About me

At the age of ten, I began riding on my uncle’s farm. I quickly realised that I wanted to learn more than just sitting on a horse. I took riding lessons and competed in my first tournaments, where, to the delight of my family, I immediately achieved my first small successes. My faithful companions at that time were the school horses from the local riding school. Over time, I switched to private horses owned by stable colleagues, with which I was able to gradually participate in more challenging competitions.

Even back then, I trained with German trainers in Belgium and was fortunate to be able to ride tournaments with various unfamiliar horses, as I never had my own horse. With these horses, I was able to gather successes and many wonderful experiences in national competitions in the „Young Riders“ age group.

After completing my high school diploma, I wanted to focus on equestrian sports for a year and then actually begin studying psychology, but things turned out differently. During this year, I was almost coincidentally offered the opportunity to do an internship at a renowned dressage training stable in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. Following this, I received an offer to stay in Germany and the opportunity to begin an apprenticeship as a professional rider.

I completed my apprenticeship in Westphalia with Norbert van Laak, a renowned international trainer, who was then the coach of Margrit Otto Crépin and later the national coach of Canada, in whose business I subsequently worked as a professional rider.

As often in my life, I was in the right place at the right time and had the good fortune to prepare for my master equestrian management examination at Ann-Kathrin Linsenhoff and Klaus-Martin Rath’s Schafhof Stud in Kronberg. After successfully passing the examination with distinction, I moved to Hofgut Liederbach where I had the opportunity to not only manage the facility, train the estate’s horses, and coach the estate’s clients, but also to advance my own sporting career.

Against this background, a cooperation with the Rothenberger family developed. Sven Rothenberger noticed me when I became Vice-Hessian Champion with Acolito at the senior level in Grand Prix. This success in Niederzeuzheim was something very special for me, as I had only received Acolito into training two days earlier. From this, the idea emerged to participate in international championships in the future.

With Barclay, the path led through many beautiful international competitions up to the World Equestrian Games in Aachen 2006, in which we successfully participated with the support of the Rothenberger family as trainers. The qualification for Aachen was achieved with only six months of preparation time and was an exciting challenge. Despite these successes and having completed the master equestrian management examination with the Stensbeck medal, I wanted to learn more and gain experience. I had the opportunity to celebrate further sporting successes for several years each in England with the Bechtolsheimer family, afterwards in Austria with the Max-Theurer family, and in Switzerland with the Lualdi family.

A bit of homesickness for the Rhine-Main area remained during my stays abroad, and so I became self-employed. After a short time, the collaboration with the Nolte family developed. During our six-year collaboration, Anna Nolte developed from her first tournament starts to Grand Prix victories and received the Golden Riding Badge. After this period of jointly developing Hofgut Rosenau and the Nolte family’s horses, I decided to focus more on my own career again. In this sense, I always look forward to existing or newly formed cooperations with the goal of practising classical dressage up to international tournaments and championships.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people and four-legged companions who have accompanied and supported me on this great and eventful journey.

Yours, Carl