Interview – Chris Hector
Dirk grew up in Gomadingen in the south of Germany only a few minutes away from the famous cross country track at Marbach CIC and not surprisingly, eventing became the passion for the young rider and by the time he was nineteen, Dirk was competing in the European Young Rider Championships. After a brief time working in a bank, Dirk turned to a full time career as an eventing rider, trainer, and as a dealer in eventing horses from his home in Sprockhövel, where he lives with his partner, international dressage rider, Johanna von Fircks.
Dirk and King Artus
Dirk won team gold at the London Games with King Artus, then team gold (and 6th individually) the next year at the Europeans on Hop and Skip. He rode in the last two World Equestrian Games and has his sights set on making it three in a row at Caen.
Chris Hector caught up with him at the DOKR training complex in Warendorf, where the eventing squad had assembled for pre-WEG training….
Horses were more exciting than banking – or banking was too scarey?
“No no no, it was not scary,” laughs Dirk, “horses were definitely much more exciting. Horses were always a hobby that gave me a lot of joy and fun. In the time when I had to do my national service, I was allowed to go to Warendorf and spending ten months doing nothing but horses, then coming back to the Bank was very difficult for me. It didn’t work at all. I was not happy at all in the office.”
“Then I decided to do an apprenticeship, in Germany we do three years and then an exam to become a professional rider. I was able to do it in Warendorf at the DOKR, and basically, that was it.”
“I never felt sorry that I changed from being a bank clerk to a professional rider.”
Always eventing?
“Always eventing. Of course as a young boy I did a little bit of showjumping, only small and national, but basically, it was always eventing.
So you are not like Michael Jung, you don’t do Grand Prix dressage in your spare time…
“No no, I am not like Michael Jung, I do only eventing, I don’t even go to normal shows for showjumping and definitely no dressage.” (he’s laughing)
Hop and Skip – not so good at dressage…
But your partner is a dressage rider…
“Exactly. She helps me a lot with my dressage, especially with Hop and Skip, basically it is thanks to her help that we could improve Hop and Skip’s dressage a lot, because he was not good in dressage – that’s why I was able to get him.”
You came into eventing at a good time, Germany won a gold medal at Seoul, but then eventing went down for a while before it came back very strong…
“The reason for that, I think, is the change of the competition. We don’t have the long competition any more. Without roads and tracks and steeplechase, everything got more technical, more precise, higher level in dressage and in showjumping, and even in the cross country, it’s more technical. This makes it for Germany a little easier, because we are well-educated as young people in dressage and showjumping, and this is the basic, and from there it is easier to build up something. And also, even though now I have an English horse, overall German horses, nowadays with a bit of full blood in them, they fit very well into this modern eventing world.”
And you think this is a better world than the world of the old long format…
“Definitely.”
Better for the horses…
“Better for horse, better for rider, better for owners, better for sponsors. There is no doubt that it is better now than it was. I started with roads and tracks and steeplechase – one thing I have to say, is for the rider it is useful to do roads and tracks and steeple and get a horse fit and ready for a three day event. It is very important to be a good horseman, to make a horse fit, to train for that, but I think it is a better world now, a better sport now, because you don’t have so many lame horses. Look in the past and there were not too many top horses – championship horses – that did not have a gap in their career because they had a tendon and had to stop for a year. Nowadays it is possible to have a horse coming up through the grades to championship level, staying at championship level for many years, longer than dressage or showjumping, without having time off because of injury. That for me is the biggest sign that we’ve done something right to the sport.”
“And of course, everything is about money – for organizers, it costs much much more to do a proper steeplechase and no one watches – only the first rider gets watched and the rest are doing their circles on their own but it costs a huge amount of money for the organizer for basically nothing, so I think the changes are good for the sport. I really like it.”
Dirk and Hop and Skip on course at the WEG in Caen…
So are you glad you didn’t go to Badminton this year, that was a bit like the sport in the old days…
“No I wouldn’t say that. Badminton was of course tough this year, I wasn’t there so I cannot judge it. If you look at the results on paper it’s a funny result and I am sure we don’t need results like this but what makes me wonder if it was that bad, is when I see the top names are not at the top but names that you think, what are they doing there, they have top placings. Of course you must be there to judge it, but these results are not the results we love in Germany. Our German organizers would definitely not like results like that.”
