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Mighty
High
TRAVELLER
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69
WHEN IT COMES TO AWE-INSPIRING DISPLAYS
OF EQUESTRIAN SKILL, FEW CAN MATCH THE
CADRE NOIR. WE WENT TO ITS FRENCH BASE
FOR A RARE TREAT: HAVING A GO OURSELVES
M A R I E C L E L A N D K N O W L E S
FEATURES
|
NANTES
THERE’S THE TWITCHING OF
muscles, the creak
of leather and the tang of sweat as the athlete poises,
ready for the jump. Rocking back and forth, he waits
for the signal, and then his legs shoot out behind him
as he lifts himself several feet in the air, landing on
the springy ground of rubber and sand moments later
with effortless grace. He lets out a satisfied snort,
followed by a short whinny as his trainer pats him on
the head.
As you’ve probably guessed, this is no mere human
entertainer. Laozi d’Orion is one of the horse world’s
top performers and it’s my rare privilege to sit on his
back while he takes a break from his gravity-defying
repertoire of leaps and kicks. The tension is palpable as
this mass of raw power and highly tuned senses waits
for the next command from his trainer, and I can sense
he has me pinned as an amateur. To him, no doubt,
I give off the unmistakable whiff of fear.
The anxiety is not so much what he could do to me,
but what I might do to him. One wrong pull of the
reins and I feel like a learner driver crunching the
gears of a Ferrari. After all, it’s taken Laozi d’Orion 10
years of training to get where he is, not to mention an
investment of hundreds of thousands of euros.
I’m here as a guest of the Cadre Noir, an elite
and