with Martina Hannöver
Story - Chris Hector Pics - Roz Neave

Martina's lovely young stallion, Ratino H - by Rubinstein

All Martina Hannöver’s horses have lovely half passes, so it is no surprise to find that while she was working under the late Herbert Rehbein at Grönwholdhof, he declared that she was so good at it that she could ‘train a cow’ to half pass...
“Herbert didn’t like to ride half passes, so he always put me on the horses to train them.”
What is important about training a horse to half pass?
“The most important thing when you start training the basics is that the horse listens to you. Listens to the leg, and listens to the half halts, that you just have to think and the horse stays with you. That when you come with your leg, the horse doesn’t go up with its head, against the hand - so that they stay there. You have to make sure that the pressure is not too much, you have to take a good combination between pressure and half halts.”
“With my younger horses I always start doing half pass and shoulder in, without bending the horse, so that the horse just listens to my leg. The most important thing with a young horse, is to get the muscles of both hind legs, the same. You have to teach them so they go with the hind legs, right where the front legs are, in a straight line. No horse is born straight, you have to work on it all through their lives, so you have to ride shoulder-in and half passes right from the beginning.”
“I start with shoulder-in with my three year olds so they learn to go straight, and they can work the muscles on both sides, the same, that’s very important. If you don’t do this, then the muscles will be different. If the horse moves with the hind leg beside the front leg, that is a big problem.”
“When the horse is four, then I ask for half pass, but without bend. Some learn it easy - like all the Rubinsteins. I always ask in a normal working trot so that the muscles in the back can learn to go over. It depends on the horse when I start to ask for the bend - it always depends on the horse, when they feel very good and easy in the hand, and you can push them and they stay on your seat, when you can give them the reins in a half pass, you shouldn’t have to pull them over, always on the outside rein, they have to follow the outside rein, then they can go over very easy... and when they do all that, you can ask for the bend. You can go in the half pass, three or four metres, then make a circle, then again the half pass. Or when they come over too much with the hind legs, you can go to shoulder-in to get them straight again, the horse always has to listen to you, it should never get in front of your aids - then it will always be super to ride.”
“It is always difficult on the centre line and the diagonal to keep them straight, but when they follow your legs, you can help them. You know how little kids have bikes with trainer wheels, we have to try to help the young horses with our legs, like they were trainer wheels.”
When you have a finished horse - do you have to keep riding on the inside leg to keep the bend?
“I ask for the bend in the corner, and it should stay. Then in the half pass you get the horse over with outside rein and outside leg, and the inside leg makes the inside front leg of the horse, bigger, and keeps him active. He should stay in front of me, on my inside leg.”
If the horse starts to put its quarters in front of its shoulders?
“Then I do a little bit of half pass/shoulder-in, always when I do the half pass, the mother of the exercise is shoulder-in. Always correct the horse in shoulder-in. The bending, I correct with circles between the half passes, not in the half pass.”
If the horse starts to go with the shoulders in front to the quarters?
“Then there is not enough outside rein and outside leg. So you need a few more half halts. Some horses are good to the left and bad to the right, or the other way round, and so you don’t always give the same aids to left and to right. You have to feel how the horse is, and how it listens. Some horses listen much better to the left, then you have to be a little softer to one side, and stronger to the other.”
When do you train the changes of hand in half pass?
“When they listen to the leg it is very easy to teach them that - but you have to get into the new bend, very soft and slow. They have to be soft in the neck so you can bend them - like the jumping horses. When I train or correct the young horses, I put them really round, like the jumpers, then it is easier for them in the back. A one hundred metre runner doesn’t just come out of his house and run one hundred metres, he is gymnastically conditioning himself, and that is what I am doing with the horse. Sometimes I just ask for one good half pass, soft and listening, then back to the gymnastics.”
“When they are young, you just straighten them for a stride before taking the new bend, but when they are older, they should, with the slow bending to the other side, be straight for a moment, then they go over right away, that’s when you can count your points.”
“The horses are so intelligent, that when you are doing the half passes in canter, you have to concentrate and really listen to what the horse is thinking, because those Grand Prix horses, they really know - three, six, six, six, three - you have to be careful with your inside leg, and keep your outside leg on the horse because otherwise they come before your leg. It’s very interesting to ride half pass, I like it. But really, I have never tried to train a cow.”

