Olympia is Sostmeier time !: The dressage poet who divides the nation

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Olympia is Sostmeier time!
The dressage poet who divides the nation

By Tobias Nordmann

The Olympic Games are also his big stage: When it comes to medals in dressage, Carsten Sostmeier is always there. And how: The ARD man comments in a way that generations of viewers have fallen in love with. Others switch off annoyed.

Carsten Sostmeier says sentences that nobody else says. They are sentences that nobody says because they are sentences that nobody except Carsten Sostmeier can say. Carsten Sostmeier says, for example, sentences like these: “Showtime is about to make itself great under the saddle of its rider. He shows what dynamic movement he has and can do them with great thrust from the hindquarters in a strong trot with such elegant freedom in the shoulder celebrate us wonderfully. ” To claim that he simply “says” such sentences is also wrong. He sostmeizes his sentences with calm and devotion. His words melt at the microphone like warm chocolate soufflé on your tongue. There is no word for it that does it justice.

There are many people who are now watching dressage with awe. Without understanding exactly how it works. And there are a lot of people who can have a say in dressage because there is Carsten Sostmeier. So the man who can convey the art of the four-legged friend in a square so enchantingly, so fascinatingly and sometimes so overwhelmingly verbatim that you get the amazing feeling of seeing this wonderful thrust from the hindquarters as a matter of course. As if she were a cracking forehand on the tennis court. As if it were a dunking in basketball or a penalty kick in soccer.

Dressage riding is a phenomenon. A huge highlight at the Olympic Games. One with plenty of airtime on TV. Sure, when it comes to dressage, Germany is always there when it comes to medals and titles. Isabell Werth, everyone knows her. Just like everyone knows Claudia Pechstein. Dressage is what speed skating is in the Winter Games. Actually a thing for a very knowledgeable audience. You could say “special interest”, something for the niche rather than the general public.

Carsten Sostmeier would never say something like that. He would say it much nicer. But any attempt to find out how the ARD equestrian legend would express it can only fail. Nobody is like Sostmeier. For his live moderation of the dressage decisions at the games in Athens, Sostmeier received the “German Television Award” in the category “Best Sports Broadcast” in 2004 and was nominated for the Grimme Prize in 2005.

Sometimes, however, also out of print in tone

Dressage riding and speed skating are sporty siblings in spirit. They have nothing to do with each other, of course, except that good footwork counts. But they are important for the national spirit during the Olympics. Then somehow something is always going on somewhere. The successful days of German skid runners are actually over. Unlike the golden times in the square. So back to the dancing horses. And if you still haven’t understood what it’s all about, please listen carefully: “You know, dressage riding, that is not pressing a horse into a template, but carefully developing its talents into a noble silhouette!” A rhetorical painting.

But Sostmeister has always exaggerated the creativity. At the 2016 games in Rio he said, for example, when broadcasting the versatility competition, he said sentences like “Now let’s see what the blonde has to say”. Or he called debutante Julia Krajweski a “fearful rabbit” and noticed a “brown stripe that she already has in her pants”. The outrage was great, and rightly so. Sostmeier apologized. Not for the first time.

He had already had to formulate an apology in London in 2012. At that time he called loudly into the microphone: “But then the French, the British, the Americans came and at the green table they tore the gold medal away from us with a questionable decision, and the Germans remembered that, because we’ve been riding back since 2008. We’ll get gold back, mercilessly. ” A quote from Hitler, paraphrased, but a quote from Hitler. Even then, the criticism was huge. Even then, completely rightly.

These dropouts didn’t hurt Sostmeier’s status as a legend. Big hymns to the 61-year-old are sung on social media. Sostmeier for football. Sostmeister for kings. Sostmeier for President! One user even calls him the verbal dressage erotic. But some also sing: Now it turns completely freely! Also because of such sentences (to the rider’s feeling for his animal): “You have to feel it through your buttocks and thighs and guide it through your hands.” Well, commenting is an art. And art is arguable. And in the case of Sostmeier, however, it is always at least poetic: “As easy as the light play of a candle, which moves elegantly back and forth in a gentle breeze.”