Equestrian: Kiwis harnessing the art of dressage

New Zealand rider Jonathan Paget and Clifton Promise at the Olympics last year. The New Zealand team finished with bronze. Photo / AP

It is hard enough to do on two legs, let alone four.

And if you don't know your half halt from your leg yield; your piaffe from your serpentine it is truly a head-scratcher.

However while the cross country is the most physically draining stage of a three-day event, the opening dressage section, with its hefty emphasis on discipline, is becoming the element that can make or break prospects of success.

If an eventer wants to prosper at eventing's top flight, it's no longer good enough to write off the arcane world of dressage and put the stirrups in the cross country and showjumping baskets.

Time was when New Zealand's top eventers did take a view - if not quite that black and white - then certainly a "get by as best you can" approach to the mysteries of the dressage.

No longer, and it's producing substantial rewards.

Take the Burghley four star event week, won by Jock Paget on his outstanding 15-year-old Clifton Promise, with world No 1 Andrew Nicholson second and third aboard Avebury and Nereo respectively.

After the dressage, Paget was leading the field with Promise and fifth with his second mount, Clifton Lush; Nicholson sat third and seventh; Jonelle Richards was 12th while Mark Todd and Nicholson, on his third mount Calico Joe, were equal 18th.

All were therefore strongly positioned to challenge over their favoured cross country discipline. So it played out, with New Zealand having a remarkable six combinations finishing in the top 10.

New Zealand has traditionally favoured tough, strong horses, rather than the more genteel European-breds.

However when it was decided to remove the steeplechase and road and tracks element, which took place just before the cross country, it removed an edge for the New Zealanders. As Equestrian Sport New Zealand boss Jim Ellis put it, "the importance of dressage went north in a hurry".

"If you do not have a tough cross country course, which is a little bit in the lap of the gods, your dressage score is absolutely essential," he added.

So now New Zealand's best riders have specialist dressage coaches, in Todd's case Charlotte Dujardin, a double gold medallist at last year's London Olympics.

"Our leading riders' dressage has come on enormously. Technically it's so much better in the last four years," Ellis said.

Under the terms of ESNZ's $1.8 million annual grant for each of the next four years leading to the Rio Olympics in 2016, dressage expertise is covered. Buying horses isn't, and that's another big issue for the sport.

Ways and means of improving that situation are in train. For now, dressage is clearly heading in the right direction.

Ellis has an idea of how to assess whether the work done on the dressage will have paid off.

In London last year, only Todd on Campino were inside the top 15 after the dressage. New Zealand finished with the team bronze.

"We'd love to get into a position in the team event [in Rio] where we're in a medal position after the dressage. That is when New Zealand eventing will have changed