THM editor Christopher Hector talks to St Georg editor, Jan Tönjes, here’s Jan in action in the Press Seats…

Journalists interviewing journalists can look a bit dodgy, but the truth is, some of the most acute observers of the scene, are sitting at the press desks, and with Jan Tönjes sitting just down the desk from me at Aachen, the temptation was too strong to resist.

Jan is well qualified. A serious rider as a young man, he worked with the Oldenburg Verband, before joining the editorial team at   St Georg Magazine in 2003. He became the editor of the magazine in the autumn of 2012. Jan is also in great demand as a commentator at breed shows, and is well known for his affection for, and knowledge of, among others, the Oldenburg and Trakehner breeds. He is also not afraid to speak his mind, as you will find as you keep reading.

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The other day I was talking with Nathalie zu Wittgenstein, and she said she was afraid for the future of dressage with the threat of all sorts of liberationists, and that she also thought that dressage had lost its heart with every horse for sale, that when she started riding with Klaus Balkenhol, the top riders would not sell their horses..

“If that has been Nathalie’s experience, I can’t prove her wrong, but horses were always for sale. There has always been money, if you look back, the late Reiner Klimke rode Entertainer, that was a top PSI Grand Prix horse, and wasn’t it later with an Italian rider?”

The Rothenberger parents, now assisting their children

I just interviewed Sven Rothenberger who bought Andiamo from Otto Hofer…”

And before that the Doruto mare he bought from Bert Rutten, Bo. When Sven started his career, and it was a bit the same with his wife Gonnelien, they purchased horses, we don’t know how much they paid, for sure they were expensive. They were top horses,
Andiamo for example was third at the World Cup Finals, so I don’t think it is that new.”

“The heart, that’s something I’m thinking more about, if there are more emotional aspects in the whole dressage business, I don’t know.”

It wasn’t so much business was it, it was more the hobby of the gentry…

Cathrine Dufour and her first star, Cassidy, seeing the Aachen arena for the first time… 

“Dressage was always a sport for wealthy people, very wealthy people, stinking rich people, so to speak. What was the last Cinderella story that we had? Maybe Helen Langehagenberg coming from a non-horsey background, making her way to the top in Germany? Cathrine Dufour, and Charlotte Dujardin?”

“The most important question is the Olympic future for dressage or equestrian in general, and I can very much understand what Nathalie is fearing.  The problem, or part of the problem, is that the public, or part of the public, hasn’t realized how much of a positive change the sport has been going through. It’s still not ideal, and we still see things in the warm up in dressage, or bits in showjumpers mouths at places I go, please never ask me to tack up this horse. Impossible, there is a bit here, a bit there, a shank, a chain, dozens of reins, attention not only to the bit, but also the nose band, or two nose bands that we see.”

“There are still some things we need to take a close look at, we as the media, as well as the FEI, all stake holders. We need to stay in the Olympic family with horses. In general we need to communicate better that this welfare of the horse is paramount is really more than just another sentence. As a journalist I am always a little bit sceptical when I hear that, it’s part of every press release. But in general, here we are at Aachen, and if you look at the warm-up area, twenty years ago what happened there in the morning that was just awful. Awful.”

It got so bad that they tried to shut us (journalists/photographers) out of it…

“Yes, and they were right. My other example, is look at three-day-eventing. Me, as an old man, I loved the long format, with the tracks, the racecourse, the horses trotting, but too many horses and too many people died.”

Back in 2000, Australia’s Andrew Hoy and Darien Powers, over one the steeplechase fences on the racecourse, on the long way to a medal in the eventing…

Michael Jung and his star, Sam, just the dressage, showjumping and the cross country course…

I think it is so nice here at Aachen with the eventing format, the horses come off the cross country with their ears pricked, looking comfortable, and it is still an interesting test…

“Yes it is, but this sport had come to a point where there had to be a change, a change was the only chance to stay, maybe even in the FEI. Yeah and it worked out.”

It was out of the Beijing Games, and it was Wayne Roycroft who saved it, who said, we can cut out this and this, and he bore a lot of criticism for that…

“And now what wonderful sports persons we have. Tom McEwen, I am not starting with the Germans, but Michael Jung and I am sitting here getting goose bumps thinking about them, Julia Krajewski, she’s a goddess to me. I knew Julia when she was a pony rider, and she was always good. Now she is also a trainer and a lot of these young guns who are here competing in the eventing, and doing so well, have been trained by her through the levels, she is a horseman, 120% and they have all learned it from her – she is so strict as a trainer, really strict and it is always horse first, and that’s why they produce so many good combinations. Yes, that’s Germany and I have more insights, but look at these marvelous British riders, Yasmin Ingham , it’s brilliant, you want to video tape it and say, ‘Look, this is how it is done’. Use some slow motion and you find nothing wrong, but everything nearly perfect.”

One of those starry British girls – Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo (FEI photo)

Christopher Bartle has this amazing ability to get new stars going…

“He did it here, but look at the podium at Luhmühlen, all three of these British riders – Laura Collett, Kitty King, Yasmin Ingham were a picture perfect example of how it is to be done and how it is to be done fairly with happy athletes.  The horses canter into the finish and they look, maybe not happy, but relaxed, they look comfortable with the situation, yes they are athletes, they are sweating, their heat rate is up, yes, yes, but they look good.”

It doesn’t help when one of the world’s leading dressage training establishments, Helgstrand Dressage, has rushed to court to prevent the publication of footage of their training..

