January/February 2020 USDF Connection

Is This Your Last Issue? (p. 27)

January/February 2020

Official Publication of the United States Dressage Federation

2020 STALLION AND SPORT-HORSE BREEDING ISSUE

Nadine Schwartsman on the US-bred Jhocolate R

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USDF CONNECTION

The Official Publication of the United States Dressage Federation EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Stephan Hienzsch (859) 271-7887 • stephh1enz@usdf.org EDITOR Jennifer O. Bryant (610) 344-0116 • jbryant@usdf.org

An official property of the United States Dressage Federation

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Hilary M. Clayton, BVMS, PhD, MRCVS EDITORIAL ADVISORS Melissa Creswick (CA), Margaret Freeman (NC), Anne Gribbons (FL), Roberta Williams (FL), Terry Wilson (CA) TECHNICAL ADVISORS Janine Malone, Lisa Gorretta, Elisabeth Williams

YourDressage delivers exclusive dressage stories, editorial, and education, relevant to ALL dressage enthusiasts and is your daily source for dressage!

Look for these featured articles online at YourDressage.org

SENIOR PUBLICATIONS COORDINATOR Emily Koenig (859) 271-7883 • ekoenig@usdf.org GRAPHIC & MULTIMEDIA COORDINATOR Katie Lewis (859) 271-7881 • klewis@usdf.org ADVERTISING SALES REPRESENTATIVE Danielle Titland (720) 300-2266 • dtitland@usdf.org

USDF OFFICERS AND EXECUTIVE BOARD PRESIDENT LISA GORRETTA 19 Daisy Lane, Chagrin Falls, OH 44022 (216) 406-5475 • president@usdf.org VICE PRESIDENT TERRY WILSON 2535 Fordyce Road, Ojai, CA 93023 (805) 890-7399 • vicepresident@usdf.org SECRETARY MARGARET FREEMAN 200 Aurora Lane, Tryon, NC 28782 (828) 859-6723 • secretary@usdf.org TREASURER LORRAINE MUSSELMAN 7538 NC 39 Hwy, Zebulon, NC 27497 (919) 218-6802 • treasurer@usdf.org

EDUCATION “Releasing Your Horse’s Inner Dancer” A European dressage trainer shares the secret he has discovered behind every horse’s dance.

COMPETITION “2019 US Dressage Finals presented

by Adequan®: Recap and Results” Catch up on all the action from the seventh edition of the US Dressage Finals with photos, videos, and results.

ACHIEVEMENT “American Saddlebred ‘Born to Rage’ Shows on the Devon Stage” The first American Saddlebred to compete in Materiale at Dressage and Devon brings home a blue ribbon.

COMMUNITY “The Odyssey of Homer” Hard work pays off for a Region 1 rider, as she earns her USDF Bronze Medal with her unmotivated and downhill horse.

It’s YourDressage, be a part of it!

Visit https://yourdressage.org/ for all these stories & much more!

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2 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

USDF Connection

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020

Volume 21, Number 5

Columns

40

4 Inside USDF

Ringing in the New

By Stephan Hienzsch

6 Ringside

The Stories Behind the Stars

By Jennifer O. Bryant

Departments 18 Clinic

Nailing It! Riding with Success Through the Levels Part 2: Training Level

By Beth Baumert

24 GMO

Features

40

Bringing up American-Bred Babies

Satisfying bonds and big successes are happy outcomes in the sport-horse-breeding journey

By Kim F. Miller and Kim MacMillan

Competition Highs and Lows

By Lisa Schmidt

30 Salute

The Builder

By Anne Gribbons

32 Free Rein

48

Guiding Light

Danish-born Charlotte Bredahl found her way to America and then to the Olympic medal podium. Now she’s helping future US dressage stars to forge their own paths to the top.

54

Us vs. Them

By Maurine “Mo” Swanson

36 Sport Horse

What Makes a Good Para-Dressage Horse?

By Elizabeth Moyer

64 My Dressage

The Enigma

By Holly Hilliard and Frances Haupt

28 The Judge’s Box

Put Your GMO on the Map with the GMO Education Initiative

Exclusive book excerpt: Sometimes the most challenging horses prove the most memorable. That was the case with Satchmo, German Olympian Isabell Werth’s brilliant, maddeningly erratic mount.

Letter from a Horseless Rider

By Jennifer Macklin

Basics 8 Contact 10 Sponsor Spotlight 11 Collection 60 Rider’s Market 62 USDF Connection Submission Guidelines

On Our Cover Increasing numbers of American-bred dressage horses are achieving success, like five-year-old Jhocolate R and owner/rider Nadine Schwartsman. Story, p. 40. Photo by SusanJStickle.com.

62 USDF Office Contact Directory 63 Advertising Index

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

3

Inside USDF Ringing in the New What’s new at USDF in 2020? A lot! Check out these benefits you might not be aware of.

U

SDF has been busy developing new opportunities and activities for its members and the dressage community. Are you getting the most for your membership dollars? Read on to find out.

April 1 will mark the one-year anniversary of USDF’s publications website, YourDressage.org. YourDressage delivers exclusive dressage stories and educational content relevant to all dressage enthusiasts. The site has enjoyed record traffic with over 40,000 unique users, and is growing monthly.

Visitor feedback indicates that relevant experience sharing, learning, and a sense of community are behind the success of this USDF venture.

In 2020, USDF expects to launch a new member dashboard on the USDF website (usdf.org) called MyUSDF. When a member logs into the website, the MyUSDF dashboard will allow quick access to information and services most pertinent to that member, such as horse portfolios, member cards, standings, and qualifying status. MyUSDF will also be able to suggest educational content based on the member’s profile and habits as related to past interactions with USDF and the website.

The new USDF Regional Schooling Show Awards Program offers regional recognition to USDF group members who participate in non-USEF-licensed/non-USDFrecognized competitions (“schooling shows”). Participants will receive confirmation of how they stack up against their peers within their USDF regions.

The program will also strengthen USDF’s group-member organizations (GMOs) by providing an additional exclusive benefit of membership.

In 2020, USDF will fully assume

responsibility for the education and training of dressage licensed officials in preparation for their respective US Equestrian (USEF) licenses.

USDF is well known for its L Education Program, which is a prerequisite for entering the USEF “r” judges program; for its Technical Delegates (TD) Apprentice Clinic, a prerequisite for entering the TD licensing program; and for its Sport Horse Seminar, a prerequisite for becoming an “r” dressage sport-horse breeding (DSHB) judge. Now the USDF is extending its expertise to help educate all nationallevel dressage officials—which was previously a USEF activity.

A new online application process for all dressage licensed officials is in place, and USDF is accepting applications for all training programs. USDF is also providing all of the required continuing-education clinics for dressage judges, DSHB judges, and TDs. An “S” Dressage Judge Training Program exam will be held in 2020, and an “r” Dressage Judge Training Program will begin this year, as well.

Going forward for the next cycle of national-level dressage tests, the USDF will be taking over the writing

4 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

of all national-level dressage tests from USEF. You may have noticed that the tests are now cobranded USDF and USEF, as USDF has already assumed the merchandising and licensing functions related to the national tests. USDF has also produced several test products that are available throughout the current test cycle (the 2019 tests): the USEF/USDF test booklet, the On the Levels educational DVDs and streaming video, and the USDF Test Pro app, now available for Android users as well as for iOS. Prepackaged and self-contained GMO education lectures are available for GMOs to host short unmounted educational events. USDF continues to add to the list, with five lectures currently available.

An educational map showing the location of all USDF educational events is now available on the USDF website. The map has been expanded to include events hosted and submitted by GMOs. The USDF Breeder of Distinction award recognizes breeders for the accomplishments of offspring in DSHB, USDF Breeders Championship Series Final, and Materiale classes. In 2019, its inaugural year, over 60 awards were presented.

A good source for more of what USDF has is the annual USDF Member Guide, which is mailed to participating, group, and business members.

A digital version is available on the USDF website.

USDF’s committees, Executive Board, and staff are already hard at work developing additional new opportunities. Stay tuned.

JENNIFER BYRANT

By Stephan Hienzsch, USDF Executive Director

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Ringside The Stories Behind the Stars Meet the “real people” behind some of the dressage world’s best-known names

well-being. Sometimes we’re right, and sometimes we turn out to be wrong.

Human geniuses can be quirky, and equine prodigies can, too. The Swedish Olympian Jan Brink once told me that top horses are often “a little bit crazy.” One that proves Brink’s point is the late Monsieur, the Danish gelding who won team bronze at the 1992 Olympics with Charlotte Bredahl. So spooky that Bredahl nearly couldn’t get him in the ring in Barcelona, Monsieur was a resale project that no one wanted to buy. Can you guess the rest of the story? Bredahl recognized his talent, and although the pair’s path to the Olympic podium was not entirely a smooth one, it obviously had a happy ending.

Bredahl, like Werth, recalls her travails with a challenging horse in this issue’s USDF Connection interview, “Guiding Light” (page 48). Growing up in Denmark, Bredahl did not have access to fancy mounts and was more likely to be found astride a plow horse.

But she discovered her equestrian talent and nurtured it, took a leap of faith and immigrated to America while still a teenager, and eventually climbed her way to the high-performance ranks.

Today she’s the US Equestrian national dressage development coach,

6 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

and her warm and unpretentious nature has endeared her to the dressage community.

In her “Salute” to USDF Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Marianne Ludwig (p. 30), her friend the FEI 5* dressage judge and Roemer Foundation/USDF Hall of Fame inductee Anne Gribbons describes the Swiss-born Ludwig’s contributions to US dressage and especially the USDF L program, made more remarkable considering that equestrian sport was the scientist’s second career. In “The Judge’s Box” (p. 28), US Equestrian “S” judge Lisa Schmidt reminds us that dressage judges were (or still are) competitors themselves, and shares some personal show-ring highlights and cringe-worthy moments to which many of us will relate. And in our cover story, “Bringing up AmericanBred Babies” (p. 40), we hear from some riders and trainers—who in several cases are also the breeders and owners—of dressage horses that are proving to be every bit as gifted as their imported counterparts. These aren’t tales of deep-pocketed investors “poaching” top horses from Europe; they are made-in-America success stories of breeding, raising, and training talented sport horses right here in the States.

The takeaway: We’re all in this dressage and horse obsession together, and together we’re achieving some great things in American dressage.

Wishing you a New Year of discovery and fulfillment in your own dressage journey.

Jennifer O. Bryant, Editor @JenniferOBryant

MICHAEL BRYANT

T

he more famous the celebrity, the easier it is to forget that the person is still just a human being. Talented and successful, to be sure, but with worries and failures like the rest of us.

Reviewing the well-known dressage names that are featured in this issue, I was struck by one similarity: that all were willing to reveal the chinks in their armor, proving that even the greatest riders and trainers experience doubt and failure.

Let’s start with the most famous name in these pages: Isabell Werth.

The German star, who is on track to go down in history as our sport’s most decorated competitor, has talent, experience, and a stable of horseflesh that others can only dream of. Yet even she struggled—not entirely successfully— to decipher the source of one mount’s notoriously erratic behavior.

I admire Werth’s success and attitude—she’s funny and down to earth, which makes for a great interview— but I admire her even more after reading her candid account of her career with the brilliant Satchmo. In our exclusive excerpt from Werth’s new memoir, Four Legs Move My Soul (p. 54), the Olympian confronts her own doubts, frustrations, and training mistakes as she attempted to find the cause of Satchmo’s unpredictable freezing and spooking. I have felt the same sense of desperation that Werth describes as I grappled with an equine “behavior problem,” and it was, to be honest, a source of comfort to learn that even Isabell Werth doesn’t have all the answers. Until horses learn to talk and tell us exactly what’s bothering them, we are left to read their actions and body language as best we can, and to make the best decisions we can regarding their training and

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Contact Thank you for the front-page coverage of youth in dresYOUTH ISSUE sage and the “Youth Outreach” article (September/October 2019). Your article nailed it when it recognized that the impact dressage can make on a young rider can come from a number of different sources.

The California Dressage Society (CDS) has a 30-plus-year history of promoting juniors and young riders in dressage. More than three decades ago, CDS member Mary Schrader created the CDS Junior/Young Rider Dressage Championship Show; today there are two shows, in northern and southern California. CDS created a Jr/ YR clinic series eight years ago. Spend a weekend with these young riders and you’ll see friendships form and hear lots of giggling. There are riders from walk-trot level to competitive FEI. Parents and trainers are encouraged to attend, and pool parties and pizza parties are commonplace.

CDS continually asks itself: Who are the influencers encouraging youth to get involved in dressage? We combined the Jr/YR Championship shows with open shows, and the Jr/YR trainers are now bringing their entire barns to the shows instead of only one or two riders. Financially, we made the Jr/YR Championships a positive for trainers to attend. This past summer, a hotel adjacent to the show grounds offered a $20 pool pass to all show attendees, showing that positive influencers come in all forms.

Besides social events, CDS youth shows include popular mini-clinics on such topics as sport-horse judging, young-horse handling, and longdistance hauling. Led by CDS board members, these mini-clinics were produced at no cost to attend or host.

CDS has created an expanded division called Extend the Championship Experience, which includes the Christine Traurig: The USDF Connection Interview

September/October 2019

Official Publication of the United States Dressage Federation

How to Bring Kids Into Dressage (p. 36) Competition Cost Containment for GMOs (p. 28)

Youth Dressage Festival competitor Browyn Jalee Pilato

regular Jr/YR tests, a freestyle, and a “jog skills” test. It was developed both as a stepping stone to the FEI North American Youth Championships and to give NAYC veterans an expanded experience. Extend the Experience is offered at every level from Training through FEI. What kinds of awards do Jr/YRs want to win? We asked and they answered. Old-style coolers were replaced with halters. Backpacks were added to the mix. Saddle pads, blanket storage bags, and even socks have been awarded. Last year, team-competition winners received embroidered fleece sheets, which horses and riders wore into the award presentation “like the big guys do it,” as one excited competitor put it.

CDS’s awards presentations feature announcers, music, honor rounds, photographers, and lots of trophies.

And we do it on a budget! Sponsorships help a lot.

Thank you for the opportunity to share what the CDS is doing to encourage its youngest members to continue their journey in the sport of dressage.

Elizabeth Coffey Curle Member, CDS Board of Directors and CDS Jr/YR co-coordinator Reno, Nevada I am co-district commissioner for the Seneca Valley Pony Club, which is part of the Capital Region Pony Clubs in Maryland. We run two licensed horse trials a year, and our fund-raising from those events is put toward fully subsidizing lessons for our members.

Pony Club members may now specialize in areas of interest, and dressage is one of the specialties. We recently had a member achieve B dressage specialty certification, which is the equivalent of Second Level; another achieved A, the equivalent of Third Level.

Several other members are working toward their dressage specialty certifications.

Lebanon Junction, KY Permit # 559

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8 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

Our club organizes several dressage lesson series and clinics throughout the year. These not only serve to deepen members’ abilities, but also help to improve the dressage foundation for those members who prefer to event.

It is a challenge to direct kids who only want to jump toward dressage lessons, but when the lessons are with popular instructors and are structured as beneficial within the Pony Club system, we find we often are at maximum participation levels. I always feel more comfortable seeing a new rider develop a foundation within dressage and then move into jumping.

Lisa Rowe Boyds, Maryland As a mum who rides and has kids who ride also, nothing pleases me more than spending time at a show together.

I think a way to help young riders start in dressage is to offer discounts on rides, stalls, and the

OFF TO A GREAT START: Five-year-old Annabelle Hede in her very first dressage show

overall weekend. Help the parents to justify the cost, and hook those riders and parents in! Another idea is to offer Pony Club kids the opportunity to come and ride at a discounted fee. I am starting a Pony Club in my area so that I can help young riders learn some basic foundations. I would like nothing more than to get them to some

COURTESY OF JIMEALE HEDE

Youth Outreach

dressage shows, but price is a dealbreaker for many. I would love to see an under-14 price break for kids entering recognized shows at Intro, Training, and First Levels.

