Sven has been a key player in the world of dressage for many years, a thinker, a pioneer, and a successful international competitor. Now Sven, and his wife, Gonneliens’s children, Sanneke, Sönke and Semmieke are carrying on the family name in the dressage arena.
Gonnelien and Barclay at the Las Vegas World Cup in 2005
Sven at Aachen back in 2003 with Barclay
Sven’s son Sönke and his latest Grand Prix star, Fendi at Aachen 2023
I caught up with Sven at Aachen and asked him a question that came from an interview raised by Princess Nathalie the previous day – has dressage lost its heart? A pretty heavy opening line:
Sven you’ve been there for a long time, through all the changes in dressage, what do you think?
“Oh that’s a difficult one. But no, it didn’t lose its heart. I’m going to say something a little bit critical, there are a lot of people with very good horses, but there are still only a few horse-people.”
Princess Nathalie was talking about the trend for every horse to be up for sale, and she said that the people she started out with, like Klaus Balkenhol, would not sell their good horses no matter how much they were offered…
Semmeike Rothenberger and Flannell – Lafrentz image
“It’s the same with our family, we are so passionate that we only sell our horses to people who will leave them with us. That’s the difference, I might have to sell my horse but I would never ever sell the heart of my stable. You can have a nice day, but the barn is only running when you come along and say hello to your best friends who give you this feeling, the feeling we are working on for our whole life – to have horses like Fendi, Cosmo, Flannell, perhaps Matchball one day, he has to climb up the ladder now and show us.”
“But as soon as they are in our hearts, we don’t let them go.”
Sven and Andiamo competing at the World Cup
And yet in a funny way you were perhaps the first guy to set the trend, purchasing Andiamo when he was right up at the top with Otto Hofer.
“Oh Chris this is always coming back this criticism, but there were people before me who paid a lot more money. In the older days, when Reiner Klimke took over the ride on Georg Theodorescu’s horse, when he bought The Entertainer, the thing is, I was not the one who decided to sell. If they hadn’t said, I’m going to sell my horse, I wouldn’t have stepped through the open door.”
Sönke working at home while Gonnelien and Sven look on, and talk to Chris
“So please don’t blame me for that, it’s something that my kids don’t like so much, Sönke always said, I would like to build my horses up from four or five-years-old to a finished Grand Prix horse, then I know them in more difficult situations, then it is my style of riding. As a rider, you should never say never, it is always a pleasure to have a super horse if you can afford it, and that’s our bottleneck very often, with three kids riding and running such a big barn, and at the moment having difficult times of business because we are in a bit of a crisis in Germany, in Europe, then you have to think about it, and manage all this. As long as I can keep my best horses, I will never sell them, I also don’t sell my wife!”
Gonnelien and Sven at home – “I also don’t sell my wife!”