It’s a story we’ve all heard. The pupil who comes for one year to learn, and ends up staying, and it’s the case with Sarskia Lieben-Seutter, at Holga and Birgit Finken’s training stables on the outskirts of Verden in Germany.
“I’ve been here now for five and a half years. I came here to do one year practical.”
Why?
“I wanted to learn riding when I came. I was studying but I decided I would like to learn to ride better – just for fun. I was studying film production, something completely different. Then Holga asked if I would like to stay. I asked my parents if I could leave the university, they said, okay, and it is so good here. The horses are so good. I want to do my Master’s next year, normally you should leave a stable after you have finished your Bereiter, and go to another stable. But I don’t know where, because you learn so much here, and they are such good horses. It’s perfect here.”
Holga has a very distinctive way of riding – you can see him from 200 metres away, and say, oh yeah, that’s Holga Finken – what is it about his seat?
“I think the first thing is that he has the perfect body, perfect proportions, his legs, his upper body, his arms. Then he has this straight seat, he’s not too fat, not too skinny, it is really a perfect seat. And he has perfect balance, even on a three year old bucking horse, he sits the same. It is unbelievable.”
He also has his horses listening to his seat, he doesn’t have to use the reins – is that a technique of this stable?
“That is what he always says to us, you have to keep the horse on the seat and on the legs. That’s the most important thing. You ride the horse with your legs and your seat, not so much with your hand. With your body, you make the horse complete. The hands are important to make them loose and make them round, and to make them over the back and deep, but with him, he can just come with his legs and make them dance.”
And always in self carriage so you can make uberstreichen – give the reins away, and the horse stays in the same frame?
“He loves it. At the competitions, we are always laughing because even if it is not in the test, he is always making uberstreichen. That’s just him, and nobody else can do it like that. That is the typical movement from Holga. It’s very funny.”
Last year, Saskia got to ride the Hanoverian stallion, Wyclef Jones at the World Young Horse Championships in Verden. In the days before the competition, Saskia was aglow with excitement. Here was her opportunity:
“I started riding him when he turned four. I rode him in 4 year old material classes, at the Bundeschampionate, where he was fourth – he was the best four year old stallion from Hannover. Since then he has been going really well – I love him.”
“He is so loose, his whole body. He is perhaps not so amazing when you first look at him, like some stallions, but from the ears to the tail, he is so loose and the feeling is so good.”
Is it hard with the Weltmeyers to keep the rhythm in the walk?
“They have such a big walk, he has a huge walk. When you have him on the long reins, it is a super walk, but when you start to take them back, and start to ride collection and push them more in the trot, then you make the transition, trot to walk, it is perhaps a little bit difficult. Most of the Weltmeyers have a little bit of a problem with the walk, but he normally has a really good walk, super good, but when you have him together, he has to relax – and he is a stallion. That is always a problem with a stallion.”
So are you nervous riding at the World Championships?
“I’m super nervous. I’m dying.”
How does Wyclef Jones get to compete for Austria?
“The horse is owned by a German, but now he is also owned by me, so I can ride him for Austria. He is a breeding stallion.”
This does not affect his brain?
“No, he is so good. When he goes on the phantom mare, he is super crazy, you can’t hold him at all, he sees the phantom and he freaks completely out. Just phew! But when you ride him, nothing, You can ride him next to a mare, nothing. Of course you have to be a little careful, he is a stallion, but he is super.”
And what is Holga like when instead of riding, he is the trainer?
“He is very strict. I think he prefers to be the rider, he doesn’t love training, but when he sees that you are trying and concentrating he tries for you. He doesn’t tell you how good it is, he is not like that, he’ll say, that was shit. I think he is super nervous himself when he trains but as long as you want to do it, he is with you. But if you are saying ‘I don’t know… It doesn’t work…’ then he gets mad at you. Of course, he is a super trainer.”
So how did it go with Sarskia and her cute as stallion at the World Championships? To tell the truth the first round was a disaster, while the second round was very fine indeed. As I remarked to Saskia, ‘last week we had the theoretical, now how did the practical go?’
“The problem in the first round was that when the rain came down, the umbrellas went up! It is not such a problem with the rain, it was the umbrellas. There was so much water and the ground looked bad, but it was not so bad, not slippy – it looks like hell but it rides okay.”
What was Holga’s advice to you – riding in such extreme conditions?
“When I warmed up the conditions were not so bad, then it started to rain and my horse freaked completely out. With the umbrellas he was completely out of it, and I was so nervous. Holga just said, ‘come, stay calm, do your best’. I had to try and stay quiet. The moment I went in the competition arena, he was good. He is always like that – always at the competition, he says, okay, I have to be good now. I think my horse knows, okay for the next five minutes I have to be good.”
“Holga said, just ride forward, show the good trot, with the canter because it is not his best gait, I have to have him round in the neck but a little bit higher – but perhaps because I was so nervous, I didn’t do it so good. Holga was not so satisfied with me. The walk! Nobody understood it, because I got such a bad walk score – 4.9!! I talked to the judges afterwards, and asked them, and they said it was a pace. They said they think he is a super horse, and the walk is so big, that you have to be really careful, you have to let him go longer and I did that in the second round and it worked. I have never had such a score for walk with him – always 8 or 8.5, but as we talked about it earlier, it is now when you start to collect him, it’s Weltmeyer, and it is also a question of submission – Durchlassigkeit.”
“With me, it is the same as all riders, we train the trot first, then comes the canter, and sometimes we forget the walk. Because he has such a good walk I forgot to ride him in the walk, riding forward and back. In the second round in the walk I was super satisfied with him.”
“Now we must concentrate on qualifying for the Bundeschampionate…”
And you will stay on with Holga?
“Yes. At the end of next year I want to do my masters in Warendorf. Until then I will stay with Holga, then we will see.”
Do you think you will become a professional trainer?
“I hope so.”
Never again a film director?
“Never again. I just live for horses, we all do. To be a rider you have to be so crazy for horses. All the people, the riding scene, it’s my world. I can’t say why – it’s super super hard but it is what I want to do. I am very lucky to be with Holga. When I decided to break my study, and come here for half a year it was just luck I came to Holga, because he wasn’t so well known at that time. It was just from God that I came there.”
“Then I started to see what was behind the riding. It was strange – when he asked me if I wanted to start studying with him for my Bereiter, I had two days to break my life in Austria – I had a boyfriend, I had my study, I had my whole life there, and Holga said you only have two days time to decide. I saw Holga riding Wie Weltmeyer at a stallion show, he rode piaffe, passage, then he just dropped the rein and gave him a big pat, and he went into a big loose walk. From the most collection in one second to a loose walk, and I thought that is what I want to learn. That’s the way Holga rides.”
“For all the horses it is fun to work. When he rides, for example, passage, then he lets them canter really forward, and over the back, and you can see them really work for him. And I thought, that’s what I want to learn, never before had I seen such communication between horse and rider. Holga is very special.”
“My mother does Shiatsu massage, and is used to working with people who have problems with their body and movement. She visited one time, she saw Holga ride, and said that is incredible, it is not a horse and a man – Holga belongs to the whole horse. When he rides the horse, they become just one being… but I don’t think I will ever learn to do that. Still it is good to try.”
There’s more with Holga – go to his who’s who page: