Massage For Dressage, Aye, There's The Rub

A day or so after the U.S. Olympic equestrian team won gold medals in both the individual and team three-day events at Montreal, a man named John Meagher (rhymes with bar) visited the stall of Bally Cor, the big brown mare which Tad Coffin had ridden to victory in the individual event. Meagher, a "sports masseur," doesn't mind taking some of the credit for Bally Cor's admirable performance.

"Bally is my big one," says Meagher, who started massaging horses in 1970. Until then his clients were mostly human athletes, but, as he is fond of saying, "a muscle is a muscle."

It was, in part, geographical juxtaposition that led Meagher to offer his services to the Olympic team. His home in Lynn, Mass. is a scant half hour from U.S. equestrian team headquarters in Hamilton, near Boston.

There was more to it, of course. There was the challenge. "These horses are the toughest athletes in the world," Meagher marvels. "No kidding, the toughest, bar none."

The mounts in the austere Massachusetts stable are what are known as "three-day" horses. Unlike their counterparts in dressage and open jumping, they are tested for three straight days in separate disciplines: dressage, endurance and stadium jumping. This sport is known as three-phase, combined training or eventing. Meagher has accompanied his equine charges to several events, for sports massage is done before, not after, a performance. "It's like force-feeding blood and oxygen into the tissue," Meagher explains. "People always think in terms of 'jazzing up' the horse but that's not it at all. I just give the animal a freer and easier motion. I don't want a horse prancing around; I just want him to start loose and stay loose."

Meagher says that sports massage, sometimes called deep massage, is an art, not a science. "It's the study of anatomy in braille. You can't just walk up to a horse and go slam-bang, because you'll get the opposite reaction from the one you want. You have to know when to stop. You have to know how much force to use. You have to know where the architectural stress points are. They're the places where the traffic jams happen."

On the first day of competition, Meagher gives Bally Cor what he terms a "light" massage. The dressage phase tests the precision of a horse's gaits. The animal is asked to perform a sequence of natural movements—the walk, the trot, the canter and halt—under rigid scrutiny. Obviously, within the narrow confines of the dressage arena, a horse's flaws are glaringly apparent.

On the morning of the second day Meagher performs a deeper massage, applying more force. The second day is the most taxing for the horse. It includes a steeplechase that is run flat out, two long "roads and tracks" that must be trotted and a cross-country course to be galloped.

"There's no way a muscle can be neutral," Meagher emphasizes. "It either works for you or against you. Out on that cross-country, a horse that's been massaged will conserve his energy. Massage won't increase endurance, understand. You build endurance through training and conditioning, but that horse will use less energy. If you push the horse, you'll find out he can do more."

The final day is devoted to stadium jumping. This is done in a manicured ring over spiffy painted fences, and tests the horse's ability to perform after the rigors of cross-country. The stadium jumping is preceded by a veterinary check and, for the U.S. horses, a massage.