Meet Martina...

Martina Hannöver is a riot, a joker, a party animal - and one of the coolest, most professional dressage trainers in the world. She is living breathing, mostly laughing, proof that you don’t have to be gloomy and serious to be good, very good, at working horses.
Martina burst on the world stage with one of the most glamorous horses of all, the black stallion, Rubinstein - the horse she had trained all the way from ‘just broke’ to Grand Prix.
For a while there, it looked as if the pair would force their way into the mighty German dressage team... but after a dispute with the horse’s owner, Martina lost the ride (and Rubinstein’s competition career came to a crashing halt!!) and the bubbly blonde was out on her own.
But Martina Hannöver is tough. She re-grouped, found herself a husband at the stables of her childhood, and is once more a force on the German dressage scene with a barn full of super horses.
Not surprisingly, lots are related to that glamorous black stallion:

“There are no bloodlines that I really won’t have, in my stable every horse can have a different colour, a different breeding, I just want to try them. Sure I have favorite bloodlines, like Rubinstein and Donnerhall, because they are very easy to handle. My own horses are just Donnerhalls and Rubinsteins because when I buy them and train them, and they go to Prix St Georges or whatever, and I want to sell them, I know someone will buy them. It’s much easier to sell bloodlines like that to the United States.”
When you rode Rubinstein, what did you learn about him?
“He was very sensitive, nobody could see it, he looked so cool but inside of the horse, he was very sensitive. You could see it with Rhodiamant and his kids, when they had a lot of blood they showed it more that they were very sensitive.”
You found the Rhodiamants hotter?
“They are not so good to breed to mares with a lot of blood. I have a Rubinstein out of a mare with a lot of Thoroughbred, and he is very hot, and I am very glad because I wanted to breed this mare to Rhodiamant - that was seven years ago, and at that time Rhodiamant had an accident, and he couldn’t breed - so I took the mare to Rubinstein, and the result was my stallion Ratino H, and now I am very glad I didn’t breed to Rhodiamant. The other nice thing is that Ratino was born on the day Rubinstein and I won our first Grand Prix.”
“I think the stallions have to show in tests that they are good and easy to ride and handle, and not just the big movers for the material classes that no-one can handle. We are not just breeding for professional riders, we are breeding for riders who want to go out in the woods or who want to make a little jumping. That’s what is so super about Donnerhalls and Rubinsteins because they can do both.”

Together they became famous - Martina and Rubinstein back in 1996

When you competed with Rubinstein he looked very impressive, but when you stopped riding him, then it looked as if he lacked scope and movement - do you think he needed mares with big movement?
“Yeah, you could breed Rubinstein to the mare with bigger movement, then you have something perfect. With Rubinstein everyone saw what happened when I stopped riding him, the horse has to want to work with you. If they don’t want to work with you, they can have the biggest movement in the world, but you can’t use it. With Rubinstein you needed a mare with a little bit of movement over the knee, they can do super piaffe and passage, they have so much talent for collection, for movements like pirouette, and this is double points in the test. There are just two or three extended trots in the Grand Prix so I can live with a horse that hasn’t got a super extended trot - of course, it’s much easier if you have the extended trot too. Now I have a six year old Donnerhall/Pik Bube and he comes in the extended trot, and you have an 8 or a 9, then you can have a mistake later and you still place. If you are just 7, 7, then you have a mistake, 4, then you have 65%.”
Do you think there are some horses that look fantastic in the young horse classes, super movement, but maybe they don’t make the good Grand Prix horses further down the track?
“It depends how they are ridden. If they are just ridden forward forward all the time... When I showed Rhodiamant, I only showed him when he was three, not at four, because I thought now he has to go a different way. It is not just bigger and bigger, when you can’t get around the corner because the canter is too big then you have a problem. They are standing sometimes in their own way with the big movement, and if they are not well ridden they don’t get to Grand Prix.”
Was Rhodiamant a more difficult horse to ride?
“He was different but I wouldn’t say difficult. He was wonderful, I loved him. I remember riding him when he was five, and in a final, we were standing in the line I could feel his heart against my leg! He was so nervous, but he gave everything. We got 9.5 - I think he had everything to make a Grand Prix horse, and he wanted to work.
I have ridden two or three of his progeny, and maybe they had a bit too much blood. I like more the direct way, I go to Rubinstein and not Rhodiamant”
What do you like about the Donnerhalls?
“The same, they are super to work. Even when the extended trot is sometimes not so good you can work them. They are all super in piaffe and passage, and most of them are wonderful in canter, they learn the flying change so easy. They find the half pass in trot a little bit difficult.

