Jonny Hilberath is the German dressage coach for the A and B squad as well as the Future Squad.

His family lived in the country, and working horses were a part of his daily life. One day a young Jonny followed a girl to a riding school and watched her riding her horse. The horses moved differently to any of the heavy working horses he knew and from that day he was hooked. He started helping with the local riding club and began to have lessons. In his teenage years he trained with Rosemarie Springer’s head rider and had a weekly lesson with him. “One day he asked me whether I could school a few of Mrs Springer’s horses as he was going on vacation,” Jonny remembered. The head rider never returned from that vacation and Jonny stayed with Rosemarie Springer, completing his Bereiter education.

“Horses have influenced my life, they have taught me modesty and discipline and given me much enjoyment. I am sure that horses are able to find the good in people.”

Chris Hector interviewed him in 2010:

Do you find it a challenge? You do a lot of things at once – compete at Grand Prix, train your own riders in competition, and then you also help with the German team riders…

“Actually I do what I always did in my life. From the beginning I was a rider, and the last 15 years I’ve become a trainer, and that’s what I do. Now it changes a little, I am still a rider but I don’t do so many competitions any more, even now when I have the two nice horses I have got, my focus is on training. I try to organize myself as much as I can and it is a big challenge. It is a lot of fun and it is also very inspiring. I always say, since I teach so much, I have become a better rider because you have to think more about processes. If you have to explain things more, it helps you to ride better.”

But it must be different – you have regular riders that you are working with every week, and you can mould those riders over time, then you come to somewhere like Windsor, working with really high powered riders in a German team who come from all different personal trainers – is that hard?

“There is a kind of responsibility on my shoulders to make it as good as possible for the country. But the way to train doesn’t change for me, I always look for the same thing, always look for correctness, it doesn’t make a difference if it is one of my personal students, or one of the team riders. The big difference is that when you are a national coach, you don’t have the team riders as your students – it is more organizing and coordinating. It is much easier for me, and for any trainer, when you have the people who train with you regularly – that makes it a bit special when you have to go with a team or a rider on a show and they are not your pupil, and have the right feeling for the rider, the horse, and the situation. You have to be the diplomat, and never irritate the horse and rider.”

Jonny runs a training stable with 36 boxes in Abbendorf. He has collected many wins and placings at Grand Prix level and placed third at the National Championships in 2007.

www.jonny-hilberath.de