My Horse, My Touch-Stone

This year, I’ve met two of the greatest contemporary classical riders in Europe, Bent Branderup and Marius Schneider. I have started my journey in the academic riding, a journey, which also confronted me with a darker side of myself. With my impatience, ambition, and need for perfection. My human teachers can only give me the tools, the methods, pass on their experience. But I have to travel the way myself, I have to look in the mirror.

My horse is my ultimate teacher, he reflects “my good and my bad moods unmodified”, as Bent says. It is not by accident that we choose a certain horse, and I believe that Nazir is the answer to my wish to develop my skills for the benefit of others. He clearly shows me  who I am and he only accepts a fair and kind way of teaching him. The rider I am today, I am because of him, because he made me look for another way. And he gets the final say about the validity of my method.