Wednesday November 8, 2006

Euro Update: "Curbed" Discussions at the 2006 Global Dressage Forum

The 2006 edition of the Global Dressage Forum at Bartels’ Academy in Hooge Mierde, The Netherlands (October 30-31, 2006) was one with very inspiring demonstrations, refreshing sessions on equine behaviour and two heated discussions on the judging and training of top level dressage horses. These two discussions – Withages’ review of the World Equestrian Games and Sjef Janssen’s and Anky van Grunsven’s demonstration of the rollkur, had all the potential to become genuine debates that could shape the future of dressage, but they were ‘curbed’ either by a restricted time schedule, which forced one talk to end abruptly, and by a lack of interaction between the presenters and defenders of the anti-rollkur ‘campaign’. Nevertheless, the 2006 Global Dressage Forum was much more interesting than the one in the 2005 and it will be a stepping stone for an even better and improved forum in 2007.

There were four highlight sessions to the 2006 Global Dressage Forum. The first one was Hubertus Schmidt talking about classical dressage and explaining his training methods. In the wake of the still raging debate on classical dressage versus the Sjef Janssen/Dutch training system based on the rollkur, Schmidt came to Holland to demonstrate classical dressage. Having trained over 30 Grand Prix horses in his career, Schmidt is the most prolific dressage rider and trainer in the world. At the Forum, Schmidt showed his techniques aboard a world class dressage horse, the 7-year old Rhinelander gelding Furst Fabio (by Fidermark x Worldchamp), who is owned by Colombian rider Dr. Cesar Parra. Hubertus stressed the importance of a correct warm up in which looseness and suppleness have to be obtained with the achievement of “schwung” as goal. Schmidt’s pointed out that the horse has to get a light contact with the bit and stretch into it at all times.