Steffen Peters: The Six-Time Olympian on the Dark Place Behind the Medals (Part 1)

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When did you make it? Ask most riders that question and they'll point to a medal. Steffen Peters points somewhere else — to the darkest place he has ever been, and the way back out of it. This is Part 1 of my conversation with a six-time Olympian, and we barely touch a rein. Forty years of horse training sit behind this man, and the first thing he wants to talk about isn't a horse. It's the thing underneath the ribbons. The neuropathy in his hands and feet after Paris that twenty-five doctors couldn't explain. The cold plunge and the vagus nerve, and the natural experiment that gave him relief when the medications didn't. The one ride in Tokyo — September 27th, 2018, a date he can still…