As anyone who’s watched NBC’s prime-time Olympic Games coverage knows, the mainstream media and many viewers love the human-interest stories behind the Games athletes.

We haven’t had too much of that in the Olympic equestrian events of dressage, eventing, and jumping. But the 2012 London Games are yielding a bumper crop of both feel-good stories and celebrity gawkers.

Being in London, after all, we couldn’t get away from the Brits’ fascination with eventer Zara Phillips, who is a member of the British royal family. (But when the media got all breathless reporting what Kate, Duchess of Cambridge–I think that’s her title–wore to the show-jumping, I got a little sick of it all.)

So on to the dressage, where (no disrespect to Zara’s great riding and eventing team silver medal intended) a few truly interesting stories are playing out