Jean Bemelmans – Dressage from the Heart

Story by Christopher Hector & Photos by Roslyn Neave

There are some people who make you feel good just seeing them, and one of those is the Belgian-born, German-based dressage trainer, Jean Bemelmans. Watch him move through a crowd of people, and he radiates his warmth, his sense of humour and his delight in life itself. 

He’s the same when he teaches, so encouraging, so positive, and, best of all, so effective. Jean is one of those trainers with a huge vocabulary of exercises, solutions and suggestions. He is the same on a horse, you get the feeling that every time he rides, it is a new adventure for him, another step in the endless quest to understand the horse.

After many years as the coach of the Spanish dressage team, Jean has moved on, this time to France, which is where I met up with him, at the horse show in Deauville. I remarked that he seems to take care to only go to countries with good wine and food…

“I think it is very important that there is a good ambiance because at the end of the day, success has a little bit to do with luck. If you are in the right moment in a good form and then you can work very hard, sometimes it comes out and sometimes it doesn’t come out. I think the ambiance is always very important. I had a fifteen wonderful years in Spain, and I am still very friendly with them – we went away crying for each other! In Aachen they were super successful and it was a great pleasure, I had them immediately on the telephone. I was a few times in Spain this year to do clinics, and they are always still my friends… but on the other side, I came to France because sometimes you need a new tangent.”

“I worked with the Spanish fifteen years, and it was a nice time, so do you do it for the next ten years?  Or come to another country, a new challenge? I have a good feeling with the French federation, it works very well, we have a very good understanding, we are a very good team. We have a lot of new combinations here at the moment. I think that here at Deauville is the first time we have come with eight Grand Prix combinations, and I still don’t know which of them will get the best score…”

Is it very different the dressage culture in France from Spain…

“It is different. Every country has its own culture. The technique to ride everyone knows – you can learn it on the internet – but every nation has its own mentality. This is my job, not to change the mentality but to teach them the technique.”

Is there any trace of the old French dressage traditions? Or is it just like everywhere else?

“It’s not just like everywhere else, for many years they work with this légèreté – light, everything has to be light… okay, light is good, this is what everyone wants, but the question is how you achieve the light. There has to be a certain gymnastic. I think the breeding of horses has developed so far, at the World Young Horse Championships in Verden, in the five-year-old, I think there were 50 or 60 horses qualified… that means horses with over 80% because you need 80% to go. You can see how much good breeding in the dressage direction there is.”

“But from the other side, also the sport is developing, and it is important that you are open for the concurrence, that you can see if someone is winning, that you can also learn something. You have to be ready to learn all the time. I think that now, what I want to do is bring a little bit more gymnastic, not only doing the movements of the test. It is like an athlete, a football player is not kicking for goals all day. He is running, he is swimming, he is cycling, he builds up different muscles and then he is ready to kick a goal. This is the idea we have to bring to the riders in France, to see the horses more as athletes that we have to make ready. They need fitness, then go to the exercises, and then to the lightness.”

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Here you are dealing with mainly German horses – none of them are Selle Français…

“In France, jumping breeding is very successful, the breeders breed jumping horses, and breeding in the direction of dressage horses is not so important. This was also the same in Spain. At the end of the day, you can buy an Oldenburger, and if it is good, it can go for France. It would be better if there was better dressage breeding here, and we didn’t have to go abroad to find horses. It is difficult, the Germans breed the good horses, but they are also the first ones to know when a good horse comes out. Sometimes we are a little bit behind, and then we have to pay a lot of money, for the good ones.”

You said it was important to look at who is winning to get ideas, at the moment, I think the vision is very good, Charlotte and Valegro are very good models…

“First of all, with Charlotte, she has a super team. She has a super trainer, there is a super horse, and she is a super rider. Then they grow together. It is not as if she bought a Prix St Georges horse, and went into Grand Prix with it. She had him as a young horse, she made the small classes with him. I saw the development, she did the first Prix St Georges, Intermediaire I, and they go step by step. This is like a marriage the two of them, a unit. Then with all the quality of the three – the trainer, the rider, the horse, now it is top-of-the-top. They have found the right key together, and it is good for our sport that we can see this beautiful picture, because she gives a beautiful picture. When she goes in the ring, everything looks really light, even the extended trot, you always think, oh she asks too much, she always goes full risk, but full risk under control.”