The photo is of my daughter riding in her first show, at Stable View in Aiken, South Carolina, last June. Annabelle is five years old and her pony, Sweet Georgia Peaches, is older than dirt! She earned scores of 62% and 63% at Intro A, riding the tests from memory.

Jimeale Hede Bluffton, South Carolina

USDF Connection welcomes your feedback on magazine content and USDF matters. Send letters to editorial@usdf.org along with your full name, hometown, and state.

Letters may be edited for length, clarity, grammar, and style.

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

9

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Collection Bits and Pieces from USDF and the World of Dressage

PIRITA/SHUTTERSTOCK

US Para-Dressage National Championship ★ Gribbons to Head World Cup Ground Jury ★ NAYC Moving to Michigan

IN THE FRAME Happy New Year! Fresh powder brings out not only winter-sports enthusiasts, but also some intrepid dressage riders and their mounts.

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

11

Collection PARA-EQUESTRIAN DRESSAGE Trunnell Wins Her First US Para-Dressage National Championship US FEI World Equestrian Games para-equestrian dressage veteran Roxanne Trunnell claimed her first national-championship title at the 2019 Adequan®/US Equestrian Federation Para-Dressage CPEDI3* National Championship. The competition was held September 13-15 at the Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring, North Carolina.

ON TOP: Team USA prevailed at the 2019 Tryon Fall Dressage CPEDI3*. From left: Kate Shoemaker, Sydney Collier, chef d’équipe and USEF para-equestrian dressage technical advisor/head of coach development Michel Assouline, Roxanne Trunnell, Rebecca Hart.

Riding Dolton, a seven-yearold Hanoverian gelding owned by Flintewood Farms LLC, Trunnell, of Rowlett, Texas, contested the FEI Para Team test, the FEI Para Individual test, and the FEI Para Freestyle to earn a final overall score of 75.247%.

Her steadiness and harmony with Dolton were highlights of the competition, said Trunnell, who praised the gelding’s consistency.

“He was always marching and relaxed,” said Trunnell, who as a Grade I para-equestrian athlete competes at a walk only. “I haven’t been with Dolton for very long, and the partnership is really forming.”

Trunnell’s main goal with Dolton for the upcoming year, she said,

12 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

(439.540) bested Canada (414.815).

Trunnell on Dolton competed for Team USA alongside Rebecca Hart on Rowan O’Riley’s El Corona Texel, Kate Shoemaker on Craig and Deena Shoemaker’s and her own Solitaer 40, and Sydney Collier on Going for Gold LLC’s All in One. US team chef d’équipe and USEF para-equestrian dressage technical advisor/head of coach development Michel Assouline called the outcome “a dream come true. Our drop score today was 71%, and all three best scores were 73%. I think it’s the best we have ever done historically and the highest team score we have ever earned.”

Assouline noted the continued increase in depth in the US paradressage program. With nearly 30 horse-and-rider combinations competing in Tryon, the US is becoming increasingly strong in the sport, he said.

Online Extra Watch 2019 US para-dressage national champion Roxanne Trunnell’s Grade I freestyle aboard Dolton.

LINDSAY Y. MCCALL

THE NEW CHAMPION: 2019 US paradressage national champion Roxanne Trunnell on Dolton

is to earn a spot on the US paradressage team for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

David Botana, of Portland, Maine, is only 17 and a relative newcomer to para-dressage competition.

But the teen has formed a strong partnership with his mount of less than a year, the former Grand Prix dressage horse Lord Locksley, an 18-year-old Trakehner stallion owned by Margaret Stevens. The Grade I athlete took the reserve championship on an overall score of 74.318%.

“He’s taken beautifully to it,” Botana said of Lord Locksley.

“It’s taken us a while to get into a groove, but now we’re in a perfect balance where he knows that as soon as I put my foot in the stirrup, we’re just going to walk, and that’s it.”

Lord Locksley seems to understand intuitively that he must take care of his rider, said Botana: “There can be a million things going on and he won’t bat an eye, but when I step a foot away, he goes right back to being a big old stallion.”

In the team competition at the 2019 Tryon Fall Dressage CPEDI3* presented by Adequan®, the USA

BEHIND THE SCENES

YOUTH

DANI MAC/GREAT LAKES EQUESTRIAN FESTIVAL; ALLY DUNLOP/COURTESY OF THE DRESSAGE FOUNDATION; JILLIAN ZAMORA PHOTOGRAPHY

North American Youth Championships Moving to Michigan The Great Lakes Equestrian Festival (GLEF) at Flintfields Horse Park, Traverse City, Michigan, will host the Adequan®/FEI North American Youth Championships (NAYC) in dressage and jumping in the years 2020, 2021, and 2022, US Equestrian announced in October.

The 2020 NAYC is scheduled for August 4-9.

The GLEF already hosts multiple weeks of FEI-sanctioned jumping competition. Located two hours north of Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, Traverse City is a popular small-town tourist destination.

US Equestrian CEO Bill Moroney

called the GLEF at Flintfields “a premier venue in the US and…a location well-suited for this type of event.” He added that the NAYC is “essential in order to continue building our Olympic programs, as younger generations of athletes are able to gain the valuable experience they need to excel at the next level.”

International competition organizer Thomas Baur will manage the NAYC dressage competition, according to US Equestrian.

To learn more about qualifying for the NAYC dressage competition, visit usdf.org/competitions/competitions-championships/najyrc/index. asp.

NEW HOME: NAYC dressage and jumping this year will move to the Great Lakes Equestrian Festival in Michigan

FINANCIAL AID High-Performance Grant Approved for Use in US The Dressage Foundation (TDF), Lincoln, Nebraska, in October announced that its $25,000 Anne Barlow Ramsay Grants for

2018 RAMSAY GRANT RECIPIENTS: Adrienne Lyle and Harmony’s Duval, US-bred by Harmony Sporthorses and owned by Duval Partners LLC

US-Bred Horses may now be used for training and competition in Wellington, Florida, as well as in the original designation of Europe.

The reasons for the expansion are the growth of CDIs (FEI-recognized dressage competitions) in “Welly World” and the area’s becoming a destination for top international dressage competitors and trainers.

To be eligible for a Ramsay grant, a horse-and-rider combination must be competing successfully at Prix St. Georges or higher, with a demonstrated ability to move into the high-performance ranks and to serve as an ambassador for the American-bred horse. Learn more at DressageFoundation.org.

Elise Gaston Chand, Equine Podcaster

STORYTELLER: Chand with Atticus

Job title: Host and producer, Because of Horses podcast, Dallas, Texas (becauseofhorses.com) What I do: I have a wonderful production team that does all of the mechanics of post-production.

I do all of the guest scheduling. I write every interview, do all of the research, all of that side of it.

How I got started: [I asked myself:] What the heck do I want to do with the third chapter of my life? What have I really loved doing? I love horses, and I love telling people’s stories. OK, how can I do that? A close friend was a huge podcast fan. I really wasn’t familiar with podcasting. So I started listening, and little by little I thought, You know what? I could do this. I went to J-school. I know how to put things together.

Best thing about my job: Helping others to see that there are a million different ways to be involved with horses.

Worst thing about my job: When people reach out and it’s not going to work in the editorial calendar.

My horses: I don’t right now. I do periodically ride other people’s horses.

Tip: Every one of us, at the heart of it, is connected by horses.

—Katherine Walcott

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

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Collection WORLD CUP FINAL Officials Announced for 2020 FEI Dressage World Cup Final 2013. She is one of USDF Connection’s editorial advisors.

Joining Gribbons on the ground jury will be Irina Maknami of Russia, Elke Ebert of Germany, Raphaël Saleh of France, Eddy de Wolff of the Netherlands, Susanne Baarup of Denmark, and Peter Storr of Great Britain. First reserve will be Maria Colliander of Finland, with Susan Hoevenaars of Australia as second reserve (non-traveling).

The Judges Supervisory Panel (JSP) in Las Vegas will consist of Henk van Bergen of the Netherlands, Linda Zang of the USA, and Mary Seefried of Australia. Maribel Alonso of Mexico will be the foreign technical delegate.

The 2020 FEI World Cup Dressage Final will be held April

MEET THE INSTRUCTOR Viviane Pilicy, Waltham, Massachusetts Viviane Pilicy is a USDF bronze medalist and a USDF-certified instructor through Second Level.

How I got started in dressage: I am from Germany, where we start with dressage, then work on jumping. I also did foxhunting. After I broke my neck in a riding accident on a jumper in Florida in 2018, I decided to stick to dressage.

I wanted to become certified because: I love to continue educating myself with all things dressage. My students are so dedicated to learning, and I wanted to make sure that I am also on the right track as a trainer and rider.

My horses: The horses I ride and train are all owned by my clients. I have been working recently with a nineyear-old German Riding Pony, Cloud Dancer Casimo HE WE, bringing him up the levels.

Training tip: If you teach lessons, seriously consider participating in the Instructor Certification Program, and take the time to read the material that is offered and recommended by the USDF. You will find very valuable information that can be passed on to your students.

Contact me: viviane.lackhoff.pilicy@gmail.com or (857) 269-5731.

—Alexandria Belton

14 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

MADAM PRESIDENT: The USA’s Anne Gribbons will head the 2020 FEI World Cup Dressage Final ground jury

15-19, in conjunction with the 2020 Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final. This will be the seventh time that Las Vegas hosts the Finals. Learn more at WorldCupLasVegas.com.

THE NEAR SIDE

COURTESY OF ANNE GRIBBONS,; SUSANJSTICKLE.COM

US FEI 5* dressage judge Anne Gribbons will serve as president of the ground jury at the 2020 FEI Dressage World Cup Final in Las Vegas, event producer Las Vegas Events Inc. announced in October.

Gribbons, of Chuluota, Florida, has judged four previous FEI World Cup Dressage Finals and three FEI European Championships. She was the head of the ground jury at the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games in Tryon, North Carolina. A longtime international trainer and competitor in her own right, with many other accomplishments in the sport including having served as the US Equestrian national dressage technical advisor, she was inducted into the Roemer Foundation/USDF Hall of Fame in

Photo: Alden Corrigan

www.GreatAmericanInsuranceGroup.com 4414 SW College Rd, Suite 1422, Ocala, Florida 34474 1510 Newtown Pike Ste 200, Lexington, KY 40511 "Great American Insurance Group, 301 East Fourth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. Coverage is underwritten by Great American Insurance Company, Great American Alliance Insurance Company, Great American Assurance Company and Great American Insurance Company of New York, which are authorized insurers in all fifty states and D.C. Great American Insurance Company is the owner of the following registered service marks: the Great American Insurance Group eagle logo, and the word marks Great American(r) and Great American Insurance Group(r)."

Collection USDF BULLETINS Attention, 2019 Awards Recipients

Awards not picked up at the 2019 Salute Gala & Annual Awards Banquet will be mailed to award recipients at the end of December. Contact USDF if you have not received your award by January 30, 2020.

Free Online Reports Available

USDF Historical Awards Reports, Owner’s/Lessee and Breeder’s Horse Portfolios, and Dam/Sire Reports are available to current USDF participating, group, and business members free of charge. Please note that you must be logged into the USDF website to obtain reports at no charge.

I-I and I-II Test Reminder for Year-End Awards

For the Adequan®/USDF year-end awards, Intermediate I and Intermediate II tests are not consecutive levels. See the USDF Member Guide for year-end award requirements regarding consecutive levels.

Horse Ownership for USDF Awards

USDF horse registration must be in the name of the current owner or lessee, and the horse must be exhibited in the name of the current USDF owner or lessee of record. If a lease is on file with USDF, the horse must be exhibited under the ownership of the lessee.

Demonstration rider Vincent Flores rides Southern Belle SWF in the 2019 New England Dressage Association Fall Symposium with Dorothee Schneider, October 19-20 at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the US teaching debut for Schneider, a German Olympic and World Equestrian Games gold medalist who is renowned as a trainer of young and developing dressage horses as well as for her high-performance achievements.

For a report and more photos from the NEDA Fall Symposium, visit the USDF publications website YourDressage.org.

16 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

CAROLE MACDONALD

Training with a Star

Clinic

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NEW TRAINING SERIES

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Nailing It! Riding with Success Through the Levels K

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Based on USDF’s On the Levels videos, our new training series debuts. Part 2: Training Level.

By Beth Baumert

D

id you “nail” the Introductory Level (“Clinic,” November/December 2019)? If so, you’re ready to move on, but never leave “the purpose of Intro Level” behind. By focusing on the purposes of these tests, you’ll succeed, so

• An elastic contact • Independent, steady hands and a correct balanced seat • Proper geometry of figures in the arena • Correct bend (all movements—

will be reflected in all your future work. Learn to love hammering out details, because you’ll need to keep working on those qualities forever!

Then, whether or not you compete, your next step is to make your Training Level riding great. Here’s exactly what to work on.

Know and Understand the Purpose

let’s stick with that plan. There are aspects of the purpose of Intro that aren’t mentioned in the purpose of Training Level, but those qualities are supposed to be even better as you and your horse develop in Training through Fourth Levels. So start by reviewing those qualities in the purpose of Introductory Level that will forever improve:

from Training Level through Grand Prix—are based on the quality of that bend).

These are aspects of riding that the best riders in the world continue to work on without end. Even if you never compete at Introductory Level, you and your horse necessarily navigate through that skill level and lay a firm foundation of basics that

18 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

The Purpose of Training Level

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o confirm that the horse demonstrates correct basics, is supple, and moves freely forward in a clear rhythm with a steady tempo, accepting contact with the bit.

BETH BAUMERT

LONGITUDINAL SUPPLENESS: USDF-certified instructor Annie Morris on her PRE gelding, Icaro, demonstrates one of the goals of Training Level dressage. As seen in profile, Icaro has a rounded topline and is thrusting from behind, reaching for, and accepting contact with the bit.

Even though the purpose of the Training Level tests is relatively short and simple (see sidebar below), it’s packed with meaning. Here are the important takeaways: Your horse demonstrates correct basics by retaining and improving the qualities required at Introductory Level, as discussed above.

• Your horse is supple • He moves freely forward…

• …in a clear rhythm…

• … with a steady tempo…

• …accepting contact with the bit.

These qualities clearly represent the first three steps in the pyramid of training (see illustration on the next page) or “training scale,” which is the

The pyramid of training

USDF ILLUSTRATION; BETH BAUMERT

recipe for training all horses. The first three qualities on the pyramid of training are rhythm, suppleness, and contact.

Let’s look at each specific requirement.

A clear rhythm and a steady tempo. As your horse moves freely forward, he does so in a clear twobeat trot rhythm, a clear three-beat

LATERAL SUPPLENESS: Remember this photo from the last issue? I love this image—again of Annie Morris on Icaro—because it shows how the rider’s aids shape the horse in bend. At Training Level, the horse is required to show 15- and 20-meter bend and should be equally supple on both reins.

canter rhythm (with a moment of suspension), or a clear four-beat walk rhythm. The tempo is the speed of the rhythm, and the rider is responsible for making the tempo consistent.

The quality of your horse’s gaits is the essence of dressage, and that’s

all about rhythm and tempo! Those horses whose gaits improve as they get older thrive in the sport and become even more beautiful.

Sometimes, however, the tempo isn’t steady, the gaits are choppy, and the horse is a “leg mover” instead of being a “back mover.” How

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USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

19

Clinic does a horse become a graceful back mover, swinging through a lifted back? The pyramid of training—and the purposes of the tests—tell us that developing suppleness will help.

