Rebecca Ashton talks with German Eventing Coach, Christopher Bartle
The resignation of Wayne Roycroft as Australian Eventing Coach had barely been announced when I caught up with Christopher Bartle. You know, Christopher Bartle. Sixth in Atlanta Olympics for dressage, 1996. Winner of Badminton, 1998. Coach of the gold medal winning German event team, Beijing 2008. The cv looks perfect, and with a big desire to head south and revisit our shores, perhaps we’ve found the perfect candidate?
First of all Christopher, congratulations on your continued success with the German Event Team. You must feel a great deal of satisfaction and pride at having brought the team so far?
Yes I certainly do although mixed with a feeling of disappointment that we still failed to achieve what was possible both in 2009 at the European Champs and at WEG Kentucky. It is easy to say that we were just unlucky but there were definitely things to be learned from these failures both individually but also for the squad as a whole.
Christopher and Wily Trout
How did you initially get involved with the team?
It all happened pre-Sydney Olympics. Between ’93 and 2000 I was involved as dressage coach to the Brits but in 1999 I was asked to be overall coach to the British team at the European Championships in Luhmühlen where it was vital for us to get a qualifying result for Sydney having failed the year before at the World’s. The team came up trumps and we won double gold. Also at that time, having won Badminton with Word Perfect the year before, off due to injury in ’99, I still had an ambition to ride in the team myself in Sydney and so stood down as coach and concentrated on trying to get selected. In the end, I was left behind as first reserve, naturally very disappointed. Yogi Breisner led the team to Sydney and of course has remained as Coach to the Brits since then.
After Sydney, I was approached by Christoph Hess to sound me out as to my interest in coaching the Germans and it seemed the right point in my career to focus on the coaching and leave the competing behind.
What was your initial thought on the team? What were the areas you thought needed improvement? Was there any standout issue that you thought needed addressing?
What particularly interested me in taking over the coaching role in Germany, having been so long partly involved with the British team as specialist dressage trainer, was the opportunity to coach all aspects of the sport. It occurred to me that although the German riders generally had a very strong basis to their riding, perhaps the link between the three elements was missing. In my first talk with the squad, I remember saying to them that they had all these good dressage and jumping trainers in Germany, why weren’t they using them? I also stressed the importance of the dressage training and jumping training being based on absolutely classical principles. In dressage leading to self-carriage and in jumping leading to the horse looking after himself and not being totally reliant on the rider. The standout issue for me was the cross-country riding and to influence their typically German underlying desire to ‘control’ everything and to hand responsibility to the horse especially in training but also in competition.
I know your mother is multilingual and translated quite a few very well known equestrian books into English. How’s your German? Have you found language or the fact that you’re not German any hinderance to your role?
Although my mother is multilingual, (still with us at age 88), my knowledge of French was fairly good but my German was tourist phrase book standard. Luckily the majority of the riders spoke some English. My trainer partner in Germany, Hans Melzer is an anglophile and speaks English fluently and as an aside, I must say his contribution to the results we have achieved should not be understated. I always like to say that I learned my German in the riding arena and the pub afterwards. Now I’m fairly fluent when sticking to the chosen subject but the grammar is certainly in need of improvement!
Christopher and Word Perfect won Badminton in 1998 and again in 1999
You’ve been able to bring a wealth of knowledge to the team with your great success over the years in both eventing and dressage. What would be your one most important piece of advice for young up and coming Olympians?
The advice I always give when asked this question, is that if you really want, it you have to be obsessive about getting it. In the end you need many things to come together, but more than anything you need the mental toughness to never give up until you get to where you want.
The 2004 Olympics must have been disappointing. What lessons did you and the team take from that? How did that shape your lead up to Beijing where the team won gold?
The ‘disaster’ of Athens, winning double gold on the playing field and then losing them both shortly afterwards in the Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) was a double edged sword. One side hurt us badly and I returned home gutted. Subsequently the other side turned out to be the best thing that could have happened for us and the sport of eventing in Germany. We got so much more sympathy, media and even Government attention after Athens than we would have done if we had come home with the medals. It fired up the squad and that team of riders were so motivated that we went to Hong Kong four years later with that ‘sword’ in our bag, determined to put things right.
Do you work mostly with the riders individually or do you tend more toward “team camps”?
Of course we have squad training at various times of the year. I think however a lot less than was done previously, and do prefer to work more individually with the riders even within the squad training sessions. There are of course points that can be put across more effectively in groups and building up a good rapport between the riders and a good team spirit was also important, so I find these team
training sessions are important.
Where do you see yourself professionally in 10 years time?
Time flies I know, but that’s too far ahead. I have a contract with the German Federation until 2012. I still have my own riding and training centre at home – the Yorkshire Riding Centre (YRC). I have changed that quite a bit over the last couple of years and want now to focus on using it as a base for competition interested riders, at whatever level, to come with their own horses and train with not just myself, but also the various other resident and visiting Instructors here. I continue to be interested in both Dressage and Eventing especially and would want to be active as a trainer in both disciplines for as long as I can.
You must have a lot of frequent flyer points built up now with all those trips to Germany. Will we be lucky enough to see you back in Australia anytime soon?
I miss the visits to Australia that were so much part of my life for 14 years from ’87 to 2001. Since then I have only managed to get back over once because of the commitment with the German team. Now I have put these changes into place with the YRC (by the way look at our new website, yrc.co.uk) and my 2 kids from my second life are now 5 and 4. I would really love to combine a family visit to Australia again at the end of the year with the chance to catch up with friends, and if the opportunity arises, do some teaching down under again.
It’s great to hear that you’d love to come back and visit us. You know that there’s a job going down here?
Well I had heard that there was an interesting job vacancy down under, but at the moment I’m only thinking about the next 2 years and it will certainly have been filled by then!!
This article first appeared in the March 2011 issue of THM.