Danish dressage star, Princess Nathalie has become a regular visitor to Australia, and has worked with a number of our leading dressage riders. This time, we thought it would be interesting to make a place in the clinic for a different sort of rider, one of Australia’s up-and-coming younger eventers, Katja Weimann on her two star horse, Pluto Mio – coming fresh off a second in Adelaide and a win at Camperdown.
Read the story here!
You can tell in those crucial first couple of steps when horses – particularly young horses – have been ridden correctly… they go easily and without fuss into a nice frame. I guess, given Jamie Coman’s reputation for demanding first class work on the flat, it should come as no surprise that the minute his wife, Sue, and her four year old Nic of Time (by Nicklaus) and daughter, Hayley’s four year old Coolart Farm Hopscotch (by Hamlet) hit the dressage arena, that both the babies were sweetly operating.
Part 1 and Part 2 are online now!
Organizing a Seminar in Portugal is a bit of an oxymoron, things are not so much organized as they happen in this charming country, and so it was with the 1st International Seminar for the Pure Bred Lusitano in Dressage… it happened to distinctly Portuguese rhythms but with a distinguished array of international experts and guests and started with a very Portuguese lineup of dignitaries each with their own little welcoming address on the first morning…
All the elite of Australian dressage, "The stars" will gather to fight out for World Equestrian Game places at the 2010 Sydney CDI.
3 days of intense action cumulating with the freestyle to music on Saturday which guarantees a packed stadium and amazing entertainment!
http://www.sydneycdi.com
For most spectators there’s a moment in time when a rider passes by and grasps your full attention. It may be the straightness of their back, the softness of their hands or the seemingly easy way they sit to an elevated extension. One rider who possess all of these traits is Matthew Dowsley and I can only wonder how many riders he’s inspired to pursue Dressage in the hope they could one day achieve similar heights.
Read on Here
Her rise to stardom has been one that has developed over time. First a successful hack rider for Kibah Stud she has progressed into a self-made, internationally successful Event rider. With a champion husband, charismatic daughter, hot new property and a string of exciting horses it’s little wonder that the Treasure of the Aussie Eventing world, Sharmayne Spencer, is stoked beyond belief!
Ingrid Klimke is one of those rarest of creatures – the complete horsewoman. She was part of the German Gold Medal Eventing Team at Beijing. At the 2009 German Young Horse Championships she qualified horses in three disciplines, placing in dressage and eventing and winning the Young Riding Horse class for three year olds. She has also won Grand Prix dressage classes, and World Cup dressage qualifiers.
Read Part 1 of this new series here
The 2010 WEG lasts for 16 action packed days: World titles in dressage, reining, endurance, eventing, jumping, para equestrian, vaulting and driving.
The event is being held in specially constructed arenas in Kentucky’s famous Horse Park – and we’ve got some of the best seats in the house (oh yes, A Reserve tickets sold very quickly and we were lucky to get in and buy our seats months and months ago!) If you haven’t been to a WEG before it’s hard to describe the very special excitement – that’s why so many of our travellers on our previous WEG trips have signed up again… We’ve got a great hotel in the ideal town of Frankfort. We’ve got our own buses to get you to and from the competition… and we’ve got a whole lot of exciting add-ons – special dinners, sightseeing, visits to the famed Kentucky Studs, attending the Keeneland races, even shopping excursions. Ask anyone who has travelled on a THM / Organisation Unlimited WEG trip – it’s lots of fun.
For information click the photo above or contact Bridgette Fitzgerald at Organisation Unlimited on 03 9926 3555 or email: bmf@organisationunlimited.com.au
I always thought the combination of young Australian dressage rider, Briana Burgess, and German dressage star, Monica Theodorescu, would be magic, simply because Briana is a very similar style of person and rider to Monica… but there were a few hiccups along the way.
Briana spent some time in Belgium, in a Dutch run stable, and it affected her riding. Monica recalls her arrival: “I was away in Hong Kong when Briana arrived and I asked my mother, how does she ride? DUTCH!”
But it was just a matter of time…
It’s a huge understatement to say it has been a big twelve months for Australian dressage rider, Hayley Beresford. Not only has she achieved the almost unprecedented feat of taking the first horse she ever trained to Grand Prix level to the Olympic Games, but she also married Kia Bullock, AND took the mare Rhapsodie Queen into 5th place at Germany’s top show for young FEI horses, the Nürnberger Burgpokal. Wow!
To read the article follow this link...