Suppleness. Suppleness requires relaxation, but it is the relaxation of working muscles, not grazing muscles. Energy flows through relaxed muscles to create two kinds

of suppleness. Lateral suppleness is bend, and your goal, throughout the training of your horse, is to try to develop equal bend left and right.

The bend required at Training Level is 15- and 20-meter bend. From your work at Intro Level, you may recall that bend begins with flexion in the poll, and it develops from the rider’s inside leg, which helps to shape the

Half-Halts and Transitions: How They Work

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alf-halts balance your horse underneath you by connecting him and collecting him. The three parts of the half-halt are: 1. Your seat and leg ask his hind legs to step directly under your center of gravity and thrust toward the bit (“Go”). You want the hindquarters to become more attentive than they usually are inclined to be.

2. Your hand stops following his motion, closes in a fist, or both to say, “Stay with me. Don’t flatten, stiffen, and go fast.” You want the forehand to be less active than it usually is inclined to be. As a result of this “whoa aid,” the rider transfers a bit of weight to a grounded hind leg.

3. As the weight is transferred back, you soften your hand and the contact, allowing your horse to carry himself (and you) and to become more supple, both longitudinally and laterally.

These half-halts should make your horse more active, more supple, and better connected, all of which make him more ridable.

Transitions between the gaits do exactly the same thing as half-halts.

Upward transitions train and confirm the horse’s “go” response from the leg and seat. Downward transitions train and confirm the horse’s “whoa” response to the hand.

Your half-halts balance your horse. Then, to make a transition, your halfhalts ask for a change of rhythm—between trot and canter, or between trot and walk, or between walk and halt. Throughout the levels, there are many places in the dressage tests in which the transitions are scored separately from the movements. This emphasis on the transitions reflects their importance (very!), because they keep your horse longitudinally (from back to front and from front to back) supple and connected. Good transitions occur when the connection is good—and transitions improve the connection.

Try this: Practice transitions on an accurate 20-meter circle. Prepare for each transition by riding two half-halts, which will put your horse’s body in a good position to execute the transition. Then ask for the transition with a third half-halt. Begin with simple trot-walk transitions, and do one every time you come to the center line. When they become good, try doing them four times on a circle. That requires a lot of half-halts! Be sure your leg and seat are doing more than your hand so the half-halts create a more forward—rather than less forward—horse. Try the same with trot-canter-trot transitions. Your transitions will become better with time!

20 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

horse in the desired degree of bend and sends his energy, in motion, to the outside rein (photo, previous page).

Longitudinal suppleness (see photo on page 18) is the development of a round topline as seen in profile, when the horse thrusts from behind, reaches for, and “accepts contact with the bit.” That round, supple topline is the horse’s spine, and when it is laterally and longitudinally supple, the back muscles are loose and swinging. And here’s the important part: The back swings in the rhythm of the gait and in a steady, predictable tempo. That suppleness and the steady, predictable rhythm and tempo are what improve the gaits and make the horse easy to ride.

What about the third step of the pyramid of training, contact?

Typically, when the rhythm is clear, the tempo is steady, and the horse is relaxed and supple, the contact is also good.

That Sounds Easy, but… …Actually, there are countless things that can and do go wrong. Here are the most common issues at Training Level: When I ask my horse to go more forward, he gets too fast, stiff, and hard in the mouth.

When I ask my horse to go more forward, he is dull and unresponsive to my driving aids.

My horse isn’t consistently round.

My horse gets curled and behind the bit.

My horse won’t bend left (or right).

My horse’s rhythm is choppy and uncomfortable.

Not to oversimplify, but the solutions to these basic issues are all the same: transitions and half-halts.

Both transitions and half-halts will balance your horse, and a balanced horse is comfortable in his own skin and comfortable for you to ride.

At Training Level, you ideally

STRETCHING IS FUNDAMENTAL: The 20-meter stretching circle is not just a Training Level movement; it’s an exercise that you will use for the rest of your horse’s career, as demonstrated by international competitor Karen Pavicic on the upper-level mount Beaujolais

How They Work” on the facing page for more on how to ride these essential elements in dressage.

The Stretch Stretching is required at Training Level and is scored as a double coefficient (x 2) because of the importance of “reach” in your horse’s

training. Stretching on a 20-meter circle is the key to longitudinal suppleness, and it is an exercise that you will use for the rest of your horse’s career. If he learns to lower his neck and reach forward and downward as he seeks the bit, then his back will automatically—because of the way his body is designed—

JENNIFER BRYANT

would like a balance in which each leg carries an equal amount of weight. When that’s the case, your horse doesn’t need to rely on the bit (your hands) to carry weight. That said, he should be “committed to” and reaching for the bit. He should seek it and use it for direction and for balance in the same way that you might hold onto a hand rail but not lean on it.

Transitions and half-halts send two messages that are somewhat contradictory: Go and Whoa. So you and your horse need to become savvy about what transitions and half-halts mean. To the hindquarters, they say “go toward the bit and step under my seat”—and to the forehand they say, “Wait a second.

Don’t go beyond the bit.” You want your horse to go to the bit but not beyond it or above it. You want his center of gravity to be directly under your center of gravity so he can carry you comfortably. That’s harmony.

See “Half-Halts and Transitions:

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

21

Clinic

Fine-Tune Your Geometry

SERPENTINE GEOMETRY: The three-loop serpentine consists of three 20-meter halfcircles, with one straight stride as the horse crosses the center line and then a smooth change of bend in the next direction. Ride clear corners before and after the serpentine figure.

come up. In theory, when you close your legs, your horse should reach forward and downward toward the bit. However, in practice that doesn’t always happen.

Try this: Begin in any gait. On a large, accurate circle between E and B: 1. Close your legs and soften your hands slightly forward—not enough to throw away the contact, but enough to invite your horse to reach to the bit. Repeat this many times (forever) and your horse will accept your invitation eventually. You can

In Training Level Test 3, you’re required to ride a three-loop serpentine between A and C. This is deceptively difficult because there are so many things you need to do to execute this pattern well.

First, know your geometry, and study how three 20-meter circles fit into your 20-by-60-meter arena (see diagram at left). In order to follow the pattern, you need to be able to: • Show exactly 20-meter bend both to the left and the right • Avoid letting your horse carry you into a corner (which will be his inclination) • Smoothly change the bend from left to right and vice versa each time you cross the center line.

Half-halt one or two times, beginning on the quarter line, so that your horse is balanced and light enough to change the flexion and bend as you cross the center line. If you still have trouble, half-halt a third time and ride a downward transition to walk or halt. Then pat your

22 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

horse so he understands that coming back is what you wanted.

Next time, see if it is easier.

• Each time you change direction on the center line, feel that he steps in front of your new inside leg and goes to the new outside rein. This will improve your connection and his ability to respond to those half-halts.

• Ride a clear corner before and after the three-loop serpentine.

The serpentine is difficult, and riding it correctly requires practice and communication with your horse!

When your horse is comfortably balanced and can walk, trot, and canter demonstrating the qualities required at Training Level, it’s no small feat. You’ll keep working to improve those qualities as you graduate to First Level, where you’ll teach your horse about adding power and impulsion.

In the next issue: First Level.

Meet the Expert

B

eth Baumert is a USDFcertified instructor through

Fourth Level, a USDF L program graduate with distinction, and the author of When Two Spines Align: Dressage Dynamics. She currently serves as president of The Dressage Foundation. For many years she owned and operated Cloverlea Dressage in Columbia, Connecticut, and served as the technical editor of Dressage Today magazine. She divides her time between Connecticut and Florida.

USDF ILLUSTRATION; COURTESY OF BETH BAUMERT

combine this with the transitions you’ve been doing between walk and trot or between trot and canter.

2. Next, use your inside leg to create contact with the outside rein.

If it helps, you can leg-yield out to enlarge one or both sides of the circle. When you feel that your horse is successfully accepting the outside rein, soften it. He should follow that outside rein forward and downward.

Keep the contact as your horse stretches, because you need to control the amount and direction of the stretch. Stretching is traditionally part of the warm-up, but if your horse can’t do this in the beginning of your ride, try it in the middle and again at the end. It might be easier then, and eventually it may be part of your warm-up. Be sure to retain the accurate bend of your circle. This requirement early in your horse’s career helps you to develop him correctly and as easily as possible.

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GMO Put Your GMO on the Map with the GMO Education Initiative How to offer the dressage education your club’s members want—at a price they can afford

By Holly Hilliard and Frances Haupt

GMOs nationwide have already begun expanding their educational offerings—and creating valuable new member benefits—using these programs. Since their inception in 2017, more than $22,000 in grants have been awarded. At press time, GMOs and GMO chapters across the country had hosted 40 GEI programs for riders of all levels (see map on the facing page for a look at program locations around the coun-

EDUCATION, YOUR WAY: GMO Education Initiative enables clubs to offer the events members want. Dressage judge Sue Mandas teaches Carli Hall on Wonder Boy at a 2018 Ride-a-Test clinic in Weirsdale, Florida, hosted by Central Florida Dressage.

Are riding clinics with respected trainers too far away and too expensive for your club’s members to attend?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then the USDF’s GMO Education Initiative (GEI, formerly known as the National Education Initiative) and the associated USDF GMO Education Initiative Grant can help!

try). Read on to learn more about how the GEI works and how your GMO can tap this resource.

Why the GEI? The primary objective of the GEI is to create and support new and affordable programs to engage members. The GEI aids GMOs in offering educational opportunities closer to home and provides sup-

24 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

portive resources to help organize, promote, and fund those programs.

Providing quality education is one way that a GMO can add value to membership. Participation in the GEI demonstrates a club’s commitment to providing quality educational opportunities for all members.

Program Guidelines Here’s all your club has to do to get started with the GEI: 1. Be a GMO or GMO chapter with a desire to host an educational program.

2. Review the GEI program guidelines (on the USDF website at usdf.org/education/gmoei.asp).

3. Select an event type, an appropriate instructor, the date, and a venue.

4. Submit the appropriate applications and budget. The forms and template are available on the USDF website at the above link.

5. Make it happen!

There are four basic event formats to choose from, and the GEI guidelines are flexible to allow GMOs to tailor programs to meet their members’ specific needs. The guidelines clearly define the instructor requirements for each event type, and the lists of preapproved instructors will help your club to find a qualified individual to headline your event.

Clinics and symposiums include traditional riding clinics, those with a more focused curriculum, and programs that include a variety of educational opportunities.

Ride-a-test clinics give riders

COURTESY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA DRESSAGE

D

oes your USDF group-member organization (GMO) or GMO chapter struggle to provide quality educational opportunities for members?

Is your GMO located in a part of the country that lacks access to high-quality dressage education?

Do most or all of your GMO’s members live in less densely populated areas with limited member numbers, funds, and resources?

ON THE MAP: GMO Education Initiative educational events since the program’s inception in 2017

the opportunity to receive a judge’s feedback in a noncompetitive environment, and can be beneficial to all riders, whether they compete or not.

Competitors get an opportunity to improve their test scores, and noncompetitors receive feedback from a perspective they might otherwise miss.

Camps appeal to riders and auditors alike by providing an opportunity for a “horse vacation.” Camps typically include a variety of related activities, such as group and private lessons, lectures, social events, and often yoga, Pilates, and meditation sessions—not to mention campfires, toasted marshmallows, and s’mores.

Unmounted events bring members together when weather and other limitations need to be considered. The GMO and the instructor determine the curriculum, so the possibilities are endless.

The GEI program guidelines walk GMOs through the application process. A sample budget guides you through the financial-planning process, and the USDF provides printed and online promotional support. In addition, because providing highquality education can be expensive, the GEI grant of up to $1,000 can give

you a great head start on expenses.

If you’re not sure what type of program to host, consider your members’ needs, and check out what participants in past events have said about

the experience (see “What They’re Saying About the GMO Education Initiative” on the next page).

Still have questions or need help? Just ask! USDF Adult Pro-

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25

GMO NOMINATIONS OPEN

April 15,

2020

is the deadline for nominations for Participating Member (PM) Delegates in All Regions To accept the nomination, and if elected, a PM delegate nominee must:

• Be a current Participating Member of USDF. • Have a permanent residence and reside in the region for which they are running to represent.

• Agree to serve a one year term, from the time of election in 2020 until the election in 2021.

• Attend the 2020 Adequan®/ USDF Annual Convention in Omaha, NE. e-mail all nominations to

nominations@usdf.org

grams Committee members and USDF Education Department staffers will be happy to assist.

The GEI program is experiencing exciting growth, and resources are still available to help make more programs a reality. Make 2020 the year your GMO gets on the map!

Holly Hilliard is a USDF associate instructor and the chair of the USDF Adult Programs Committee. She and her husband, Steve, own and operate Harmony Horse Dressage and Equine Sports Massage in Bruce, Florida.

Frances Haupt is the Region 6 representative to the USDF Adult Programs Committee. She is a former Oregon Dressage Society adulteducation chair.

What They’re Saying About the GMO Education Initiative The instructor was equally attentive to all levels of ability, experience, age, conformation, and breed. As an added bonus, her intimate knowledge of the tests, involvement in various areas of USDF, and experience as a judge provided a well-rounded clinic for both riders and auditors. As someone who was able to attend at no cost, I am very appreciative to the USDF for their generous support of educational events like this one, which keep continuing education with high-quality clinicians affordable for everyone.

–Heather Kline, Oregon Dressage Society In the area where my GMO chapter is located, there are many educational opportunities for dressage riders. However, we had been hearing from many of our “grass roots” members that they were hesitant to apply to ride in these clinics, as they were intimidated by the thought of riding with a “big name trainer” or “S” judge. So we came up with the idea of a “NoStress Fix-a-Test,” which was designed for riders through Second Level who primarily show at schooling shows. The idea was very well received, and because we received a grant from USDF, we were able to offer the clinic at an extremely affordable price, allowing us to deliver an outstanding educational opportunity to a previously underserved population of our club.

–Michelle King, clinic organizer and president, Virginia Dressage Association, Northern chapter (VADA/NOVA) I so enjoyed the clinic and will plan on doing it again. I loved the format of riding a test, getting feedback and working on weaknesses, and then finishing by riding the test again.

–Cindi Moravec, Commonwealth Dressage and Combined Training Association At the end of the day, it was obvious that the USDF grant and clinic had accomplished one of USDF’s goals: to bring together the dressage community on a local level to help build a solid foundation whereby more members feel valued and included. It was a great day for dressage, and SWVADA will apply for more grants in the future!

–Meredith McGrath, Southwest Virginia Dressage Association Does your GMO want to offer similar benefits? Learn more about the USDF GMO Education Initiative at usdf.org/education/gmoei.asp.

26 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

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The Judge’s Box Competition Highs and Lows Dressage judges are competitors, too, and we’ve had our share of terrible tests and memorable moments in the arena. Judges share their war stories and fondest memories.

By Lisa Schmidt If you’ve ever presumed that the all-knowing judge was looking down their nose at you for making a mistake, I’d like to set the record straight. Let me share a few of my own dressage-competition highlights and lowlights, and you’ll realize that you are not alone!

Here are a few of my own notable embarrassing moments: At my first time competing at

A MOMENT TO CHERISH: Dressage competition can be a bumpy road, but when the stars align it’s a glorious feeling. In 2015, the writer won the Great American/USDF Region 1 Training Level Open championship aboard the Hanoverian gelding Qrown Prince (Quaterback – Halleluja H.A., His Highness).

dressage competition. So the majority of judges you show under have themselves gone down that center line many times—and they’ve experienced their share of competition highs and lows, from 10’s to zeros.

Judges have many war stories about the good times and the bad times in the competition arena. Have you ever forgotten to drop your whip before a championship class? Some judges have done the same thing.