Talking about fitness, are you a very scientific trainer, with heart rates and all, or do you do it by feel?
“I’ve done it scientifically, with the heart rate monitor, with blood analysis after the competition… I did that while I was at the DOKR centre in Warendorf, now I only do it by feel. It helped me a lot the scientific approach, to see a few things, but now I do it on what I feel, what I know about the horse. I always have my horses for a long time, I know them well…”
Hills or flat?
“Hills. I am based near Wuppertal, Bergisches Land, we have hills there. In the season I canter up the hills, and before the season I use a lot of canter on flat ground just to get the basic fitness, then during the competitions, I use the hills, and, touch wood, it works well so far.”
How many horses do you have in work?
“I have quite a few horses in, I think about 30, probably sometimes a little bit more, sometimes less. Many young horses, four, five, six year old horses. Basically I earn my money selling horses and producing horses. Sometimes there are big changes, sometimes nothing is changing for a month, it goes in waves.”
Is it hard for you to keep the really good horses now that the rest of the world is coming to Germany to buy eventers?
“Definitely. I always keep the ones that are not so easy. I don’t want to say they are bad horses, but the easy good ones are gone straight away, everybody wants them, the bit tricky, but not less quality ones, they stay a little bit longer.”
Do you have help from the German federation, or sponsors, to help you keep good horses to compete?
“No. I have three major owners – the owner of King Artus, she has a seven year old horse with me, the owner of Hop and Skip, she has another horse with me and we are looking for another one, then there is another lady who I have worked with for years, she breeds her own and I always have many young horses from her. This works very well in the last ten, fifteen years.”
And the bloodlines of these horses…
“They are all Holstein bred. I basically only have Holstein horses. My best friend has worked for a long time with the Holstein Verband as a sales manager, and he is now on his own, and he sees a lot of horses and every time he sees a nice youngster with blood, he gives me a call. And that’s how I end up only having Holstein horses.”
How much blood do you want to see? Fifty percent?
“Not always, it depends on the horse. Blood is nice to have but it is difficult, most of the time you lose a lot if they have 50% Thoroughbred – in Germany if you cover a mare with a full-blood stallion, you have an 80% chance that you lose movement, or jump. In the second cross, if you have a half blood mare, and you use a stallion with a little bit of blood, you win again, but the first generation you usually lose something. I don’t judge a horse only on the pedigree. It is nice to see Thoroughbred there, but one good this thing with these Holstein horses is that they have a lot of Thoroughbred in the background. You sometimes have no Thoroughbred in the first generation but you have a much more Thoroughbred sporty type horse, than one that has a full-blood father. I don’t judge only on pedigree, I want to see the horse.”
There is a different sort of Holsteiner now, more elegant, lighter, not old fashioned grey things with big heads…
“Definitely, they have a modern breeding, not those big long Holstein horses that they had twenty years ago.”
You were saying that you don’t go to showjumping shows?
“Normally not, probably once or twice in the beginning of the season, that’s all.”
Because you get so much natural jump from your Holsteiners?
“I’ve thought about that, it’s probably right. In my training I do not too much showjumping training. I do cross country, I do dressage, I do hill work, but quite often I go to a competition and I think, oh he has not showjumped in the last four weeks, because they are natural good jumpers. They have it in their body, so you don’t train them too much, and I think this is a little because they are Holsteiners.”
Do you do your cross country schooling on cross country obstacles or do you use showjumps to create cross country fences…
“On cross country obstacles. We have in the army place here in Warendorf, an all-weather cross country field, and we train there a lot, you can come there any time. Most of our cross country fields, if it is raining, they are not so happy for you to ride on that because they want to save their grass, that’s why we go quite often to the army place where we have an all-weather surface.”
Are you looking forward to Normandy?
“I’m looking forward, I hope the selectors chose me. I’m pretty excited about Normandy.”
And so he should be, he took home a gold medal…
