Story by Chris Hector and Photos by Roz Neave & Jan Gyllensten
Like her father before her, Ingrid Klimke is a star not only in the dressage arena, but also on the cross country course. The late Reiner Klimke rode for the Germans in the 1960 Olympic Eventing team before going on to win team dressage gold medals in 64, 68, 76 and 1984 – when he also won the individual gold. Ingrid was part of Germany’s gold medal Olympic Eventing team and although she has won at World Cup dressage level, she has yet to ride for to her country in a Dressage team, that might all be about to change, since Ingrid has the ride on an up-and-coming dressage superstar – Damon Hill. The pair have already collected a World Young Dressage Horse title, when we caught up with them at Aachen, Damon Hill was in the Prix St Georges class.
Ingrid says it wasn’t hard moving up the grades…
“When he was seven he already competed in Prix St Georges and Inter 1. He won 12 S level dressage classes, and he is very established now at the Prix St Georges/ Inter 1 level. At home I school the one tempis and the piaffe / passage, and my aim is at the end of the year, he will do his first Grand Prix. My biggest thing is that I have to combine his breeding career and dressage training and competition. I have to be very careful, with lots of rests in-between, enough time in the paddock, enough time to recover and keep him motivated, because every day he goes for breeding – that is more difficult than bringing him up to the Grand Prix level if I am honest.”
But there are lots of young horses that are trained in a spectacular way for the Young Horse Classes, and they do find it difficult to go on to higher level dressage…
“That’s true, I always kept the work with him very natural. When he was three years old I was with him at the Bundeschampionate and we placed 8th, and I was in the same class as these huge big Oldenburger stallions – it was like I’d come from the Pony Olympics. But I showed him as he was, he is naturally quite small, and a little bit shy – I tried always to keep him as natural as possible. I am lucky he has so much ability, naturally he has so much movement and so much presence – I really didn’t have to work so hard there. From the beginning, I knew I would like to keep him as long as possible and not ride him ten times in material classes, just medium trot, medium trot, medium forever, and then goodbye, I want to go to the highest level with him. Even at home now I don’t ride him much in medium, I know it is there in the stable so I don’t have to train this. I was really looking at the long range picture, trying to save all the energy I can at home, and make him shine at the show.”
When you see Ingrid warm up Damon Hill you know how the stallion has kept his loose, natural and relaxed way of doing…
He had a little problem with flying changes at one stage…
“I think that is pretty normal, at the age of six or seven coming from the counter canter but I don’t think it is a problem. If you start now playing with the ones for sure it’s more exciting. It’s the same with piaffe / passage. You can do a little bit of piaffe, a little bit of passage but then put it together with the transitions, that’s another story. It’s the same with the changes, he is very excited often, which I like, he is sensitive, so sometimes he is a bit over-ambitious, but for me, honestly, that’s not a big problem.”
Do you do the cavaletti gymnastic work with him?
“Of course. It’s like so many people ask me, do you really put your breeding stallions out on pasture? Do they really go out every day? I say it’s important for them to go out every day because if you only put them out once a month, then definitely they will be crazy. He knows that the first thing he does in the morning is go out on pasture, then I ride him, then he goes breeding. It is also important that he has his time off where he is only on the pasture, no bridle, no saddle, so he can really start looking forward to the next dressage day – what are we going to do? He often goes out for a hack, he loves to go out in the group, when we take the horses outside and canter a bit, that is one of his favourites. He’s very kind with the other horses, he’s really a nice guy, he’s never a stallion who is aggressive to others. He has a very nice character, but on the other hand I did this right from the time he was three years old. I took lots of time to make sure he was educated well. That means he has to behave with me on the ground, and accept me as a rider, so he knows when we stand and wait somewhere, he has to wait and focus on me, and not try and spin around – that’s something I really don’t like on any horse. Right from the beginning, I am very strict with my rules, then they have their freedom.”
And when you see him warm up in canter, you know why he still has his ‘forward’…
You will be able to keep this horse and have a chance to go all the way with him?
“I really wish and hope so, because he is not mine, and ever since he was the World Champion, there have been lots of big offers but they still say ‘no – we want to keep you and the horse together’ so I hope we can keep him. He is now qualified for the Nürnberger Burgpokal, so this is the next step before we go to Grand Prix… cross the fingers that next year we will be on the Grand Prix.”
But it wasn’t all dressage for Ingrid this year, one real highlight was winning a place in the German Eventing team with her new star, FRH Butts Abraxxas.
“He is really neat, he is now 11 years old, I bought him when he was seven years old to be the one after Sleep Late. I decided whenever Sleep Late decides to retire, I want to have another horse coming up, so I don’t fall into a deep hole where I have to lose a few years of championship competition. He was with me last year at the European Championships. I retired Sleep Late last year, and Abraxxas was ready to go into the German team, and he was the best team horse at the Europeans in Pratoni. He is ranked just behind Bettina Hoy and Cockatoo on the rankings.”