The Danish Princess Nathalie soon realized she was not in Europe when the temperature reached forty degrees in the indoor arena. It was a far cry from the minus thirty-five at home! Despite the ambient temperature that surrounded the horses and riders, the Princess was extremely cool (or is that kewl) with her explanations. It was obvious that to her, teaching and riding dressage are not for monetary gain, but for the excitement of seeing horse and rider start to blend as one. To see improvement in the riders so they can then learn new feelings that will make them better. The Princess did not hesitate to climb on board and feel any horse at any moment and there was no messing around. There was only one way and the clear simple basics were back again. Yes another brilliant international competitor and coach, yet again harping on about: Forward, Straightness, Reaction, Rider Position and Contact.
Read the article here
They are, I guess, the glamour couple of the equestrian scene, he, fresh from a win in the Adelaide four star three day event, she, still glowing from her first World Cup Showjumping round victory. Christopher Burton and Julia Hargreaves have recently announced their engagement, formalising a partnership that has seen them set up a smartly equipped training centre: Redleaf Lodge in horsey Wilberforce…
Read more here
Good teaching, like good horse work, consists of doing very simple things very well, and the lesson that Clayton Fredericks put together for his class at Equitana was a perfect example of elegant simplicity in action.
And what could be simpler than a few poles on the ground?
Well they certainly didn’t look that simple to Seamus Marwood’s Wild Oats, who was quite certain dragons lurked within, and just could not get the idea of quietly cantering over them.
As Clayton quipped, “This is every presenter’s nightmare. Am I brave enough to get on Seamus’ horse?”
Find out here
I guess it’s hard for Australians to understand just how specialised the German Horse scene is. While in Australia lots of our top riders have bred their own horses, in Germany the breeders tend to be one group, the riders and trainers another, with not a lot of communication between the two. Wolfram Wittig is a spectacularly successful exception to this rule..
You can find the rest of this article here...
I first worked with Steffen in 2004 with a slightly (understatement of the year) neurotic but very talented Russian warmblood who had spooked his way through a couple of Prix St Georges tests with previous trainers, and a lovely green Grand Prix gelding. After two 45-minute sessions I was beyond sold and asked if he would come regularly to Wellington in Florida to give clinics (he lives on the other side of the country in California). I now have the privilege to work with him up to five times a year—it is so miserably hot and humid in Florida in the summer that Steffen, being sensible, will only travel for clinics in winter.
It seems to me, that equestrian sport – particularly eventing - in South East Asia is at a crossroads. Some time ago, and especially in Thailand, eventing was targeted as THE sport that offered the greatest chance of Olympic participation. An energetic program paid off with fine results, gold at the Asian Games, and gold at the SEA Games. It was a strategy that had inherent risks: older more experienced horses gave the Thais an instant start, but even at the SEA Games last year, the writing was on the wall.
Read on here
One of the many intriguing things about the equestrian art is that it is both simple, and complex, at the same time. Good training is really quite simple, but it only works when applied with great discipline, tact and subtlety – which is why real dressage instructors sometimes sound like Buddhist monks who specialise in riddles like ‘listen to the sound of one handed clapping’.
Part 1 with Judy Dierks here Part 2 with Linda Foster’s here
For all it is true that as the world’s top jumping horses get more and more similar in type, and that the world’s top riders increasingly share an international style, you only have to watch Anne Kursinski warming up her new star, Champ, to realise that there is still something very very American about Anne’s way of schooling a horse. It is even more noticeable because the Holsteiner stallion, by Chamonix out of a mare by Coronada (that’s a cross of Cor de la Bryère top and bottom with a dash of Lord thrown in) is really a very big German style of horse.
According to Anne the ‘Americanisation’ of Champ is still a work in progress, but he appreciated the way of riding right from the start…
At the end of the Second World War, the tractor was taking over the Agricultural sector and the future was looking grim for our friend, the horse. Then something very exciting happened, equestrian sport, previously reserved for male military officers, started to boom all over the world! The first World Showjumping Championships were held in 1953, then the first Eventing and Dressage World Championships were held in 1966. Suddenly the horse was back in demand, and the hunt was on for riding horses, for competition horses for the newly popular sport.
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and now Part 4
A brilliant lesson is one of those magical moments. A moment when the three vital ingredients come together… Take one talented, well-prepared horse, one intelligent and highly motivated student with equestrian feel, and add a brilliant, involved, enthusiastic and insightful instructor who passionately cares about the craft of riding and sit back and watch the chemistry bubble...
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Part 4 and Part 5 NEW
Gill Rolton was the original Golden Girl of Equestrian Sport. As a member of Australia’s gold medal winning team at the Barcelona Olympic Games, it was her bubbly personality that captured the imagination of the Australian public – here at last was a horse person that the media loved to interview. Four years later, Gill was again a cult hero, this time for her courage in continuing to ride across country with a broken collar bone and ribs – at one stage four tough AFL clubs were using footage of the ride to inspire their players!