Dressage at Devon (Pennsylvania), I was stabled with a well-known trainer who was also in my Prix St. Georges class. The ring had been dragged right before my ride. My horse was “electric” in the Devon atmosphere—so much so that I could barely steer him. The trainer, who rode right after me, came back to the barn and said, “I was hoping to follow your tracks, but I don’t know what test you did!”

28 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

In my first Grand Prix test, I rode the canter-work pattern backward.

The judge didn’t realize it, and neither did I until I left the arena.

In my first year showing on the Florida winter circuit, the Prix St. Georges test included a rein back at A. Every single class, I forgot that rein back!

Now a highlight: My first year showing a fiveyear-old for a client, I qualified the horse for the Great American/USDF Regional Championships at Training Level. At the Regionals, I was the first to go with some 40-odd in the class—not the best starting spot.

I got a reasonably good score. As of the lunch break, half way through the class, I was still in the lead. The last two rides were super riders on super horses, so I thought maybe I’d finish in the top six. At the end of the day, the final scores came out and we were the champions. I still don’t know how it happened, and I didn’t dream it.

I can’t tell you how many of my colleagues have been sure that certain of their peers would judge them extraharshly as fellow judges when they competed—but when they got their scores, they were pleasantly surprised.

Conversely, doesn’t every competitor feel that some tests are scored low?

Judges do, too, when they show. Whatever you have experienced as a dressage competitor, the judges have, too.

The Flip Side: Judging Highs and Lows As a judge, I will never forget the first score of 10 that I gave. It was for the first center line and halt in a First Level test. I couldn’t imagine how much better it could be. I’ve also given a 10 for a stretching circle.

COURTESY OF LISA SCHMIDT

W

hen I judge, I am often asked whether I still ride.

The answer is a resounding yes! And I am not alone: There are many dressage judges across the country who still ride, train, and compete.

In order to obtain a US Equestrian “r,” “R,” or “S” judge’s license, one must obtain certain scores at different levels in USEF-licensed/USDF-recognized

Sometimes being a dressage judge means giving a harsh mark, regardless of how well-known the rider is.

I once gave an Olympic medalist a zero in a Second Level test. The horse simply didn’t go from letter to letter in any recognizable gait.

For this article, I asked some of my peers to share their favorite moments, either as judges or as spectators. Several talked about watching the gold-medal-winning Dutch stallion Totilas and Edward Gal at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Kentucky. All agreed that his trot to halt/rein back to trot was a 10. Others mentioned watching the late Dr. Reiner Klimke of Germany riding Ahlerich in the victory round at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where he performed an amazing number of one-tempi changes around the ring.

Judging can involve self-criticism.

One judge told me that she gave a score of 9 to a “world-class piaffe” by a Lusitano in a Grand Prix test. That

night, back at her hotel, the judge obsessed about why she hadn’t given the piaffe a 10. Judges really do want to do the right thing and worry that they have treated the competitor fairly.

Another judge told me about a time when he had no regrets about giving poor scores. After a half-pass before the counter-canter in a Third Level test, the rider abruptly halted and forced the horse into a lengthy rein back, then proceeded in countercanter to the flying change. The movement received a score of 1, and the rider received a collective mark of 4 for abusive aids. In this case, the judge did his best to be an advocate for the horse, by sending a message to the rider never to use injurious aids again.

Scribes are wonderful and valuable volunteers who occasionally create moments of humor. I heard a story of a judge’s giving the comment of “not clean” for a flying change that was late behind. Glancing over at the test sheet, the judge noticed that the scribe had written “dirty.”

Scribes can also go above and beyond their duties. A judge once became so ill during a show that she had to be taken to the hospital. Her scribe stayed in the emergency room until the judge was released, took her back to her hotel, helped her pack, and helped her rearrange her travel home.

Judges are just like you: They have great times and not-so-great times at competitions. And like you, they love and enjoy the animals that give us all so much happiness.

Lisa Schmidt is a US Equestrian “S” dressage judge, a faculty member of the UDSF L Education Program, and a former USDF Region 1 director. She is the only judge to date to have both competed and judged at the US Dressage Finals. A USDF gold, silver, and bronze medalist, she teaches and trains out of Upper Creek Farm in Stockton, New Jersey.

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29

Salute The Builder Meet Marianne Ludwig, chief architect of the USDF L Education Program

By Anne Gribbons

I

n his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell writes that our first impression of an object or a person often ends up being the lasting one.

The moment that I met dressage judge and future USDF Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Marianne Ludwig, I knew instinctively that she was the real deal.

In the 40 years that Marianne and I have been friends and colleagues, she has never given me a reason to change that first impression, and I am confident that many other people

bullied by one of her teachers, Marianne was enrolled in a private school akin to our Montessori schools.

At 13, Marianne started her riding career with lessons at a local stable.

Her family could not afford the luxury of a horse, so Marianne took odd jobs to pay for her hobby and eventually was given the opportunity to ride horses belonging to private owners who needed their equines exercised.

When she was 17, Marianne began training for a career as a veterinary technician, and after graduating she

some Grand Prix-level Lipizzans, she lost interest in jumping and developed a lifelong passion for dressage.

As time went on, Jurgen Ludwig proved both more intelligent and interesting than Marianne had expected, and slowly the two became an item.

Jurgen wanted to expand his horizons and go to America, but Marianne made it quite clear that was not happening unless they were married. When Jurgen did not catch on quickly enough, Marianne took off for Paris. She got a job in the laboratory at the Institut Pasteur, devoted her evenings to earning her language diploma in French, and enjoyed Parisian life and culture.

Marianne and Jurgen kept up a long-distance relationship, and in 1962 they were married in Zurich.

Less than a year later, the couple left for Chicago for what was supposed to be a two-year sojourn at the Cook County Hospital. Before long, both had landed jobs at the Mayo Clinic.

EARLY DAYS: Marianne Ludwig riding in an undated photo

who know her would say they feel the same.

Let’s tell the story of Marianne, beginning with her growing up in Zurich, Switzerland, in the 1940s with a loving mother and older brother, but with a father who left the family when Marianne was six years old. In those times, being from a “broken home” carried a lot of stigma, and after being

accepted a position in a cancer-research laboratory in Zurich. One day the team gained a new member: the German Dr. Jurgen Ludwig—whom Marianne found a bit “too German.”

In the meantime, Marianne continued her riding education at Circus Knie, the Swiss National Circus, which was located outside Zurich.

After she got the opportunity to ride

30 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

By 1965 it had become obvious that going back to Europe was not to be, and Marianne bought her first horse, a Thoroughbred off the track. Beginning a 40-year-long second career, she began training and teaching dressage.

In the late 1960s she started competing, supported by her coach, Melle van Bruggen, who had helped her for many years in Switzerland along with Egon von Neindorff in Germany. In the US, she also received instruction from Col. Bengt Ljungquist and from Nuno Oliviera.

In 1975, Marianne rode in a clinic with German Col. Gustaf Nyblaeus and watched him conduct a judges clinic. She took the written exam as a lark, and when she passed it easily she

COURTESY OF MARIANNE LUDWIG

The 40-Year-Long Second Career

COURTESY OF MARIANNE LUDWIG; USDF ARCHIVE; SUSAN SEXTON/USDF ARCHIVE

SIDE BY SIDE: Jurgen and Marianne Ludwig enjoy a ride together in an undated photo

SECOND CAREER: Ludwig as dressage competitor in an undated photo

FOLLOW THE LEADER: Ludwig at the 2002 USDF convention

entered the world of dressage judging. In time she earned her American Horse Shows Association (AHSA, now US Equestrian) “R” judge’s license, and by 1980 she had become an “S” judge. She continued moving up the judging levels, becoming an FEI “C” (Candidate) in 1986 and then an FEI “I” (International) in 1988.

Marianne, who now lives in Bonita Springs, Florida, judged actively until 2015. Along the way, she earned a reputation as an accurate, compassionate judge. I have shown several of my horses in front of Marianne over the years with confidence that I would get the truth told about the status of the training, with the appropriate score and comments delivered in a positive way, even if the performance was not stellar.

years developing guidelines for training and testing national-level dressage judges. She is the main creator and guardian of the USDF L Education Program, which was introduced in 1981 and which has produced some of the best judges in the world.

Marianne truly had to start from scratch, and with help from such colleagues as the late dressage judge Liz Searle (also a USDF Lifetime Achievement Award honoree), she plunged in.

There were places to find to hold the training courses and examinations, negotiations to be done with show organizers, exams to be developed, teaching aids and documents to create, and guidelines to formulate—all, of course, before the computer age.

(When I was a member of the FEI Dressage Committee in the early 2010s, the FEI was busy working out a way to better educate judges worldwide. Some of the issues that baffled them this country had solved and successfully used for years. They were not amused when I pointed this out.)

Her L program involvement was far from Marianne’s only contribution to American dressage. She served as the USDF’s first Region 4 director, from 1978 to 1979. She is a past chair of the USDF Judges Committee, of which she was a member for decades.

For US Equestrian, she was a member of the Dressage Committee—which she chaired from 2000 to 2009—and of the Licensed Officials Committee.

She is also a director emerita of the USA Equestrian Trust.

The USDF recognized Marianne’s extraordinary contributions to the USDF L program and Judges Committee with the USDF Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. US Equestrian followed suit in 2010 with its Pegasus Medal of Honor.

During Marianne’s tenure as the chair of the US Equestrian Dressage Committee, she led the meetings with her usual tact and quiet control.

When she thought we had derailed in the discussions, she would make the only loud noise I ever heard from her, squeezing a shrill-sounding toy alligator with her message: OK, guys, time to move on!

An Advocate for Judge Education When Marianne was appointed examiner for the AHSA Judges Program in 1980, she asked for the guidelines and how to conduct the examinations.

No formal procedures existed, she was told, but not to worry: There were always two examiners, and they would work it out between them.

At Marianne’s first assignment, the other examiner had an emergency, and a nonstop rain ruined the candidates’ score sheets. After the official judge refused to share her own score sheets, it became abundantly clear to Marianne that the US needed a method to follow. She spent the next 30

Anne Gribbons, of Chuluota, Florida, was the US Equestrian national dressage technical advisor from 2010 through 2012. She is an FEI 5* dressage judge, a USEF “S” dressage judge, and a USEF “R” sport-horse breeding judge. She was the head of the ground jury at the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games in Tryon, North Carolina.

Gribbons has trained and competed 16 of her own horses from start to Grand Prix. She was a member of the 1995 US Pan American Games silvermedal-winning dressage team.

In 2013, Gribbons was inducted into the Roemer Foundation/USDF Hall of Fame. She received the USEF’s Walter Devereaux Trophy for sportsmanship in 2018.

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

31

Free Rein Us vs. Them In buying and breeding sport horses, does it always have to be a choice between American and European?

breeding stock that we have already imported is usually of high quality, since it costs the same to import a mediocre horse as it does a good one.

That said, bloodlines available in the US may not be from the latest “flavor of the month.” The Europe-

A NEW WAY TO BUY: For years, top-quality European sport horses have been sold in curated auctions, like the storied Verden Hanoverian auction in Germany (pictured). Our sport-horse columnist thinks the US should try the auction model, both live and online.

produce good (sometimes great) sport horses that we work hard to get on the ground alive. We invest a great deal in getting a foal to the point where we can sell it, and along the way we endure heartbreak along with the highs.

Although warmblood breeders in the US need and want new bloodlines that may be unavailable to us without importing, we have many of the same bloodlines that can be found in Europe. After all, the

ans usually don’t freeze the semen of the new young stallion sensations until the fall after their first breeding season, so American breeders are a year behind. On occasion, that has been a good thing for us: A few stallions have lost their full breeding privileges when they failed to pass a required stallion test or were injured before going to a testing. Any foals produced during that interim were therefore unable to be registered.

We serious American sport-

32 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

horse breeders consider ourselves to be well-educated on European bloodlines and the resulting offspring. Breeders both here and abroad are willing to exchange ideas and information about many topics, one of which is the reliability of various stallions’ frozen semen—which is costly to obtain, and usually sold with no guarantee—in producing pregnancies. Not all frozen semen works, not all mares are good being bred with it, and horses are inherently not the most fertile animals.

The quality of horses is here in the US. I have had German breedorganization judges say that they saw the best foal of the year on my farm, or that they saw multiple foals that were of elite-auction quality.

One stallion-licensing judge told me that he had never awarded as many premiums at a single farm as he did at mine. And my breeding operation is not an isolated case: I have heard similar things from European judges about other American breeders. Yet the five stallions I stand—all with recognizable European bloodlines— get only a few outside breedings.

We have some very good stallions in North America. We should use them.

The Riding-Horse Market I am less frustrated when American buyers purchase schooled horses from Europe. I get it: The US is a big country, and it takes money, time, and effort to go try all those highly trained riding horses that are scattered all over the country. In Europe, you can see a lot of schooled horses and not have to travel as far.

Training horses to the upper levels is a big business there.

Buying in Europe is not always

FOTO ERNST

A

s a large Oldenburg breeder in the US, I sometimes find it frustrating to read socialmedia posts about people’s newly imported young sport-horse prospects or breeding stock.

It is hard not to feel resentful.

We American breeders think we

By Maurine “Mo” Swanson

the cheapest route, though. Magnified by the oftentimes unfavorable exchange rate, the costs of not only the horse but also sales commissions, insurance, transatlantic flights, quarantine, and transportation within in the US can add up quickly.

There does seem to be some prestige associated with importing a horse: “If it came from Europe, it must be better.” When a client or sponsor gives a trainer the green light to buy a horse, the appeal of a shopping trip to Europe can be too hard to pass up. Going to Europe sure sounds like a better brag to friends and clients than a trip to Anytown, USA. What’s more, I have seen trainers buy horses they would like to ride instead of choosing mounts more suitable for their adult-amateur clients’ needs. A trainer that looks out for their clients is a gem.

I have some horses that live in Germany, and I would never consider just looking up European horse dealers on the Internet and making a cold call for a buying trip. I appreciate the fact that I have a German friend who knows which sellers to trust and which to avoid. This is especially important in purchasing a riding horse. It can happen that a European dealer hears “American client” and the price goes up, the quality goes down, and honesty flies out the window. A reliable sales source in Europe is golden.

Prepurchase exams and radiograph interpretation in Europe are different from what we’re accustomed to in the US. In my opinion, most people buying in Europe should get a second opinion from a US veterinarian. I know of Americans who have bought young stock and breeding stock from Europe off the Internet, sight unseen.

I also know of people who have bought riding horses—even very expensive ones—without trying them in person or even sending someone to try them. Sometimes

it’s worked out—and sometimes it hasn’t.

The US Needs Sport-Horse Auctions One potential way forward for US sport-horse breeding is an increase in the number of auctions of quality horses. We have no live auctions in this country! There is presently one domestic online auction that offers warmbloods, but there are no

selection criteria. The good horses, especially foals and hunters with show records, seem to sell for good prices at this auction; other prices are unimpressive and generally not indicative of the market.

I would love to see a select US online sport-horse auction. Let’s start with foals and broodmares, as those would be the easiest to sell online. I’m not sure who should serve as the selectors; a rejected horse or foal could make for a lot of hurt

Convenience doesn’t always equal results.

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33

Free Rein feelings. In the first Select American auction, sellers may have to accept the price they get, with the hope that future auctions would attract more buyers and that prices would rise as the auction gained a reputation for quality. Auctions in Europe started out that way, and look at them now.

European breeding farms and breed consortiums have recently put on a few very successful online auctions. The best ones, in my opinion, showed the foals in walk, trot, and canter as well as walking away from and toward the camera. This format, along with a veterinary report, would give me the confidence to buy without seeing the foal in person.

Online auctions lack the excitement of a live event, but there were a few spirited bidding wars going on during the last minutes of those European online auctions.