Carl and Charlotte talk a lot about how they put their horses out in the paddock, how they take them out to ride, not just in the arena, do you think this is important?

“I am 100% convinced that the biggest part of success is that you understand your horse. You have to be a horseman – not only riding because you want to be successful and you use the horse to be successful for you. Carl and Charlotte are not thinking in this way, they didn’t start with Valegro to be an Olympic winner. They love him and they build him up and suddenly he gives more, and more, and suddenly he gives them a win in the Prix St Georges, and then he gives them a little bit passage, piaffe, and this is the way. As a trainer you cannot look at the technique first, first you have to look in the eyes of your horse, you have to ask, what does this horse want? Does he want more training? Does he want less training? Is he happy? Then you put the technique on top. But if you immediately go with the technique, you don’t try to understand your horse, you don’t communicate with your horse – then you don’t have any chance. Charlotte and Carl, they are communicating with their horses, and I think that is the biggest part of their success.”

When you talk with Carl, there is nothing very complicated about his training techniques… it’s very simple…

“It’s very interesting, I was reading an article the other day about a very successful football player. Suddenly he retired from the team, quite young, why? He said, I have also another life, not only football is my life. I had many matches where we were so good, we were better than the other team, but we lost because we didn’t have the right luck in the right moment. I think this is a little bit the secret with Carl and Charlotte, they always look very happy. I have seen them for many years. I had some clinics in Britain, and they came to my clinics, and I found that very sympathetic, that they came to my clinic, it was an honour for me – but they are open minded, they have fun, and then at the end of the day, it is not that difficult, you just don’t make too many mistakes!” Jean is laughing…

Is that your philosophy, you told me once you didn’t want a great big training centre, that you liked to balance your life?

“Okay at the end of the day, everybody has to find his own way to be happy. Some people are only happy if they are unhappy, but I think it is super super important not to forget how everything starts, we are here because of a little bit of luck, and because we want to enjoy riding – this was our target, not to make money or be successful. We just want to ride. Then we ride. Then we have a little bit of luck with a few horses, then suddenly it develops in a certain way that leads to success.”

“I made the mistake at one point in my life, I thought  I have to be successful, and I forgot about my horses. Then I had a bad time because I tried too hard, it was not working. You have to wait and sometimes if you are not successful, it might be because the horses are not as good as they were before, and you have to wait for the right horse again, you have to stay calm. This is also an advantage of being older, that you learn to wait.”

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Do you have some good horses to work with in France?

“I have a very good feeling, and it is also nice that my French language that I had forgotten a little bit, I can bring up again. It’s good that I can speak with them in their language, it is always easier if you don’t need a translator. We have very very good young riders, very good young horses. I have been working in France for two years now. The first year is more learning who is who, learning what everyone wants, and where you can go. Now we are into the process – and at the end of the day, we have to get up in the morning, do the job, and then we will see.”

“The goal is certainly first to go to WEG. You always have a long term, and a short term, goal. I need to find the riders who will do the best possible job for the French Federation because it is the Federation that pays me, and I have a duty to do my job as good as possible. The next step will be in 2015 to make the qualification for the Olympic Games. I hope we can do that so we get in the circle. France was not qualified for the last Olympics, and the ones before, and then you are a little bit out of the sport. We have to be in it, so we see what is happening. For me as a trainer, I hope to always be at the championships, because I have to watch, how is the sport developing? Which direction is it going? What can we do better – otherwise you stop at a certain point and then go backwards.”

How much of the year do you spend in France?

“About one week a month – sometimes it’s clinics, sometimes it’s shows, but more or less one week a month.”

You still have your stables near Dusseldorf?

“I have a little training stable at home, but I make it smaller and smaller. But when I am at home, I don’t want to be bored, so I need some horses there. I ride every morning, and enjoy this very much. I go the stables every morning, I have some nice customers, and we are busy. I have one or two young horses, one is six years old, one is seven, and they are starting to learn passage, piaffe. Last week, one of them did passage for the first time, and it was such a nice feeling oh god I got it! This is my pleasure, this is what I like the most, riding, the contact with the horse – to speak with my horse, I speak with my body, and try to understand the horse, to teach him and make him ready, and then to make the next one ready, so you keep on going…”

This article first appeared in the November 2014 issue of THM.

Bemelmans, Jean