance the difficulty of which would score about a 15 on a scale of 1 to 10. His only bad point is that Carvalho always has his head pronouncedly behind the vertical. That's bad form. Despite that, his performance there was absolutely no worse than the rest and those pirouetting piaffes are jaw-dropping.
I mean, I think he came in 15th or so, and he was the only one that made me yell with appreciation. That means he should not have reasonably done worse than fifth and only because of some prejudice the judges have against the Iberian horses.
Fuego was there too, and performed dazzlingly, but less so than last time. He didn't medal either. Even the daffodil commentator couldn't fault those guys, while faulting everyone else. Rubi had the behind-the-vertical thing and maybe a bobble once. I could not tell because the camera work was not good. Fuego had one bobble. They both did extremely hard freestyles, but Rubi's was extra extremely hard. He danced circles around the other horses.
Buncha damn snobs.
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