the grace of the Pierre Durand/Jappeloup couple in show jumping – L’Express

I remember a moment of grace. 89.69 seconds spent between earth and sky. Barely a minute and a half of stolen beauty. The impalpable lightness of being. An elf, weightless.

On October 2, 1988, in the vibrant heart of Seoul’s equestrian park, in Kwachon, where 10,000 spectators held their breath, and in an immense silence, barely disturbed by the clicking of bridle bits, the rustle of hooves on the grass dry and childish sighs of nostrils, the show is less horse riding than refined choreography, Asian calligraphy and artistic gymnastics.

That day, on Jappeloup, his little dark brown bay horse, Pierre Durand, navy blue jacket with bright red collar, enters the track, performs a brief step backwards to ensure that his mount is indeed following orders, and then galloping momentum. A swaying, dancing, mutinous gallop, a gallop forward, calm and straight. Like a walk in the gentle South Korean autumn. Without hurrying, the couple, who will even be sanctioned upon arrival with a tiny penalty for overtime, will overcome 13 monumental obstacles in fluorescent colors, including a triple complex and a double oxer on bidet, with a confusing naturalness, without express, it is believed, the slightest effort.

It doesn’t matter if some verticals exceed 1m60 and the oxers measure 2 meters wide, Jappeloup, who doesn’t look like much with his 1m58 at the withers, straddles them as if he were playing with them, sometimes brushing against the bars, but never dropping them. A black kid hovering. On his back, an exceptional rider, who does not weigh, holds his reins high like a harpist and accompanies his horse with a light hand, to which he seems to restore, despite the double bridle bit, its original freedom and the exultation of the great grasslands. Jappeloup, 13 years old, and Pierre Durand, 33 years old, formed an invincible centaur that day. He doesn’t run, he flies.

At the end of a course of straight lines and smooth curves of 770 meters, he won, a few hours before the closing of the Games of the XXIV Olympiad of the modern era, the gold medal that France had not obtained in show jumping since the victory, twenty‐four years earlier, in Tokyo, of Pierre Jonquères d’Oriola on Lutteur B. After having crossed the final vertical, standing on the stirrups, Pierre Durand removes and extends his bomb in the air to greet the public at a gallop, and then falls back into a languid step, flatters the brilliant neck of his champion and finally agrees to dismount, as if he were tearing himself away, against his will, from a marvelous dream . “The most beautiful moment,” he explains, “is when you cross the finish line. As long as you are still on horseback, for a few seconds… Afterwards, the joy no longer belongs to you alone.”

However, despite flattering and persistent predictions, nothing destined this Girondin rider and horse to the world title. Unlike the other competitors, all seasoned professionals under harness and in the saddle, including the American silver medalist Greg Best and the German bronze medalist Karsten Huck, Pierre Durand was an amateur. He didn’t want to turn his passion into a career. Horse riding was to remain a great adventure, and not a specialty; an epic, not a situation. The quarry, yes, as long as it was sanded and in the open air. Somewhere, for the Durand family, near Saint‐Seurin‐sur‐l’Isle (Nouvelle‐Aquitaine), where the soils are clayey, the climate is of an altered oceanic type and the grass is rich. He had also put himself, to compete in the Olympics, in reserve from his position as judicial administrator; thus we saw, for the first time in the equestrian world, a bankruptcy trustee become a manager of success.

Unlike his rider with such an ordinary and widespread surname (his namesake, General Pierre Durand, was the chief squire of the Cadre noir de Saumur from 1975 to 1984), Jappeloup de Luze was endowed with a late particle, due to a sponsor, a bit high-sounding. But neither the origins nor the morphology of this timid gelding predisposed him to glory in Seoul. Besides his small size (he was only eight centimeters taller than a double pony), his physique made him quite ordinary, his gait was rather dull, and his balance had something lanky. In the meadow, we didn’t notice him. But as soon as he was mounted, undertaken and assembled, Jappeloup took on princely airs.

It was because the challenge stimulated and transformed him, like at the European Championships in St. Gall, where, in 1987, facing opponents proudly measuring 1m75 at the withers, he won gold with manners, flexibility and elegance that we did not guess in him. Because he was born badly. Son of a French trotter (horse with a huge heart, but with sad jumps) and an English thoroughbred (a racing breed that prefers horizontality to verticality, riding to flight), Jappeloup the bastard was also an undisciplined boy. And unpredictable. Able, out of whim and fear, to refuse an obstacle at the last moment. Thus, at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984, he stopped short at the foot of an oxer, which did not belong to him or worried him, and sent Pierre Durand flying to the other side of the bars. That day, Jappeloup returned to his box at full gallop, with many kicks, while his rider, sheepish, crossed the track on foot, holding in his hand the net and the bridle of the fiery animal which had been the instrument of his humiliation on world television.

And yet, the exclusive, magical, inexplicable complicity of the amateur rider and his whimsical horse was going to work miracles. Proof that, in this sport, only unity is strength. […]

Taken from I remember… Pérec’s stride (and other sporting madeleines), directed by Benoît Heimermann. Threshold, 226 p., €19.90.