Perhaps if a live auction—especially of riding horses—were held to coincide with a major US dressage show, there would be some success.

Look at how well the VDL jumper auction did when it was run at night on the Winter Equestrian Festival

show grounds during the winter season in Wellington, Florida. There were some very high prices there!

The “Made in America” Goal Wouldn’t it be lovely if one of our top US dressage riders tried to seek out and purchase an Americanbred prospect or became sponsored by an American breeder? I, for one, would give away a top prospect if I was assured it would be trained up the levels, as far as it was able, by such a rider with the hope that it would make it all the way to Grand Prix.

After all, the British stars Charlotte Dujardin and Carl Hester ride some top horses bred in Great Britain. The top German riders are on German and Dutch horses, the Dutch A team rides Dutch and German horses, and the Americans are riding…German and Dutch horses.

Why aren’t Americans riding American-bred horses?

As a breeder, I realize that my market for riding horses is primarily the adult-amateur dressage

rider, but I hope that someday I’ll be cheering for an American rider going down center line on an American-bred horse at an Olympic Games or other major international event. I will be so happy and proud of that accomplishment, and proud for the American breeder, whomever it may be.

IN THE NEXT ISSUE • 2019 USDF yearbook: awards, results, and photos • 2019 US Dressage Finals coverage and photos • Report from Savannah: USDF convention happenings and photos

Meet the Columnist

O

ur sport-horse columnist, Maurine “Mo” Swanson, has been breeding horses for 40 years. With her husband, Jim, she owns Rolling Stone Farm in eastern Pennsylvania, where she stands the stallions Shakespeare RSF, Sir James, Fhitzgerald, Dheputy, and Shavane. She has bred about 400 foals, including 37 Elite Mares and Elite Mare Candidates and two State Premium Mares for the American Hanoverian Society and the German Hanoverian Verband; and 26 Special Premium mares, 12 Verbands Premium mares, 178 Premium Foals, and 48 Foals of Distinction for the German Oldenburg Verband, plus nine licensed stallions.

Swanson got her equestrian start in hunters and jumpers, then rode dressage up to the Prix St. Georges level, earning her USDF bronze and silver medals in 2018. Her homebred Hanoverians and Oldenburgs have earned top-ten national dressage rankings and have won many titles both under saddle and in hand. She has been consistently highly ranked in the Adequan®/USDF Dressage Breeder of the Year, the Adequan®/USDF Dressage Sport Horse Breeding Breeder of the Year, and the US Equestrian Dressage Breeder of the Year standings. She won the Adequan®/USDF DSHB Breeder of the Year title in 2016 and 2018, and has been the US Equestrian Dressage Breeder of the Year every year since 2014.

Rolling Stone Farm sells young stock and about 20 to 25 riding horses a year. Swanson’s greatest pleasure has been breeding suitable horses for the amateur market in the discipline of dressage with an emphasis on ridability and movement.

34 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

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Sport Horse What Makes a Good Para-Dressage Horse?

Para-dressage runs parallel to “able-bodied” dressage in almost every aspect.

When it comes to selecting a horse, is there any difference between the two disciplines?

By Elizabeth Moyer

DOING DOUBLE DUTY: The Trakehner stallion Lord Locksley has competed successfully at Grand Prix dressage with an able-bodied rider. He also competes as a walk-only Grade I para-dressage mount with rider David Botana.

In the early days of Paralympic Games dressage competition, riders faced the luck of the draw, riding borrowed horses provided by the host country. They were given only a few days to practice with the unfamiliar horses before competition began.

Athens 2004 were the first Games at which para-dressage athletes got to compete on their own horses, and the sport has progressed from there to a level that is becoming truly “paral-

lel” to its able-bodied counterpart.

Nowadays, elite-level para-dressage riders might bump into the likes of US dressage Olympians Robert Dover or Laura Graves while looking for their next mount, says Hand, of Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, who now serves as president and executive director of the United States Para-Equestrian Association (USPEA), the US Equestrian recognized affiliate association for the para-equestrian discipline. That’s the level of horse that today’s para-dressage riders need to be competitive on an international scale.

Para-equestrian dressage, a Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI) discipline, is dressage for riders with physical disabilities. The term “para” refers to the sport’s being parallel to its able-bodied counterpart. But when it comes to the equine part of the equation, we wondered whether there are differences between what’s desirable in a para-dressage horse and what ablebodied riders are looking for. Here’s what experts had to say.

Shopping in the Same Market “There’s not much difference, although people might think there is,” says Michel Assouline, the French-born US Equestrian Federation national paraequestrian dressage head of coach development and technical advisor.

However, he says, since equestrian sport’s addition to the Paralympic Games program in 1996, the type of horse needed has evolved.

“Before that, you were talking probably more of a ‘therapeutic’ type of horse, where people were looking for a horse with a very good temperament, good stability, good ridability,” Assouline explains. “But that’s all changed in the last 15 to 20 years.”

36 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

Today, he says, a para-dressage horse must be equal in quality to a dressage horse. The international standard has become so high that anything less isn’t sufficiently competitive, and “people are looking for that horse that’s going to give them a gold medal.”

The result is that “there really isn’t any such thing as a para-dressage horse,” according to Hand. “When we go horse-shopping, we are all shopping in the same market, and we all want the same qualities of [good] movement with a sane mind. It’s really no different than able-bodied. We need the FEI [quality] walk, trot, and canter with a great disposition, and that’s eye candy for anybody, really.”

What’s more, not only do top paradressage prospects hold equal appeal for able-bodied competitors, but top para-dressage athletes themselves also may “cross over” to the able-bodied divisions, Assouline says.

“Our Grade IV and V [athletes], if they’re on the Paralympic team, should be quite competitive with amateur able-bodied dressage riders,” says Hand, referring to the FEI’s system of classifying para-equestrians according to level of physical disability in order to level the competitive playing field.

Grades range from I to V, with I designating athletes with the highest degree of impairment and V, the least.

“It’s tough, but some of them are so good, they are right up there against the top people—able-bodied dressage riders, too,” says Assouline.

Top Qualities On the list of desired qualities in a para-dressage horse, two things stand out.

“What we need first and foremost for those horses is really temperament

LINDSAY Y. MCCALL

H

ope Hand, who rode for Team USA at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, recalls those Games’ opening ceremony vividly—not only for its dramatic display of 50 galloping horses, but also because some of those horses later resurfaced as mounts for the paraequestrian dressage competition.

LINDSAY Y. MCCALL

and natural ability,” says Assouline.

Specific requirements may vary depending on the rider’s type and degree of impairment.

Some horses seem to know intuitively when a rider has special needs, says Hand: “They become more attuned and patient to the para rider and behave themselves—more so than they might with an able-bodied rider really pushing them along.”

For herself, “I like a forward horse, and a lot of our riders do,” says Hand. “If we don’t have the use of our legs, we need something that will willingly accept the bridle and move forward so we can concentrate on everything else…because you can’t be nagging a horse around the arena with your whip.” But “somebody with strong aids and strong leg aids or hands or seat may want more of a lazy-type horse.”

Gaits are another priority in the para-dressage horse. The lower the rider’s grade, the more paramount the walk becomes. In Grade I, the tests are walk-only.

Para-dressage horses “have to have great paces,” says Assouline: “very correct, with some expression and perfect regularity.”

Assouline also likes to see natural balance and suppleness. “If the balance isn’t there, a clever, skilled dressage rider might be able to address that quickly, but it’s going to be harder for a physically weaker para rider,” he explains.

In addition to a quality walk, paradressage riders might look for a horse whose trot is easy to sit.

“The lower grades normally can’t post to warm up, and it might be a little bit harder for them to be flexible in their pelvis to get a good sitting trot,” says Hand, “so they look for a good, smooth trot if possible that still has animation and forwardness.”

Para-Perfect Partnership Matching a horse to the right rider is always important, but it’s even more so when the rider is a para athlete, according to Assouline.

WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS: The Hanoverian stallion Solitaer 40 (Sandro Hit x De Niro), ridden by co-owner the para-equestrian Kate Shoemaker in the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games, has assets any dressage rider would find appealing

“With a para rider, especially in the lower grades,” he says, “you have to be careful about the temperament of the horse, so that’s something where we tend to take more time.

When I’m not sure, I would have the rider try the horse several times, possibly try the horse in different environments—not just at home or where the horse is being sold from, but make an agreement that the horse can be taken to a local show so that we see what the horse does in a different environment—because that’s usually where problems can start.”

A kind and tolerant temperament may help the para-dressage horse to be a good performer, “but it’s also first and foremost for [rider] safety,” Assouline says.

Some para-dressage athletes use adaptive equipment to help them compensate for physical deficits.

For example, an athlete may need to use two whips, or special rein grips, or a modified saddle. According to Hand, most horses adjust well to the differences.

“For the most part, they learn to adapt and accept the different aids,” she says. “You get good at detecting which horses you think will come around and work with you. It’s just a question of them bonding with the

rider, just like any other rider bonding with their horse. It’s amazing how flexible horses can be.”

Typecasting In para-dressage, as in able-bodied dressage, warmbloods tend to rule.

“Usually a nice warmblood is what we all gravitate toward,” says Hand.

“The judges are partial to that type of horse.”

That’s not to say that other breeds can’t do well in the para-dressage arena. Hand points to NTEC Richter Scale, a Shire cross owned by current US Equestrian national para-dressage chef d’équipe Kai Handt. With the late Jonathan Wentz, the gelding earned a spot on the US team at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and finished fourth in the Grade Ib Individual test and fifth in the Grade Ib Freestyle.

That same year, NTEC Richter Scale was also a finalist for USEF Horse of the Year.

Assouline professes no preference for specific breeds, age ranges, or gender. It’s the same as in able-bodied dressage, he says: If the temperament and talent are there and the horse is a good match for the rider, then those details are less important.

There are numerous mares in para-dressage, and several stallions have been successful, as well, Assou-

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

37

Sport Horse

line notes. With rider Anne Dunham, LJT Lucas Normark, a striking spotted Knabstrupper stallion (Ravaldi x Pallex Af Ulstrup), brought home team gold and two individual silver medals for Great Britain at the 2016 Rio Paralympics. (Assouline was the British para-equestrian dressage program’s head coach at the time, a position he held for 13 years before coming to work for US Equestrian.)

“He was impeccably behaved; you would never have known he was a stallion,” Assouline says of Lucas Normark. “I believe a good horse [can be any] sex or color. That horse—that stallion—is a really good example of that.”

Another stallion currently making his mark in the para-dressage arena is the 2001 Trakehner Lord Locksley (Unkenruf x Enrico Caruso), ridden by aspiring Paralympian David Botana, 17. Lord Locksley is not only a stallion but a successful Grand Prix-level dressage competitor under Susanne Hamilton, Botana’s trainer.

“The horse now does a wonderful job with him as a walk-only rider,” Hand says of Lord Locksley. “It’s quite incredible how these horses just can switch roles like that.”

And age, as they say, is just a number. At the 2018 FEI World Equestrian

Finding the Unicorns Even though both para-dressage and able-bodied dressage riders are looking for the same elusive qualities in their mounts, there may be differences in terms of a horse’s level of training and ultimate potential that helps steer it toward one discipline or the other, Assouline says.

“In para-dressage,” he explains, “the highest level we compete at, in the Freestyle Grade V, is equivalent to Prix St. Georges. It opens the door more [for para-dressage horse-shoppers] because sometimes a para rider can acquire a dressage horse that might not have the potential to be a Grand Prix horse. Maybe it hasn’t got a talent for piaffe or passage or whatever, but it would still have to have impeccable gaits—a super walk, trot, and canter— to be competitive enough.”

Similar to the career trajectories of many upper-level dressage horses, which “step down” to become youngrider or junior mounts when the demands of the Grand Prix become too much for them, para-dressage can offer new options to talented dressage horses.

38 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

“Sometimes horses have reached their maximum in dressage,” says Assouline, “but then you find they have a second career for a para rider, at a level that sometimes is less hard for them, less stressful, and that they enjoy. Instead of being completely retired, they can enjoy a less-demanding life at a lower level for a para rider.”

(This is where Assouline puts in a plug for the US Equestrian para-dressage program as a soft landing place for such horses. He asks “anybody in dressage [with] a horse that might have reached the top of its career…but could still be good for a para-dressage rider” to contact US Equestrian’s director of para-dressage programs to learn about options.)

As Team USA gears up for this year’s Paralympic Games in Tokyo, finding more international-quality para-dressage mounts is top of mind for Assouline.

“We have good team members for the moment, but we still need more depth, so that means we need more horses,” he says. “I think we have the riders, but we still need a couple more horses to be really safe and have proper backup. But so far it’s looking good.”

Assouline, a veteran high-performance dressage competitor himself, makes a case for supporting the horses and riders of para-dressage as an endeavor that goes beyond the quest for medals.

“Dressage is a sport that is very often for the elite,” he says. “Para-dressage is a sport, but it’s also a cause that aims at giving people a better life.”

Elizabeth Moyer is the former editor of Horse Illustrated and Young Rider magazines. Liz is a lifelong equestrian who loves living in the beautiful bluegrass horse country of Kentucky. She enjoys dressage and trail riding, and has a soft spot for senior horses. She is currently owned by a pack of adopted Dachshunds.

FEI/LIZ GREGG

NONTRADITIONAL BREED, SPECTACULAR RESULTS: Great Britain’s Anne Dunham (with then British para-dressage team coach Michel Assouline) won multiple medals at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games aboard the Knabstrupper stallion LJT Lucas Normark

Games in Tryon, US para-dressage team member Roxanne Trunnell took the individual bronze medal in the Grade I Freestyle aboard Dolton, a Hanoverian gelding (Danone I x Londonderry) who was just six years old at the time.

“We were all kind of holding our breath that he could hold it together [in the WEG atmosphere], which he did; he’s a wonderful horse,” says Hand. “It’s amazing how he does with her, and how he wants to frolic around when he’s with the trainer. So it just shows you that [the horses] know for some reason how to take care of their rider, and what role they are playing at a certain time.”

(Trunnell/Dolton and Botana/ Lord Locksley recently finished one-two in the 2019 Adequan®/US Equestrian Federation Para-Dressage CPEDI3* National Championship; see page 12 for our report.)

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Bringing up American-Bred Babies Satisfying bonds and big successes are happy outcomes in the sport-horse-breeding journey

BY KIM F. MILLER AND KIM MACMILLAN

WORLD-CLASS QUALITY: The US-bred Kitalis MVS, bred, owned, and ridden by Jackie Ahl-Eckhaus, placed third in the 2019 Markel/USEF Four-Year-Old Championship

40 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

E

ven the wisest and most seasoned sport-horse breeders describe the endeavor as one of unknown outcomes. That’s true for many years until the application of time, training, and experience brings out the potential of bloodline pairings carefully selected years before.

There is one known outcome for those who breed their own horses or buy babies: the enjoyment, satisfaction, and unique bond born of bringing the horse through each step of its journey. In the case of these owners of American-bred dressage horses, there is the extra fun of big victories this past year. Here are the stories behind these rising stars, plus some experience-based words of wisdom from their breeders, owners, and riders.

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The Do-It-Yourself Homebred Success While she’s admittedly terrible at parting with the Dutch Warmbloods she began breeding in 1994, trainer/ rider Jackie Ahl-Eckhaus still keeps sale potential in mind when contemplating new pairings: “To reach the biggest market possible, you want a horse that is ridable and as talented as you can get.”

The regular appearance of her Mountain View Sport Horses in the high rungs of year-end standings and championships—in 2019, Ahl-Eckhaus was tied for seventh in the Adequan®/USDF Dressage Breeder of the Year standings—reflects her success in that regard.

And the accomplishments of her four-year-old gelding, Kitalis MVS, make him a poster child for the merits of her approach.