Well done Mum! Greta congratulates Ingrid and Abraxxas
Christoph Hess remarked to me, after judging at Lumühlen, how he thought you, Bettina Hoy and Lucinda Fredericks, gained so many points by doing simple things very well – halt, rein back…
“But that is the basics I learnt from my father. He always said be very correct in the little things because there you build up. So Braxxi is not a spectacular mover, he’s really a Thoroughbred and he is a cross country galloping machine, very clever and quick and he loves to run and jump but in the dressage, if you look at him, he is quite small. When I first got him, I thought, he looks like a pony! And the gaits are not really spectacular but he is such a nice character, he really tries, and his trot improved so much. Whatever you ask him to do, he does with nice presence, really listening and saying, okay, I give my very best. He grew into it and became so much more mature, but if you’d seen him when he was seven, you’d say, nice but…”
Ingrid’s eventing star, FRH Butts Abraxxas – just starting out on his career, back in 2006
It does prove that in eventing dressage an honest horse, honestly trained can win…
“Absolutely, because it’s things like the start – the salute, you go on a straight line, have a super halt, wait, and right away trot on straight to the judges. If someone does that correctly, the horse stands quiet, really focussed, and the line is really straight, you can easily have an 8 or 9. This has nothing to do with a miracle, it is really just practice. I took Braxxi to lots of dressage shows, he didn’t get high marks, the judges would say ‘oh we really enjoyed it’ but compared to the spectacular dressage movers, he got very low marks. I accept that totally but when I am in my class, with all the other Thoroughbreds, then he shows up and has the concentration in the dressage ring – he’s really quiet.”
Getting every single point there is to get in the dressage, Ingrid and Abraxxas
The showjumping has become more important, how do you prepare him?
“We must be careful that the showjumping is not getting more and more technical and difficult, with distances short, forward and backwards, oxers really high and wide. In Germany now, the eventing showjumping courses are really quite big, high jumping. At Lumühlen there were very few clear rounds, lots of rounds where there was one or two rails down. I think especially after the cross country, when they have galloped, and you want them fast, not jumping too high, not too careful – then the next day they must be so super careful with these light cups. If they just touch the rail, it rolls, but it is so un-natural, you don’t want them to see a jump and go, ‘oh I don’t want to go anywhere near it’, or jump so high because they’re afraid of it. Our horses jump, de dum, de dum, in a rhythm, at Luhmühlen is was more like clack, clack, clack, some fall, some don’t.”
“It’s a totally different type of horse – no showjumper would look at Braxxi and say ‘oh I want to have him in my barn…’ He is the sort of jumper that you love for cross country. The sport of eventing is in three different boxes: so in the dressage if it is more difficult it doesn’t matter, if you do one change or if you do four times or three times changes, but in the jumping if it gets more technical, more shallow cups with higher jumps, then in my opinion, it’s a problem. I like really good showjumping in the final phase that is tough, but I don’t want it too extra careful because we must always know that the jumping phase at the big competitions is after the cross country day. If it was before, then super. You can have dressage, showjumping, then they can go out and gallop, but to jump these super technical and difficult showjumping courses the next day, that’s too hard on our horses.”
All that hard work pays off – Gold for Ingrid and Braxxi at Beijing…
“I take my horse to normal showjumping days, and I do some speed classes with my horse as well, I want him clever and smart, and focussed, so he finds it exciting not just jumping big lines all the time. I jump him quite a lot, but I must say that I do sometimes have rails down. I have to live with it. You can have a clear round, or a rail down, that’s eventing, I can live with it. But I can’t live with a bad dressage score because that’s something you can fix with homework. The difference between a clear round and one down, it’s a lot to do with luck sometimes.”
Every member of the German eventing team seems to have a top showjumping rider helping them, who helps you?
“I am lucky I can train with Kurt Gravemeier because he is the trainer of our German jumping team, and he lives very close to Münster where I live. He’s been helping me since Sydney. We’ve worked a lot with Braxxi together, and he helps me in the warm in.”
And sure enough, Kurt Gravemeier was in the warmup ring at Hong Kong to prepare Ingrid for the final nail biting two rounds of the showjumping, and sure enough, one rail in the teams event, left the pair second best in a gold medal winning team, but one more rail (plus one time) in the individual showjumping round, saw Ingrid drop to 5th spot. If they’d gone clear? Silver, but that is eventing and nothing dims the enthusiasm of the bubbly blonde rider for her wonderful eventing ‘pony’ Abraxxas, and don’t forget Damon Hill is waiting in the wings. Both could easily be centre stage at Lexington at the next WEG. We hope so, Ingrid Klimke is a rider who proves over and over again, that correct, horse friendly training, can take you to the top in any discipline… and help you stay there.
You’ll find more articles with Ingrid on her Who’s Who page:
OMG. how lovely to see her horse in front of the vertical at all times…………………….