“I see the both sides.”

If he’s got nothing to hide, why not let us look at it?

“Yes but we have rules. I try to get into the Danish rules, I can only look at our German rules, there they have rules against entering a property and that’s what happened in a way. It’s tricky, and up to now, we don’t know what is on the video, so we can only guess, and guess is not a good basis for judging finally. It will come out sooner or later, I think, and ask me again then, because then I can see what I can see, then I can comment on that.”

I don’t buy the sanctity of privacy, what cleaned up the dressage warm up arena, was people invading the riders privacy with their phones and filming what was happening, that had more power than any of the FEI resolutions…

“Yes but… judges always have this really big argument, we can only judge what we see. My point is if they could look more closely, look properly… you see so many things and it is a 7 or a 7.5, and you go no! Look we have a tail, we have a mouth, a poll, a back, just look.”

But we had that blissful period when Carl Hester and Charlotte Dujardin emerged, Helen Langehagenberg…

Kristina Sprehe and Desperados

“Tina Sprehe with Desperados…”

And the beautiful American girls that Debbie was bringing out of the United States…

“Then finally, it is Jessy and Benny (sister and brother, Jessica and Benjamin von Bredow), they are just brilliant.”

But now I see more and more swishing tails, mouths open, hollow backs, hindlegs out behind, and I see judges here at Aachen giving that top marks…

“Exactly, especially the hollow back and the high croups, that’s so simple to detect, you see it, the croup is high, the haunches are not lowered in what should be the most collected movements in the entire test, okay its rhythmically performed, it’s so to speak properly done, because it’s 13 steps more or less on the spot but with all the other points not taken into consideration. Sure it’s 13 steps on the spot, but the rest is bullshit, excuse my French. It’s a 6.5, and if a rider gets that score for that movement four times in a row, then he is out of contention at the big Nations’ Cups, a score of 70, 71 is not enough to be selected.”

“But as long as they get the high scores, the training at home won’t be changed. It’s speculation how they train, but if you see these piaffes that really travel to the left and to the right, that’s unbalanced, yes, and the judge can’t say, I bet this rider puts his horse in front of the wall and just beats him until he piaffes. Ask the trainers – if the horse travels from left to right, this might be one indication that the training is not properly done. Of course there are horses that are more gifted for this movement, but if we have unbalanced piaffes, and if we have high croups in every change, and even in the pirouettes no spring any more in the hindlegs but more or less just a turn on the haunches without having a real canter jump, or the characteristics of a canter jump in the hind leg – and then you get a 7.5. so why as a rider do you have to change it if you get a 7.5, that’s not fairly good, it’s close to good.”

Are we once again in the situation of not having anyone on the judging panel who is able to provide a lead, like Lette did, like Niggli did? Who can you look to? The other day, here at Aachen the only one I agreed with was always one out, the Danish judge…

“The question to me, is do we need one strong judge, or do we need a better communication, an honest communication between the stakeholders, riders, trainers, judges. Something like what they had in The Netherlands, the Global Forum, that was of course a commercial thing…”

And it became a way of foisting Dutch dressage on the rest of the world – why is Salinero the world’s happiest horse, was a question at one forum and they agreed he was!!! But the Forum itself was a good idea.

“That was a good idea and I see so many things we need to discuss, for example, some of the horses, including some of the German horses, start from X, from the halt, salute, in what I would say was a medium trot and not a collected trot. We see so many horses with no flexing and bending in each corner. I mean the classical dressage – next term to discuss – says every corner is a quarter of a small circle. It’s about getting the inner hind leg, getting proper control of the poll, give some rein, be even softer, using every corner for the self-carriage… but what we see, they would rather have it in a counter flexing, and that’s absolutely wrong.”

“And that’s also part of the movement. We have the extended trot and then the short side is also counting into the score for this movement, and if I see this and say, okay this is not collected, this is passagey, or stiff and tight, there is no bending, and I don’t see that in the scores.”

“If we have a non-emotional discussion, and that is back to your first question, if we have our Olympic future in mind, it’s no longer this judge hates this nation, this rider never gets scored by this judge, or this judge has trained with the father of this rider how can he judge, blah, blah. Yes maybe all this should be considered, but we are talking about bigger things here. We need to be working together to work out how we can preserve equestrian in the Olympic Games.”

I interviewed Bert Rutten last week and his argument was that dressage had become so professional, that we needed a professional corps of judges, who weren’t allowed to deal, to run clinics, who were selected and they would judge the Championships , and it wouldn’t be up to the shows to pick the judges that will give the results the show wants…

“Whew, to be honest that is too complex to answer immediately… actually, and I think they are probably going to kill me for saying this, in soccer, in football we have a video assistant, in other words AI is used. Especially in dressage – I’m not an expert in computers – I can very much imagine that you can feed an AI with 1000 piaffes, then you see, points like wither and croup, that’s something an AI can figure out, is the croup higher, lower, or even? The poll – is it up or the third vertebrae? Is the nose on or slightly in front of the vertical? It could also see, the hocks and the knee, is it even? Or how uneven, there’s no identically moving horse, we know that, but this could be, not that we want a computer to judge but we want a computer to assist.”

I think it would be lovely…

“Or the changes, so many people say, oh they were brilliant changes, but fifteen? And it was the fourth at X, there are so many things. And of course an AI could say, he did 15 changes, and of course if you had cameras at different angles, you could see some swinging, unbalanced moments. It could all maybe help to support dressage.”