Sired by Vitalis (by Vivaldi) and out of the MVS second-generation mare Ember MVS (by Westpoint), Kitalis capped the 2019 season with a third-place finish in the Markel/USEF Four-Year-Old Championship at August’s US Dressage Festival of Champions. He was also the reserve open Training Level champion at the 2019 Great American/USDF Region 7 Championships and the 2019 California Dressage Society Annual Championships, and he ended the competition year ranked fourth in the 2019 Adequan®/USDF Training Level Dressage Horse of the Year standings.

Expressive, long-legged, and elegant, Kitalis received First Premium and Best Foal honors at his KWPN-NA (the North American branch of the Royal Dutch Warmblood Studbook) keuring in 2015 and, later, his Ster and IBOP predicates from that registry. In 2018, he was Dressage Stallions and Geldings reserve champion at that year’s KWPN-NA keuring. [ USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

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Having watched Vitalis as a young horse at Verden, Germany, and throughout his performance career, “I thought he had a really nice, good brain and was very supple and elastic,” says Ahl-Eckhaus, who starts, trains, and competes her homebreds in coastal California’s San Luis Obispo. She viewed Vitalis’ FEI-level success with his former owner and rider, the US-based Charlotte Jorst—who for many years competed as an adult amateur—as an indicator of the temperament and ridability she sought.

To the extent that a breeder can be assured of any pairing’s outcome, Ahl-Eckhaus was extra confident that Vitalis’s offspring would have a good brain because of his dam.

Ember MVS is out of Ahl-Eckhaus’s most accomplished mare, MVS Lumara (Flemmingh – Gumara, Ahorn). Lumara, who died in 2015, earned her Keur, Sport Dressage, Preferent, and Prestatie predicates from the KWPN-NA.

“Ember is easy, calm, she never worries in her stall, and she travels well,” Ahl-Eckhaus says. Injured at three years of age, the mare never competed, but she passes on her decorated dam’s mix of sane brain and show-ring sizzle.

Of Kitalis, Ahl-Eckhaus says: “He’s very ridable, very honest”— which is a good thing, considering that the gelding is 17.2 hands and his rider/trainer is five feet two.

What’s more, “he has three good gaits and a good hind leg.”

Like all MVS youngsters, Kitalis was handled early and often, says Ahl-Eckhaus, who made a point of introducing him to many new experiences.

“As a baby, he didn’t want you to touch his ears,” she recalls. “Every day when he was a foal, I made sure I touched his ears. I did it for 30 days, and he gave in.” She’ll often hose down or vacuum a mare with her baby alongside, saying, “All the basic everyday stuff you do with

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Fetch: Good Boy! As a foal, Jhocolate R was “not at all” what owner/trainer/rider Nadine Schwartsman sought, and nobody at his home farm ever calls him by his proper name. Yet the five-year-old KWPN stallion who answers to “Fetch” has earned industry-wide respect after becoming the highest-placed US-bred in the Markel/USEF Five-Year-Old division at the 2019 US Dressage Festival of Champions, where he finished tenth.

Sired by Freestyle out of the Jazz mare Cleopatra, Fetch got his nickname the morning Schwartsman and her non-horsey husband met him at the late Michele Seaver’s Red Wagon Farm in Washington state.

(Seaver was the 2019 Adequan®/ USDF Dressage Breeder of the Year reserve champion.)

“I was looking at a big chestnut

COURTESY OF NADINE SCHWARTSMAN

IRRESISTIBLE: Jhocolate R earning his nickname, “Fetch,” as a foal

them makes them be better adults.”

Ahl-Eckhaus says she does almost all the handling and starting work herself, but she does enlist the help of ground-manners specialist (and fellow dressage champion breeder and trainer) Craig Stanley.

“Kitalis is a little different than some of my others,” Ahl-Eckhaus says. “He’s a lot of fun. When you are walking him around, he has a big walk and he thinks he’s kind of special. You want to let them be themselves but manage it and not spar with it.” Stanley’s training “carries through when you ride,” she says.

Ahl-Eckhaus advises would-be breeders to “get advice and have people you can learn from.” Above all: Start with a good mare. “Breed the best mare you can, and choose the best stallion that you think will work with her.”

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DOMESTIC PARTNER: The American-bred Jhocolate R and owner/rider Nadine Schwartsman at the 2019 Markel/USEF Five-Year-Old Championship

colt that was more my style,” says the nearly six-feet-tall rider. “I looked over and saw my husband with a tiny bay three-week-old colt. He was playing fetch with him for 20 minutes—literally throwing him a stick, and Fetch ran and brought it back—just like a dog.”

Schwartsman wasn’t thrilled when her husband insisted that they buy the little colt, but she changed her tune quickly.

“I picked another baby that was exactly what I wanted in terms of perfect Dutch pedigree, size, and color. He’s good, but he hasn’t turned out anything like Fetch,” she admits.

Fetch’s playful intelligence translates to eager acceptance of each new training challenge, Schwartsman says. “He’s been really fun to train in dressage because he’s so interested. The busier it gets, the happier he seems to be.” After the 2019 Festival of Champions,

Schwartsman and Fetch won the First Level Open title at the Great American/USDF Region 6 Championships and at press time were schooling movements from the FEI Six-Year-Old test. Fetch’s reaction?

“He’s really intrigued. He’s like, ‘Oh, this is great!’”

The mix of Freestyle’s typically calm traits with the Jazz line’s hot, sometimes spooky tendencies coexist in Fetch, Schwartsman says. “He’s very calm until he sees a flower pot he doesn’t like, and then the Jazz comes out!” About 16.2 hands “on his tippy toes,” Fetch leans toward Jazz’s light, modern conformation and articulated movement, she says.

The happy outcome with Fetch inspired Schwartsman to expand his family line at her 80-acre farm, Les Bois Dressage LLC, near Boise, Idaho. Fletch has a yearling half-brother by DeNiro and a fouryear-old half-sister by Vitalis. Both share their dam’s “spicier side,”

Schwartsman says. “They all have that bit of white in their eye and are very expressive. They’re into their humans, and they like to play.”

Play is a big part of life at Les Bois. All of the horses—weanlings to Grand Prix—live outdoors 24/7 unless there’s lightning. “We switched to that a few years ago and have had no more of the traditional injuries, and the horses seem much happier,” Schwartsman reports.

A “German import” herself, Schwartsman first looked at horses bred in her adopted country because they were more affordable. “Then it became a matter of pride and seeing so many really nice horses bred here. Many Americans are really careful about what they breed, and the quality is just as good as what you can get in Europe.”

Schwartsman relishes bringing along her homebred babies.

“When you raise them yourself, you know everything that’s hap-

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

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pened to them,” she says. “I’ve been riding since I was five years old, and I never experienced such a bond as when you raise them yourself.”

A Fenomenal Mare Gentle minds and brilliant movement” is the motto at Julia Whitfield’s Whitfield Farm in Cairo, Georgia. The Hanoverian breeding program began as a commercial enterprise for Whitfield, a longtime rider and trainer. Personal health challenges have caused her to scale back in quantity but not in quality, as her latest success reflects: Her own homebred 2012 mare, Fenomenal JW, was the highest placed USbred horse in the Prix St. Georges division at the 2019 Markel/USEF Developing Horse Dressage National Championships, placing fifth under rider Lindsey Holleger.

The 17.1-hand chestnut mare by Fuerst Romancier is the last out of SPS Wattfee (by Walt Disney), the now-retired States Premium mare to whom Whitfield attributes her

program’s success.

“This cross is big and tall and can move like nobody’s business,” Whitfield says. Fenomenal “has the best mind, and she loves showing.

She eats and drinks that.”

As the ninth of Wattfee’s babies for Whitfield, Fenomenal was expected to inherit her dam’s “tremendous muscle, dense bone, great haunch, and decent topline.” What Fuerst Romancier would bring to the party “was a bit of a gamble,” according to Whitfield, because the stallion had not bred much at the time. Whitfield loved his sire, Fuerst Heinrich (by Florestan I), and so she decided to bet on his son to bring size, attitude, and refinement.

Wattfee reflects the “older style and substance” Whitfield prefers, and she admits to being a tad concerned that the Wattfee-Fuerst Romancier offspring would end up with an overabundance of substance and size. Happily, the pairing produced “refinement with good bone,” with Wattfee’s gift for “being able

44 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

to sit down and piaffe and passage.

When you ask for it, it’s no problem.”

Fenonemal has her mom’s “queenly” attitude, too. Now 26, Wattfee “walks around the farm as if she’s saying, ‘Bow down, peasants, I’m here.’ But a child can come up and give her a scratch, and she’s as kind as a doll baby.’”

Fenomenal wasn’t started under saddle until late in her four-year-old year. “She was big and rangy,” Whitfield explains. “One minute her butt was tall, and the next minute her front end was tall. We let her live out in the field and gallop around. When she came back in to be started, nothing stressed her.”

Whitfield attributes Fenomenal’s fast ascent through the levels to the “yes!” attitude inherited from Wattfee. Marsha Hartford Sapp’s “least resistance” methods of starting young horses were another key, according to the owner/breeder.

If you’re thinking of breeding a sport horse, educate yourself fully about the process, including blood-

SUSANJSTICKLE.COM

MOVING ON UP: Fenomenal JW and rider Lindsey Holleger in the 2019 Prix St. Georges division of the Markel/USEF Developing Horse Dressage National Championships

PAULA CHMURA/PAULA C PHOTOGRAPHY

FULL OF PROMISE: Three-month-old Faro SQF shows his impressive trot alongside dam SPS Rose in 2008

lines, Whitfield recommends.

Breeding has drawbacks, she cautions, “especially today, with these long-legged, spidery-type movers. That can be scary because there are more unsoundness issues.” That’s part of the reason, she says, that she favors the substance and bone of older warmblood lines.

“Whatever breed you are into, get on their auction site beforehand,” Whitfield suggests. “Read the bloodlines before you look at the pictures and videos. Tell yourself what the conformation and movement should be like; then look at the video and test how close you were.” The method may not be as educational as attending the auctions in person, but it’s a powerful research tool that Whitfield believes not enough people take advantage of. And it does have one huge benefit: “You’ll see more different bloodlines that way than flying around the country.”

On the World Stage One American-bred dressage horse proudly sported the stars and stripes

at the 2019 Lima Pan American Games. The Hanoverian gelding Faro SQF, ridden by co-owner Nora Batchelder, won team silver and finished fifth individually—proof positive that US sport-horse breeding is turning out top-quality international prospects.

Faro (Fidertanz x Rotspon) was foaled in 2008 at breeder Jill Peterson’s StarQuarry Hanoverians, then located in Florida (in 2013, StarQuarry relocated to Peterson’s brand-new facility in Aubrey, Texas, north of Dallas). Batchelder, of Williston, Florida, and her cousin Andrea Whitcomb share ownership.

Batchelder and Faro earned Prix St. Georges Open and Intermediate I Freestyle Open Championships at the US Dressage Finals in 2017 and 2018.

They competed successfully in 2019 on the CDI Small Tour, winning their last four classes before being named to the US team for Lima.

Peterson founded her Hanoverian breeding program in 1993. She wanted to focus on breeding horses for dressage and had learned well

a cardinal rule of horse breeding: More of the foal’s genetics are contributed from the mare than from the stallion.

Her search for quality mares led Peterson to River House Hanoverians, owned by Nora Batchelder’s parents, Jeanie Hahn and the late Verne Batchelder. There she fell in love with Faro’s dam, SPS Rose (Rotspon x World Cup I), an imported German mare with athleticism, elegance, and a wonderful disposition, she says.

“I had followed Verne Batchelder’s breeding program for some time,” Peterson says, “and knew he had excellent horses with superior bloodlines. When Rose came up for sale, I knew she was it.”

“Rose’s foals are typically very talented and also have extremely good ridability,” says Peterson. “Nora has commented often how levelheaded Faro is and how hard he tries.”

Her research efforts—to follow bloodlines and to match her mares with promising stallions—take Peterson to Europe on a fairly regular

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

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TROTTING IN THE BIG RING: Team silver medalists Faro SQF and Nora Batchelder at the 2019 Lima Pan American Games

around with his mom, holy moly, he was so impressive! It was obvious how special he is.”

An accomplished amateur rider and friend of Peterson’s bought Faro. The woman brought him along carefully with good coaching, but as Faro developed it became clear that his huge, powerful gaits were beginning to take his owner out of her comfort zone, Peterson says. Faro was sent to Nora Batchelder for further training and to be sold—and Batchelder decided she couldn’t do without him. She asked Whitcomb if she would consider becoming an investor, and the rest is Pan Am Games history.

StarQuarry Hanoverians is a small operation, with just two mares and foals on the farm at any one time, but Peterson values quality over quantity.

“I am certain my mares are the best—not just my opinion, but also that of judges both in Germany and here,” says Peterson, who was ranked fifth in the 2019 Adequan®/ USDF Dressage Breeder of the Year

46 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

standings. “I breed just one or two each year, but I want them to be the best.”

With homebred accomplishments like these, going to Europe to buy a nice dressage prospect or breeding stock may become a quaint notion—something that US sporthorse breeders are working hard to make a reality.

Kim F. Miller is the editor of California Riding Magazine and a freelance writer and photographer. She lives in southern California and can be reached at kimfmiller1@mac.com.

Photographer and journalist Kim MacMillan and her husband, photographer Allen MacMillan, own and operate Loon Creek Enterprises, an 84-acre equine breeding facility and grain farm in northeastern Indiana.

SARAH MILLER/MACMILLAN PHOTOGRAPHY

basis. She observes both stallions and their offspring, to get an idea of what those sires might produce with her mares.

Faro’s sire, Fidertanz (Fidermark x Ravallo), caught Peterson’s eye while in Germany on one of those excursions. A son of stallion-testing champion and Grand Prix-level dressage winner Fidermark I, Fidertanz was champion stallion of the North Rhine-Westfalen licensing.

During his performance career, he won many Prix St. Georges classes and earned top placings at Intermediate I and Grand Prix. He has sired more than 40 licensed sons to date, and he was represented at the 2019 Pan Am Games dressage competition not only by Faro, but also by offspring Floratina, who was seventh individually with Canadian rider Lindsay Kellock; Findus K, ridden by Caroline Espinosa of Ecuador; and Feuertanzer, ridden by Kerstin Rojas Huck of Peru.

“Faro has always been an easygoing guy,” Peterson recalls, but “when we put him in the ring and ran him

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Guiding Light Danish-born Charlotte Bredahl found her way to America and then to the Olympic medal podium. Now she’s helping future US dressage stars to forge their own paths to the top.

“THE WIND BENEATH MY WINGS”: Bredahl thanks Monsieur for a job well done at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics

48 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE BREDAHL

BY PATTI SCHOFLER

COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE BREDAHL

N

o one wanted to buy Monsieur, the 17.3-hand 1981 Danish Warmblood gelding Charlotte Bredahl and a business partner acquired as a gangly five-year-old for $10,000 as a resale project. Even after Bredahl trained him to Grand Prix and rode him to a team bronze medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, there were no offers.

“No one liked him because he was difficult,” Bredahl says, “but not selling him turned out to be the best thing.

He was the horse of a lifetime.”

Monsieur remained with Bredahl for the rest of his life. Already beginning to struggle with the infirmities of old age at 34, he was humanely euthanized at Bredahl’s Santa Ynez, California, ranch in 2015 after suffering a severe colic.

Bredahl’s partnership with the horse she has called “the wind beneath my wings” is a testament to the Danish-born dressage trainer’s knack for working with challenging and nontraditional mounts. Her skills have not gone unrecognized: In 2014 US Equestrian named her its national dressage assistant youth coach, and last year she became its national dressage development coach, with a goal of helping gifted emerging horses and riders to transition to the elite high-performance ranks.