Of the big three you have left out Weltmeyer...
“I had one Weltmeyer, and he was a big big mover, super nice, brilliant looking but we didn’t fit so good together. Now I have a Werther, and a Warkant... it depends on the rider, you have to ride every horse differently. You can’t say this is my style or type to ride, you have to fit in with every horse, and then you can do it. Maybe if someone would give me a Weltmeyer, I would say Weltmeyers are the best I have ridden... I just had one and they sold him when he was five.”

With Warkant, we have seen Wahajama, and she was such an exceptional mover, does that come through on all the Warkants?
“I have two now. One I had when he was five and he was so talented. Then the owner rode him herself, he was very good to handle and she won some L classes, and he didn’t find the flying change so easy, but perhaps because she couldn’t do a flying change too, it wasn’t his fault, so I got him back, and showed him in three Prix St Georges, and he was always placed, he learned very fast, he is doing one tempis now, super trot, a lot of talent for piaffe and passage. The other one is six, very easy with the flying changes, great trot. So I like them a lot, maybe they have much more trot than Rubinstein, but you got a special feeling when you rode Rubinstein, I feel there’s a magnet when I hear the word Rubinstein, I have to watch... wow! I will get used to the others, but I have eight Rubinsteins in my stable.”
Do you look for a particular cross?
“Yes, Rubinstein with Inschallah, and Donnerhall with Pik Bube, that’s the best you can have. It is very important for breeding that the stallions have good mares, and that the mares have blood. The Warkant horses must have mothers with a lot of blood. I like Thoroughbred blood a lot, I don’t want to carry my horses through the test, they should carry me. When you think of international shows, you have to ride three tests, and in the last test they still should take the feet out of the ground in the last piaffe, and if you watch, how many horses do it?”
You have just set up a new training stable?
“I have 24 horses, we built a new setup for them. It is the place where I learnt 16 years ago, when I worked for Jörn Sternberg, now he is my husband. When I worked for him, he had jumpers and I tried to become a jumping rider but I was so blind so after five years I said, okay we try dressage. Then I went to Grönwohldhof, and then five years at Vorwerks, then one and a half years by myself, then one and a half years ago, I went back to where I was born, Schleswig Holstein, with all the fields, and the ocean, it is wonderful. We built a new stable block, and made the hall twenty metres longer so I have a twenty by sixty. We have paddocks, and a gallop track, a little place to jump.”
“We have a lot of stallions, we are working with the Böckmann brothers at the moment. We just jump the stallions and collect the semen, and send that away - not with mares on our place. There are stallion owners, and they have only one dressage stallion, so they don’t get a dressage rider just for that stallion, so we can take care of their stallions. Next year, Böckmanns will send me Sergeant Pepper - I rode him when he was three and four and we were third at the Bundeschampionate. Now Gilbert Böckmann has been riding him for a year in the jumping arena, and he was second with 8.9 in the qualification for the Bundeschampionate - then next year he will come back to me. Gilly was very nice, he said ‘you can bring me more horses, they are so easy to ride to the jumps’.”
You were riding Rubinstein, very close to getting in the German team, then it was ‘goodbye Martina...’
Was it hard to come back and re-build?
“I can be very strong in myself. There were three very hard years. I always say I was in the desert - and it was very dry, I was just riding material classes, and dressage horse tests. Last year in April, I rode my first ‘M’ level again, and my first Prix St Georges. Now I am very happy to be back at the international shows. My Grand Prix horse is just a normal horse, but he is opening the way for the younger ones.”
So it is into the German team some day?
“I hope, you must have dreams. But I am always very realistic, and riding is fun, it is fun to train horses, and I have some wonderful horses, very super owners. I am not very young, but I am young enough and I will try for the team but not too strongly. I have had a lot in my life, a lot of experience, a lot of bad things, and it makes you harder, and it makes you enjoy life. I am not too unhappy when something goes wrong in a test, it is just a horse, and I am just a human, it doesn’t change my life. I am not living for riding, I am also living for my husband, and my dog, to ride in the woods with my horses, that is also fun.”