Read Part 1 Part 2 and now Part 3 NEW
One of the great things about the teachings of Andrew McLean is that he insists that when we are training horses, we are not dealing with fellow human beings wearing shiny fur coats, but with an animal: an animal with a mental capacity and mind-set that is very different from our own. I don’t know how many times I have heard otherwise sensible people gush ‘Oh my horse loves his work now’, and dear me, do they get uptight when you suggest that they are anthropomorphizing and attributing attitudes to an animal, that it cannot
possibly have. Read more here
Hayley Beresford was one of Australia’s most exciting young dressage talents, and I guess it is no surprise to see her making her mark on the world’s toughest dressage circuit – in Germany. But how on earth did Hayley make it from Australia to Germany to working with World and Olympic champion, Isabell Werth?
Find out here!
The big question about this year’s Dressage and Jumping with the Stars was just how it would survive the transition from November to April, and looking around the faces in the Werribee indoor as the first day kicked off, it was looking pretty good, and the numbers swelled as the weekend went on. Its new spot on the calendar was not a problem.
Read on here
Travel, it is said, broadens the mind, and there is nothing like a tour around Germany’s Studs to open the eyes of even the experienced breeder or rider. Although, it is wise to carefully pick the places you visit, as one of our Horse Magazine tour group, Robbie Soster, remarked to me at the end of day one: ‘I’ve been in Germany for a month and I haven’t seen horses like this before…'
Take a visit here and stay for Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4
Holstein… the wind swept marsh country in Germany’s north has its own rugged beauty, and here you have the feeling of time standing still. It’s an impression that is reinforced by our first stop-over, the Haselauer Landhaus in the little town of Haselau on the outskirts of Elmshorn. Haselau has been serious horse country for some time now – back in 1570, the brothers Benedict and Wulf von Ahlefedt fought a great battle at Haselau over the grazing rights for more than 100 horses on the fine pasture outside the dikes along the North Sea!
Start yourJourney through Holstein here and continue to here and then end it here
As a group, we in the Australian dressage community, have a well-deserved reputation for being easily won, we tend to fall madly, head-over-heels in love with the latest pair of shiny black boots just off the plane… Alas most of these whirlwind affairs end in tears. But this time with Steffen Peters, this – as they say on the soaps – is different. And hopefully it is not some passing infatuation, but the beginning of something big and lasting. And wonderful.
So what is so different about Steffen Peters? Find out here. Part 2 in the series can be found here and read Part 3 here
How much fitness work do I need to do? It’s a question I get asked a lot as an instructor and when people ask me they are normally referring to their horse. I also get asked if I still do the same amount of fitness work on my top-level horses now that the CCI events are short format. Everyone has different ways of getting their horses fit (and themselves for that matter) and people are often limited to what they can do by the available facilities they have at home or where they agist their horses, and time! If you work full time and keep you horse an hour from home and also have a spouse and kids you don’t have much time!!
When THM editor suggested that I write a “How to” series, providing eventing advice and tips for upcoming riders, my first thought was that I’m a bit under-qualified for the task – after all, I haven’t ridden at an Olympic Games like Rebel, or piloted countless horses to 3 and 4-star victories like Shane and Stuart. In fact, looking back through the years, (particularly as a junior, when I considered myself something of an equestrian connoisseur), I shudder at the mistakes I’ve made. Yet mistakes are an inescapable part of the sport, and the success of riders like Rebel, Shane and Stuart will not have been without the odd faux pas: Indeed, one of the keys to riding at the top level is learning from your (and others’) errors. Another crucial factor is experience: That is, sitting on a number of horses of varying ages, talents and temperaments, in a range of different situations. Considering the above, I decided that maybe I could offer some useful advice, after all (even if it’s sometimes in the form of ‘what not to do’). Read more here then move on to Part 2 and Part 3
One of the great strengths of the German dressage scene is the depth of training talent. It’s not just the publicly acclaimed super stars but the solid base of ‘journey-man’ trainers, that gives the dressage scene its strength. One such trainer is Jonny Hilberath from up near Hamburg. Jonny was thrust into the limelight at the most recent WEG in Aachen when his Mexican pupil, Bernadette Pujals amazed the world riding her Weltmeyer stallion, Vincent. The pair were 10th in the Special and in the Kür – and for many serious dressage fans, their happy partnership was one of the highlights of the WEG.
Time then to find out a little more about Jonny Hilberath – Dressage Trainer…
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