“It is so rewarding that I can give back by coaching these very talented and committed riders that may benefit from my different experiences,” Bredahl says. “They show such dedication to the process, doing whatever it takes to get where they want to go. It’s about details: working with a physio regularly on position and alignment, committing to fitness, getting regular help with their training. These days, the standard is so high that the ones that make it to the top don’t leave anything to chance.”

It’s quite a change from Bredahl’s own high-performance days, when most riders were lucky to get a couple of lessons a week—in Bredahl’s case, from fellow Californian and 1976 Olympic team bronze medalist Hilda Gurney—and trained their horses largely on their own.

“How many people can take a green horse and train it to Grand Prix herself with lessons once a week or two weeks and get on the Olympic team?” Gurney says admiringly of her former student.

In Monsieur’s case, it’s lucky that Bredahl was able to do most of the training herself because the gelding was notoriously unwilling to perform for other riders.

“He would only work for me,” Bredahl says. “In USET [US Equestrian Team] training sessions, the instructors

FIRST PONY: A young Bredahl in an undated photo

always wanted to get on him. As soon as they picked up the canter, all he would do was changes every stride. He would not go on a straight line. But for me, it was no problem.”

Brains over Brawn Born into a family of animal lovers (but not horse enthusiasts) in Copenhagen, Bredahl was “obsessed” with horses from an early age, she says. She cleaned stalls at a local riding school, but that ended at age 12 when her policeman father was promoted to sheriff of a police station of seven officers on the small island of Møn, between Denmark and Germany.

“There were lots of horses on the island, mostly work horses,” Bredahl recalls. “I knocked on the farmers’ doors, asking if I could ride their horses. They were huge horses with no saddles because mostly they were broke to plow, but I could ride for free. These big horses taught me a lot. I had to figure out how to get them to do what I wanted without using strength.”

Bredahl also started taking lessons at the riding school in town, learning basic dressage and jumping.

Eager for any equine opportunity she could find, Bredahl got a job at a trotting-horse breeding farm. Her duties included introducing the young horses to the sulky, and “I did tons of long-lining, which turned out to be a great tool for teaching piaffe and passage, especially when I was working by myself, without someone on the ground. You can see for yourself the mechanics of how the horse is doing, and it transfers to riding very easily.”

For Bredahl’s confirmation at age 14, tradition called for her parents either to throw a party or to give her a special present. They chose the latter option, surprising USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

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VERY SPECIAL WIN: Bredahl’s 1992 victory in Copenhagen was the first time her family had seen her ride since she’d left Denmark in 1979

Bonjour, Monsieur

their daughter with a wild two-yearold untrained horse.

“My parents didn’t know how dangerous that could have been,” Bredahl says.

The horse turned out to be a talented jumper—not Bredahl’s sport of choice—and so he was sold.

After high school, Bredahl moved back to Copenhagen and resumed working with trotters. She says college wasn’t for her. “I didn’t like school. Sitting still was not easy for me. I knew I wanted to do horses.”

Monsieur was one of those resale projects, and he was a handful: Besides his size, he was long-bodied, wide, gawky, and afraid of everything. The first time Bredahl asked him to canter, he bucked her off.

But the gelding (Lowenbrau x Guter Gast xx) was talented, and he rose through the levels, earning enough wins in California to put him and Bredahl in the top-12 national rankings—their ticket to the 1992 US Olympic dressage selection trials in Orlando, Florida.

The trials didn’t start out well for Bredahl and her spooky mount.

Just as they were going around the arena before their first test, “the school next door rang a bell and all the kids ran out of the building,” she says. “He had a complete meltdown, and I had the worst ride of my life, ending up in last place.”

But two days later, Monsieur gave Bredahl the ride of a lifetime.

“I just thought something and he did it. An unbelievable ride, and after the mess the day before.”

The pair ended up sixth—a highenough placing to secure a training trip to Europe prior to the final US

A One-Way Ticket to America At work, Bredahl befriended a woman who was moving to California and who invited her to come and stay. In 1979, the 19-year-old Bredahl packed her bags, bought a one-way ticket, and moved to the Los Angeles area.

As luck would have it, during Bredahl’s first week in America Hilda Gurney gave a talk on horses and dressage at a nearby high school.

“I talked to her in my very bad

English,” Bredahl recalls. “She was very kind and told me to go to Bell Canyon Equestrian Center near Los Angeles, where she gave clinics. At the time, it was the place for dressage.”

Although Bell Canyon manager said she couldn’t pay her, Bredahl started working there anyway. “I worked really hard, so they started paying me, and soon I was riding 10 horses a day. Even though I wasn’t that good, the [dressage] standard in the US wasn’t that high then. I rode all sorts of horses, all day. I got a lot of experience in a short time.”

Bredahl had barely turned 23 when the facility’s manager resigned. The owners hired her as the replacement, and she found herself in charge of the “big, beautiful place” with 110 horses, multiple resident trainers, and four arenas.

On top of her daily duties, she was responsible for organizing monthly two-day, two-arena shows at Bell Canyon.

“It was probably the most challenging two years of my life. The problem was, I didn’t have time to ride.”

50 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE BREDAHL

During her time at Bell Canyon, Bredahl met the Danish Bereiter Henrik Johansen. The two struck up an enduring friendship and also began a business partnership: Johansen bought horses in Denmark and sent them to Bredahl to train and resell in the US. One, the aptly named Copenhagen, reached the Grand Prix level with Bredahl (with help from bimonthly lessons with Gurney) when his American owner went through four pregnancies in a row. Copenhagen gave Bredahl several valuable years of Grand Prix competition experience.

COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE BREDAHL

team selection for the Barcelona Games. A highlight, Bredahl says, was getting the opportunity to compete with her family in the stands to watch. She and Monsieur contested a Volvo FEI World Cup Dressage Final qualifier in the heart of Copenhagen, in the magical setting before the Christiansborg Palace.

“My family had never really seen me ride except all over the fields,” she says, “and didn’t have a concept of what I was doing. They all came— and I won. The American flag was raised. The American anthem was played. My mom was crying. That was one of the most special times of my life.”

Equally special, Bredahl and Monsieur had done well enough to make the Olympic team, and she and teammates Carol Lavell on Gifted, Robert Dover on Lectron, and Michael Poulin on Graf George brought home team bronze—the first US Olympic dressage medal since Bredahl’s mentor Gurney had stood on the podium in 1976. That 1992 bronze medal is widely regarded as a turning point in American dressage—the moment when the US began to stake its claim as an international dressage contender.

“I felt so very proud to be representing the USA,” says Bredahl, who became a US citizen in 1985.

Those Olympics weren’t without some signature Monsieur moments, however. As Bredahl recounted to Dressage Today magazine in 2016, the audience in Barcelona frightened the horse badly when they applauded as Bredahl circled the arena. He headed for the exit, and “the bell rang and I was running out of time,” she recounted. With Monsieur refusing to go forward, in desperation his rider backed him down the long side of the arena until

HISTORIC MOMENT: In 1992 Bredahl (left) and teammates Robert Dover, Michael Poulin, and Carol Lavell put the USA on the Olympic dressage medal podium for the first time since 1976.

Team chef d’équipe Jessica Ransehousen is at left.

she was near A. “I am sure it made a great impression on the judges,” Bredahl said wryly, but the tactic worked and Monsieur relaxed after he was safely inside the confines of the competition arena.

Monsieur capped his illustrious dressage career with an unplanned moment in the spotlight. Another of Bredahl’s horses, Lugano—who had earned USDF Horse of the Year titles at Intermediate I and II, and who was on the US silver-medalwinning team at the 1997 North American Dressage Championships—was scheduled to appear in an exhibition at the Del Mar (California) National Horse Show. When Lugano came up lame a week before the show, Bredahl turned to her then 20-year-old Olympic partner, who had been serving as a lower-level schoolmaster for Bredahl’s students.

“I got on him the week before the show, not sure what I would find,” Bredahl says. “But it was all there. I rode him, and he got a standing ovation from a packed crowd. He was

so fantastic. I was the only one who knew it was my last ride on him.”

A Multifaceted Life An equestrian career can be allconsuming, but Bredahl has always made time for other interests. She’s also branched out in the dressage world, adding the title of judge to her résumé.

One of those other interests is children.

“When I was growing up, I always loved kids,” Bredahl says, “but I knew I didn’t want to have my own.

I even dreamt of having an orphanage. I still have a drawing of a ranch where the kids would learn to take care of the animals.”

In a way, Bredahl’s dream came true. She and ex-husband Joel Baker (they divorced in 2019) took in two foster sons, one of whom lived with them until he was grown. She also mentored several children, who led her to buy a couple of quiet Quarter Horses so that the kids could learn about animals and ranch life. The horses also enabled Bredahl to

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

51

dabble in the sport of reining.

Two client-owned horses would figure prominently not only in Bredahl’s dressage-competition career, but also in her evolving pathway in the sport.

The Dutch Warmblood gelding Komo (G Ramiro Z x H Almé Z) came into her life on a sad note. Bredahl’s friend Kathy Pavlich owned him, and another friend, Carol Plough, was his trainer and rider.

The pair was earning honors at the Grand Prix level when Plough died in 2005, and Pavlich asked Bredahl to take over the ride. Bredahl and Komo went on to win Great American/USDF Region 7 and California Dressage Society (CDS) Grand Prix and GP Freestyle championship titles that year.

Bredahl began training another Dutch Warmblood gelding, Eskada (Inspekteur x Elegant), for his Canadian owner in 2002. Bredahl brought Eskada up through the levels, and in the mid-2000s he was garnering his own share of wins.

With both Komo and Eskada showing great promise, in 2006 Bredahl decided to compete on the Florida winter circuit for the first time. Both horses qualified for their respective USEF national champi-

Coaching the Next Generation In her role as USEF national dressage development coach—part of the successful “pipeline” program, currently anchored by national technical advisor Debbie McDonald, Bredahl, young-horse coach Christine Traurig, and youth coach George Williams—Bredahl spends nearly two weeks a month on the road. Besides accompanying USEF Development Program horses and riders to competitions in the US and abroad, she holds three-day observation and training sessions

52 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

with prospective program members.

She keeps in touch with the riders and their regular trainers, reviews their videos, and sets targets for each rider, with check-ins every six months to discuss progress and future plans. She may also serve as a team’s chef d’équipe, as she did for the 2019 Nations Cup in Compiegne, France. Bredahl also coached at the pre-2019 Pan American Games training camp because USEF national dressage technical advisor Debbie McDonald was in Aachen, Germany, during that time.

More than once during our interview, Bredahl comments on how different high-performance dressage “back in the day” was from the elite sport it is now.

Her own journey to the Olympics “wasn’t like today,” she says. “These athletes take lessons every day, watch their videos, work out every day, spend hours with the horses making them feel good in every way.

Nothing is left to chance. That’s what it takes. And we as coaches are looking for people with that kind of commitment.”

But there’s no substitute for the experienced guidance of a coach who’s traveled the road to the top herself. In Bredahl, friends and colleagues say, today’s Development Program riders have an invaluable asset.

“She was so talented and worked so hard,” says Gurney. “I’m so proud of her and to be her friend. She is very gracious and a wonderful ambassador—a great horsewoman. As a rider, she’s always had such wonderful feel for horses, and yet she takes advice. And she handles the stress of competition with such grace.”

According to USEF Dressage Sport Committee co-chair and international dressage trainer, coach,

SHERI SCOTT

BACK ON TOP: With Komo, Bredahl earned 2005 Great American/USDF Region 7 Grand Prix and GP Freestyle championship titles

onships, but then Komo developed soundness issues.

Bredahl channeled her disappointment into action. Already an USEF “S” judge, “I decided it was time to start going for my FEI status,” she says. She now holds her FEI 4* dressage judge’s license, which “has given me the opportunity to judge all over the world, and it’s been a great education.”

When Bredahl relocated from California to Wellington, Florida, in 2018, one of her first agenda items was to find a new studio so that she could continue pursuing her other passion of more than 30 years: ballroom dancing.

“I’ve always had a part of my life outside horses,” Bredahl says. “It’s good to be in a different environment and with a totally different group of people. When I go to the tennis club, no one knows what I do.

It’s the same at the dance studio.”

What’s more, “I like being fit, but I don’t like to go to the gym. Dance is a very good workout. I try to go four days a week when I’m in town.

It’s 10 minutes from my house, and Florida has a big dance community.”

and judge Kathy Connelly, part of Bredahl’s success results from her ability to foster camaraderie and a sense of trust among the riders and trainers she works with.

“She is a team player,” Connelly says, calling Bredahl “a very kind-hearted, gentle soul. She has a very quiet way of doing things, and she sets people at ease….She doesn’t come into a situation with a personal agenda, but has a broad perspective that is not about her; it’s about the horse and rider and what she can do to help them.”

COACHING COLLEAGUES: As USEF national dressage youth coach and assistant youth coach, George Williams and Bredahl worked together for four years. Today she holds the development coach’s position.

COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE BREDAHL

Patti Schofler is an award-winning writer based in northern California.

She is a USDF L graduate and a passionate dressage rider.

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

53

Exclusive Book Excerpt

The Enigma Sometimes the most challenging horses prove the most memorable. That was the case with Satchmo, German Olympian Isabell Werth’s brilliant, maddeningly erratic mount.

Isabell says: This horse was my true mission in life as a rider and opened new dimensions for me with the challenges he posed. And his story is not closed. It never will be. I still blame myself that I was unfair to him at times, just because I didn’t manage to find a way to understand him.

These thoughts hurt.

TRIUMPH AND TEARS: An emotional comeback on Satchmo in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2008

G

ermany’s Isabell Werth has won more Olympic medals than any other equestrian athlete. From Gigolo FRH, her first Olympic partner in Barcelona 1992, to Weihegold OLD, with whom she won gold in Rio 2016, she has gone down center line at major international dressage championships with no fewer than 10 mounts—and that’s without mentioning the countless wins aboard these and other horses in other competitions.

Other mounts may have earned more accolades, and yet Werth does not talk about any horse in more detail or for longer than she does Satchmo, her mount for Olympic Games, World Equestrian Games, and World Cup Dressage Finals in the 2000s—not even Gigolo, her original superstar.

Satchmo, the hectic, electric little guy with his short body, kept her busier than any other of her complicated horses.

54 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

He was so agile that he could shake off anybody.

He was able to turn in mid-air, go up to the right, to the left, could run backward, buck, throw his legs. It was impressive. Judging by his flexibility and elasticity, he was an ideal dressage horse. But not by his discipline. Satchmo wanted to dominate and call the shots. I saw it all (albeit from the ground sometimes, where I had just landed, yet again), and it made my heart smile. He was a challenge on four legs.

I tried to get at least some control over the feisty bundle of energy. It was about the basics under the saddle. Walk. Trot. Canter. Downward transition. The Doctor coined the phrase: “You have to solve this one forward.” I have ever since included this advice when I speak and follow it every time I have to deal with horses like Satchmo, who constantly lose their temper.

Don’t hold on, don’t drill, don’t hold your breath—let it out. If he doesn’t want to walk, trot—don’t hold back. Don’t think whoa, or he will get charged up even more. Solve the problem thinking forward. Let him

JACQUES TOFFI/COURTESY OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE BOOKS

Satchmo and Isabell have spent more than 20 years together, and she sometimes jokingly calls him her better half. Born in 1994, he came to Rheinberg at only two and a half years old. Dr. Uwe Schulten-Baumer—Isabell’s trainer and patron for 16 years—had bought him on one of his trips to the auction in Verden, the home of the Hanoverian horse. “The Doctor,” as Schulten-Baumer was famously called, went to the stallion market and bought Satchmo (Sao Paulo x Legat) for 70,000 Deutsche Mark—that was a lot of money for a stallion that had not been selected for breeding purposes. But the fact that the famous horse dealer Paul Schockemöhle was The Doctor’s main bidding opponent in the sale shows that, even back then, Satchmo made a great impression with his extraordinary ability to move.

