Story by Chris Hector & Photos by Roz Neave
It is really a quite extraordinary feat: Katja Weimann is heading for Adelaide Four Star, riding two horses, BP Cosmopolitan and BP Flamboyant, that she bred herself, and trained herself right from the start, but wait there’s more, she also evented their sire, Triathlete!*
“I guess that was the plan when we started breeding, to breed a horse that I could end up competing at the top level, and it just luckily happened that they have ended up there.”
When did it start?
“It started when we bought a Thoroughbred mare and she had ‘Gus’ (BP Gallantry) at foot. We bought them at the beginning of 2000 and then we bred the first Triathlete foal out of her, and he was born in 2001.”
Fifteen years…
“It takes a while, they have to grow up. It is not just that you breed it and you are there, it takes that time for them to grow up… lucky it has worked out, if it hadn’t the process would be even longer.” Katja is laughing at the idea.
You were unlucky to lose Triathlete?
“That was a shame, his progeny had started competing and they were doing quite well at the lower levels but they hadn’t really stepped up. We lost him in 2006. I always enjoyed riding Triathlete, he was a nice moving horse, good jumping horse, and he was quite trainable – and those attributes are why we bred quite a lot of mares to him.”
Triathlete at Lakes and Craters in 2005
Mainly Thoroughbreds?
“We had a couple of Thoroughbreds, we had a Warmblood, a Thoroughbred cross and a Connemara Warmblood, bit of a mix, and then the Stockhorse, which was mostly Thoroughbred with a bit of Warmblood. There’s a bit of a mix in there.”
You’ve got two at four-star, Flamboyant and Cosmopolitan – Cosmopolitan got you in the Aussie team for the Trans Tasman, tell me about him?
‘He is out of the little Connemara / Warmblood cross mare. She was only 15.1h, really good jumper but just too small for me – he turned out 17 hands, great for me. He was quite quirky as a young horse, a little bit spooky, didn’t really like cross country to start with, but now he has gone through the grades and he is a really good cross country horse. It was very exciting to get selected to go to Taupo with him.”
Katja and Oskar (BP Escapade) who competed at Melbourne 2* in 2014. He is by Triathlete out of Estelia Princess who is by Esperanto…
more on Katja’s team follows
I saw your test at Sydney before you went to New Zealand, and the difference with the test you produced in Taupo was amazing, what happened?
“Sorry you saw the one at Sydney! He was really struggling with changes, his canter is his weakest point on the flat, he can get a little four-beaty and a bit tight behind, so he finds the changes quite hard. He had been doing his changes really quite nicely in the warmup at Sydney and I thought, this is going to be alright. Went in there, and they were horrendous, and he just gets a bit piggy when he gets it wrong. After Sydney I stayed up in Sydney for a couple of weeks, so I went and saw Brett Parbery for a lesson, then I got a lot of help from Prue Barrett. She had a couple of rides on him, and having her feel what he feels like to ride, that really helped me, we were really able to turn a corner. And he is going really well on the flat now.”
Both of them are headed for Adelaide?
“Yes, that’s the plan, let’s not tell them that, but that’s the plan. It should be good.”
Who have been the major influences in your riding career?
“There have been a lot of different ones. At the start, I did a lot of riding by myself, then when I got on the Squads, there was help there – Scarlett Blakeley and Jamie Coman, down here in Victoria. Getting onto the National Squad is really good, then you get to work with trainers like Wayne Roycroft, and moving forward, Prue (Barrett) and Brett (Parbery) and now Gareth Hughes, just little bits from everyone helps with getting where you want to go. Maybe sometimes if you always work with the same person, you don’t broaden your horizon as much as you need to. It’s been really good having lots of different influences.”
more follows
Who has influenced your fitness program?
“I guess it has been a process of working it out myself, working with what I’ve got here, where I live we’ve got lots of hills, so I use them. I did a lot of reading when I was younger about what people did to get their horses fit. I didn’t do a lot of the old style three days but I got to do a few, that was good having to get them really really fit. They still have to be just as fit now but you don’t have to do the miles you did back then.”
Flamboyant – easy to get fit
Do you use heart rate metres and that sort of thing?
“I don’t. I used a heart rate years ago when I was riding Triathlete because he was quite hard to get fit, he was a bit more Warmbloody in his type, so I tried that, but since then I haven’t. Flamboyant is quite Thoroughbredy, and quite easy to get fit. Gallantry was again, Thoroughbredy in type.”
“I had a bit of a problem with Cosmopolitan, not with the fitness but with the speed across country. Talking with Shane Rose when we went to New Zealand, it was interesting to hear what he did with Qualified because he went from being quite slow to now being quite fast, and he is a big heavy type of horse. Shane does a lot of interval speed in his training, so I am going to fit that into my training and see if I can’t get my horse going faster.”
You find Gareth Hughes good with the dressage?
“He’s been great, I spent a week with him in July with both the horses – they came a long way in that week. Flamboyant can still get a bit tense, but I am working on being able to ride him through that tension into something more like good tension, so a little more spectacular rather than he falls apart. He is getting the hang of it.”
Flamboyant – looking good in the dressage arena…
It has been a long road, what keeps you going?
“I enjoy what I do, to do it as a job is great. To be able to have horses that have come from little foals, through the grades and have gone somewhere, that is really exciting. I still want to go overseas and compete, so I have still got a long way to go in what I want to do. That keeps you going, having goals.”
* Traithlete started his life as Remi West Side Story (Winterkönig / Shaft xx)
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