LETTING IT OUT: Isabell learned that with Satchmo, she had to “solve problems thinking forward” or the horse’s bottled-up energy would explode

go until he has caught himself again. Satchmo was and remained a time bomb, got excited, pulled, and wanted to go—but I found control in movement.

JACQUES TOFFI/COURTESY OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE BOOKS

The hot and excitable Satchmo was prepared for competition very carefully. At seven, he was finally entered in an advanced dressage test for the first time.

From there, he quickly reached the top category, the Grand Prix. Things went according to plan—until the day at the European Championships in Hickstead, England, in 2003, where everything changed.

That’s when it started: his stopping, standing still, freezing. The first time it happened was in the warmup ring. It kind of blew my mind, but I initially forgot about it and considered it to just be tension that wouldn’t last. It wasn’t until it occurred repeatedly during the test that I knew that we had a problem. I just didn’t know the reason.

What kind of ghosts had my horse met in England?

I thought about it and came to a quick conclusion.

The problem had possibly had its start in Germany.

Maybe the memory of an accident that had happened had caught up with Satchmo. Back then, I had perhaps made one of the biggest mistakes that I have ever made as a rider. It seemed blatantly obvious in hindsight.

Back then, I would never have guessed the drama that was in store for me and Satchmo.

The entire German team had prepared for the European Championships in Warendorf, Germany. I was

pleased with how Satchmo had presented himself in his first engagement with the German team. He was only nine but my great hope for the future after Gigolo’s farewell. It was only one year until the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. But then the accident happened: My groom led Satchmo into a dark wash stall and started to hose him down. The horse’s hind end slid and fell to the side. In the process, one hind leg ended up in a crack between the floor and the wall planks.

Although Satchmo was stuck at first and desperate to get his leg free, he did manage to do so quite quickly. It seemed as if the accident had not resulted in any serious consequences. He was on his feet and had only a little cut—a mild laceration that was immediately stapled.

We should have gone home. Given him a rest.

Hand-walked him. We should have taken the staples

E

xcerpt adapted from Four Legs Move My Soul by Isabell Werth and Evi Simeoni, published by Trafalgar Square Books, HorseAndRiderBooks. com. Copyright © 2019

by Isabell Werth. All rights reserved.

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

55

out after ten days and started over. But no. We believed it was only a superficial injury and would quickly be forgotten.

I only led him and didn’t ride any more until we arrived in Hickstead. I started riding again after the vet check there. But that a nine-year-old horse was completely overwhelmed by what had happened is easy for me to see from today’s perspective.

The incidents in the warm-up in Hickstead were just the beginning.

The accident in the dark wash stall had become deeply engrained in Satchmo’s mind. At the showgrounds, there were “black boxes,” about 3 feet high and 10 feet long, with plain, smooth walls that could be seen from the ring.

They were used to display individual marks during the class for the spectators. These black boxes put the fear of God into him.

pared to what was yet to come. He worked himself up more and more, each time he was ridden. He winced at the same movement in the test: the piaffe. Everyone, even the spectators at the shows, eventually just waited for a reoccurrence of the freeze. Soon his strange behavior started even earlier during the test program: at the first passage, before turning right to the apparently very scary piaffe.

Just seconds before, he would be in the midst of a supple and majestic transition to his almost celebratory elevated trot. And suddenly, he fell directly into his “psycho-hole.” The weird thing was that, generally, he

Satchmo behaved as if a UFO had just landed right in front of his feet. He suddenly could think of nothing else but leaving the practice ring to the left, and I wracked my brains about what could have frightened him now. Should I give in? What did he want to run away from? What did he see that my eyes couldn’t? Was he really scared? Or was he simply a brilliant actor?

I had to find out what was behind his behavior in order to react correctly. But I really had a tough time with this question: What should I do? I tried to tire him out by riding more, hoping to bring his excitability down this way. Nothing. I tried to take it easy so he would be less stressed. Nothing again. I tried to repeat the movements he was anxious about to ease his fears. Nil. I avoided repeating the movement that caused him fear. Still nothing.

I turned him out more in the field, to relax with a pony.

Negative. I took him for a gallop on the racetrack. Nothing. I tried a shorter warm-up before a test. No change. A longer warm-up before the test. Also not it. If somebody had told me back then that it would help to run around the churchyard three times, holding a rat, I would have done it.

The Grand Prix Special at the 2006 World Equestrian Games was the emotional highlight of my career. that’s why you do it all — to experience a moment like that.

I felt in the saddle how Satchmo froze before the first piaffe, when he suddenly saw one of those boxes, how he took a deep breath, and panic came over him. I sat on this horse, my favorite, and we were of one mind—we were both unable to cope with the situation. The test was ruined and the European Championships, for me personally, were a disaster. Of course, we won team gold, and I was happy for the others, but insecurity ate me up inside. I wouldn’t ride the final individual test.

What Isabell didn’t know was that the mental breakdown that Satchmo had at Hickstead was harmless, com-

quickly took a deep breath right after the moment of horror, and carried on with the test normally.

Satchmo’s fits came in more frequent intervals and built up to the extreme: He suffered downright panic attacks. He not only paused, seemingly terrified, but he also aborted the movement we were performing and “paddled” with his front legs, turning around and trying to run away in the other direction.

In the end, his episodes also happened at home. I rode across the diagonal in the outdoor arena, another horse suddenly came from behind the hedge, and

56 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

A Surprise Discovery June 2005: A familiar picture was playing out at the show on the castle grounds in Balve, Germany. Isabell continued to start Satchmo in competitions, even though, by now, every one of her tests looked like a suicide mission to the en-

tire circuit. Satchmo made an excellent first impression in the warm-up—he was supple and seemed to move forward full of confidence, working through the practice movements without any noticeable difficulties. Then Isabell entered the ring, came around the turn…and it started all over again. Satchmo hit an invisible wall without warning, tensed up, stopped breathing, and stopped for two seconds. Isabell rode on again and continued as if nothing had happened.

I quickly had a feeling that the bucket seats in the stadium had reflected sunlight and blinded him. Or was this just one of the many theories that would turn out to be a fallacy?

I went to the barn after the Grand Prix, where Satchmo was being cared for by our excellent groom. As she reached up to clean his head with a sponge, I suddenly noticed that Satchmo made a suspicious movement when the sponge startled him.

I had an epiphany: We have to get his eyes checked.

Indeed, the check-up came back with a result: Satchmo had small striations in his eyes—kind of like little fish that swam through his vision. They were very bad on one side and fairly considerable on the other side. Technically, it wasn’t anything unusual, but a degenerative process, as could happen in humans and horses alike—in horses as early as six years of age.

Essentially, every horse has the striations to varying degrees, and most of them live with it easily.

Corrective surgery was relatively simple: The fluid in the eye was sucked out and refilled. However, the vet preferred not to perform

the procedure unless he was very sure that it was the reason for Satchmo’s problems.

I took Satchmo home. We tried for a week to figure out if he had an actual eye problem. We gave him a patch on the right eye, then a patch on the left eye, then blinders to the left and right. Did Satchmo relax? I couldn’t tell. I drove to our riding club, where they were going to hold a show on the weekend, and faked a test situation. I even wore my tailcoat! Satchmo was braided, was warmed up as if it was regular show procedure, and everything was the same as

eye surgery would take place. I informed as few people as possible.

I had become so thin-skinned that I was afraid of the pressure to succeed, which became stronger with every attempt at a solution with this horse Ten days later, I was allowed to ride again. We took it slow, giving him lots of time to recover.

I was full of anxious anticipation as I planned to take Satchmo to the indoor show in Stuttgart in November. Pretty much everyone had given up on him.

And then…the Grand Prix in Stuttgart. When Satchmo got under way—supple, honest, without even a trace of anxiety—everybody was astonished. Where had the strange fits gone? Satchmo went brilliantly in all gaits.

He was light and elastic, stretching in the lateral movements and the half-pass. He was focused in his flying changes, and he performed the piaffe without hesitation. I sat in the saddle and couldn’t believe it.

It was truly a real breakthrough.

I had found the way to Satchmo.

My heart rejoiced. Finally! Finally.

If I have the feeling that I treated my horse unfairly, then I can’t sleep the following night.

I can’t let it go, and I try to find a better way. our usual competition. Satchmo needed to feel the usual tension we would experience at shows. I had the club farrier make officialsounding announcements over the loudspeaker. And then I rode into the ring with the blinders, looking a little bit anxiously toward the first piaffe, which had become the normal location of the first episode by now. And Satchmo? He rattled off the entire Grand Prix as if nothing of the sort had ever happened. I took the blinders off and rode the same program again.

Satchmo stopped before the first piaffe and turned around. The old phenomenon was back.

The decision was made: The

The Ride of a Lifetime Isabell was slated to ride another mount, Warum Nicht, on the German team at the 2006 FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG), but she insisted that Satchmo go to the WEG as the traveling reserve. When “Hannes” sustained an injury shortly before the Games, he was sent home and Satchmo was shipped to Aachen, Germany, site of the WEG

USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

57

and the world-famous annual international horse show.

The German team won the gold medal at the 2006 WEG, in front of a home-country audience in the stadium at Aachen. Then it was time for the first individual-medal competition, the Grand Prix Special.

I rode into the “inferno” with my Satchmo, the ring where 45,000 spectators were waiting for me, and all of a sudden, I felt something very big in the air.

Something was up, something very special, something electrifying.

While I was riding the test, I noticed that the audience had started to murmur. I continued, heard the noises, yes, but I moved as if in a cocoon in which only Satchmo and I fit.

He stayed true to himself. He soaked up the atmosphere that was transferred from the appreciative audience to him, and he radiated his energy back onto the audience—and I let myself be carried on these waves. Everything went very smoothly, naturally, and Satchmo didn’t hold his breath, not even for a second, when he began his piaffe…unlike the audience! I didn’t doubt him for a second. Everything was completely seamless. I felt like I was sleepwalking from movement to movement, in a dream. The last center line, to the center of the ring in a passage, then a piaffe, then continue in passage—it was magnificent.

You felt that everything was just right. And then the halt. I will never forget that.

I stood there and bawled my eyes out. This is where I cried my most beautiful tears. It was the emotional highlight of my ca-

reer. That’s why you do it all. To experience a moment like that.

They had won the individual Grand Prix Special gold medal.

Painful Setback At the 2008 Olympic Games in Hong Kong, Satchmo and Isabell were favored to win over the Dutch star pair Anky van Grunsven and Salinero. Satchmo and Isabell took a clear lead in the Grand Prix, helping the German team win yet another gold medal.

The Grand Prix Special began superbly—and then: the piaffe.

Disaster. Satchmo froze. He spun around and tried to get away, full of panic. The entire nightmare lasted only a few seconds; then everything went on as if nothing had happened.

Afterward, Isabell questioned every step. Had she missed anything?

Today, however, I am at peace with myself and what happened. There is nothing on my conscience when I think about Hong Kong. Everything was relaxed; nothing was pointing toward the possibility that something was going the wrong way for my horse.

Isabell rode her lifetime horse competitively for three more years, including to the silver medal at the 2009 FEI World Cup Dressage Final. Satchmo’s panic attacks never came back. He was retired in 2011.

The Challenges of Training Of course I also make mistakes in my horses’ training. It is the same as raising children. Nobody can claim that they have never been in a bad mood, that they have never treated their

58 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

children unfairly or punished them wrongfully. It is the same with horses. You have to react immediately and spontaneously due to your close physical cooperation with a horse. You react intuitively with your body, and usually you can’t assess the situation from a distance first.

Reflexes may be used that you can’t immediately control if you have a bad day. I feel that I only demand as much of my horses as they are capable of giving, and that the mistakes that I make over time only account for a fraction of my actions.

If I have the feeling that I treated my horse unfairly, or if something isn’t going smoothly, then I can’t sleep the following night. I can’t let it go, and I try to find a better way. I continuously question myself.

At the same time, I also have to consider every horse’s quirks.

The perception of the rider’s aids varies greatly from horse to horse. There are horses that react very sensitively even to the smallest of aids. And there are horses that are a lot less sensitive, and the aids that have to be given are considerably stronger.

But no matter how similar or not similar the feelings of humans and horses may be, I can sense that my horses are happy when they have done something right. Sometimes they even seem to burst with pride, and it pleases me when they let it out.

They grow with the challenges and build up confidence. I wish everyone could feel something like it at least once.

March 6 Global Dressage Festival Showgrounds Wellington, Florida

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USDF CONNECTION | January/February 2020

63

My Dressage Letter from a Horseless Rider A note of thanks to the generous horse owners who have helped keep one enthusiast in the saddle

By Jennifer Macklin said hi to me in the barn aisle, thus solidifying my only brush with an Olympian. The solid horsemanship foundation I acquired during my years there was thanks to my first instructor, whose unyielding adherence to classical riding principles ensured that I spent countless hours on the lunge line developing my seat. Eventually I attained working-student status, affording me additional opportunities to ride—but all good things have an expiration date.

After high school, I joined the Air Force to help pay for college. Military life and educational pursuits left little time for riding.

Life without horses felt empty GRATEFUL RIDER: The writer aboard Arion, owned by Heidi Welch, at and made me a schooling show yearn for the time when they could reenter the landscape. ally spending weekends in line for When I finally returned to ridgroceries at a local food pantry. With ing after a break, I leased horses, our one dilapidated vehicle, it wasn’t did catch-riding, and took lessons. I feasible to expend fuel to engage a switched from jumping to dressage teenager’s equine whims. However, I’ve never let circumstances deter me after a couple of missed distances resulted in falls, bringing my mortalfrom a goal. From babysitting to paity into sharp relief. Dressage, with per routes, I started hustling to earn its cerebral attention to detail and its money, and I finally saved enough to purchase basic riding equipment and focus on the horse-and-rider partnership, hooked me immediately. my first lesson package.

Today I’m at least a decade past My official foray into the equesthe socially acceptable age range for trian world began at a prominent barn catch-riders. I thought for sure I’d be in Chicago. Kent Farrington, then a a horse owner by now, 20 years after rising star in the jumper world, once

64 January/February 2020 | USDF CONNECTION

I began riding, but that dream has yet to come to fruition. The challenges of a horseless rider are numerous, but by far the most difficult is getting attached to a horse only to have the partnership dissolve. Regardless of the reason, it always hurts.

But rather than lament my horseless status, I prefer to express gratitude to those horse owners who have generously shared their beloved mounts with me over the years. Each experience makes me a better horseman, and for that I am grateful. Most recently, when a fellow member of my USDF group-member organization (GMO) needed someone to exercise her horses due to her demanding job, I began riding her then five-year-old Oldenburg gelding, Arion, and showed him successfully at First Level. This coming show season I may have an opportunity to show Arion’s older brother, Relacey, who is trained to Prix St. Georges. From him I’ve learned tempi changes, half-pass, and canter pirouettes—a priceless education.

I don’t know when I will own a horse, but when that day arrives I will endeavor to pay it forward by providing another horseless rider with an opportunity to experience the joy of being an equestrian and part of this great community.

Jennifer Macklin still works for the Air Force and lives in Florida with her husband and two cats. In addition to the endless pursuit of dressage mastery, she also enjoys photography, writing, and learning to code. She hopes one day to develop mobile applications for the equestrian community to aid in rider biomechanical feedback.

COURTESY OF HEIDI WELCH

I

have never owned a horse. My mission to become an equestrian began after I devoured The Saddle Club books as a child, but riding was a preposterous idea given my socioeconomic status. My family lived below the poverty level, usu-

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