#6 Chris Bartle über seine Karriere als Reiter, Trainer & die Sicherheit im Geländekurs

[SPEAKER 2]Herzlich willkommen zum Pferdia-Podcast. Wir bringen dir echtes Insiderwissen von Top-Ausbildern und Profis. In der heutigen Folge freue ich mich auf eine absolute Koryphäe. Es ist der ehemalige deutsche Vielseitigkeits-Bundestrainer Christopher Bartel. Wir reden über seinen ungewöhnlichen Werdegang, über die Vielseitigkeitsreiterei und über sein absolutes Herzensthema, die Sicherheit im Gelände. Für dich zur Info, wir haben dieses Gespräch auf Englisch geführt. Jetzt geht’s los. Viel Spaß bei dieser Podcast-Folge.

[SPEAKER 2]We are very excited about our new podcast now for the very first time with Chris Bartle. Hi Chris. It’s a pleasure to have you. You are one of our Pferdia stars. You have an amazing track record throughout your active career and your training career. You’re a renowned trainer throughout the world, especially when it comes to cross country. You’ve been a former jockey, Then you’ve been on the British dressage team at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, been sixth in the individual, then you switched to cross-country, been the best placed British rider at the Olympic Games until London in 2012. won various four-star events like the badminton horse trials in 1989, trained the German national team for a couple of years, now you’re in charge of the British team. And we are very excited to hear from you about your philosophy on riding, your philosophy on training. And when we see your career, cross-country seems to be your passion. You’ve been a dressage rider. Why is it that cross-country is your passion besides the other disciplines?

[SPEAKER 1]I guess, yeah, I’m a bit of an adrenaline addict. I love the thrill. That’s why I got involved in steeplechasing as an amateur jockey. Of course, I was a bit too tall to be a jockey, so then I became interested in the next best thing, eventing, which was also connected with hunting, which I used to do a lot, and all those thrill sports. I became involved in the dressage just more by accident than by design, although I always had an interest in it. My dressage horse that took me to the Los Angeles Games, he started his life as a race horse and then he became an event horse and eventually he became a Grand Prix dressage horse. And not because I planned it from the beginning, it was just an adventure together. And that’s about really what gives me the fun with the horses is trying to bring out the best in the horses and to create a partnership with them and see what they can do for me really.

[SPEAKER 2]What laid the groundwork for you to first be successful in dressage and then switch to another discipline? Was it your horsey family background or was it just hard work?

[SPEAKER 1]It’s always hard work. But no, I think actually I started more on the eventing and racing side before I turned to dressage. So people of course tend to think reading through the results books and so on that I started in dressage. Dressage, of course, is something I always try to explain to people. It has two aspects to it. One, of course, is doing the fancy movements you see in Grand Prix dressage, piaf, passage, one-time changes, pirouettes and so on. But also dressage is just teaching your horse to be nice to ride and be athletic and be the best possible sportsperson that the horse can be. So my interest in the dressage at that time with that horse was just because I just was interested to see how far he could go in his

[SPEAKER 2]learning. And I think that’s that relates also to the cross-country sport nowadays because you want to bring out the best in the horse and that doesn’t matter whether it’s in dressage or cross-country or show jumping even.

[SPEAKER 1]Yeah I know the three elements of course are part of the package of eventing and They all link very closely together. Although some people tend to see them in separate boxes, I see them very much in the same box. You take your Krasnoyarsk training, your jumping and your cross-country, and your jumping training is relevant for the cross-country. It’s that aspect which is the togetherness of these three phases that interests me.

[SPEAKER 2]When we look at you schooling people, when we see the writers you train, they are all in the world-class sphere, but cross-country is a very complex sport compared to dressage, for instance. Maybe some dressage people won’t agree, but why is it that cross-country is so difficult to perfect, and why is it so complex?

[SPEAKER 1]It’s difficult to perfect because it’s a constantly changing situation, changing ground conditions, changing weather conditions, changing… situations regarding the atmosphere and of course you have the technical aspects of the different fences and every course has its own flavor and different characteristics. There’s never two courses the same whereas a dressage arena is 20 by 60 and it’s always the same. So that brings that degree of uncertainty to it and yet there’s a lot of detail involved in any top sport and whether that be eventing or Formula One It’s the interest in the detail that eventually leads to the consistency of results. It’s not just about being brave and just setting off and hope you get to the end. You’ve got to try and work on every little detail of the training of yourself and training of your horse and the partnership.

[SPEAKER 2]You talked about how the sports changed and do you feel that the horses changed as well? There used to be more thoroughbreds, now you have more warm blood influence. Did that or does that change the sport?

[SPEAKER 1]Every time you change the rules slightly, you change the perfect or the ideal horse for it. So as we’ve gone to the shorter format and on to more technical courses and the show jumping aspect of the discipline has become more important and the dressage demands are that much greater so the possibilities with the specialist breeding of warmbloods and jumping on the one hand dressage potential on the other is an asset but on the other hand we don’t want to lose and I don’t think we will lose the requirement for a certain amount of thoroughbred they need the stamina they need the the gallop, they need the motivation that the thoroughbred can often bring to it because they have to be very positive horses, very brave horses. So I think ideally we’re going to keep a blood type of horse in the sport. That would be my wish. I wouldn’t want it to go down the road of getting further away from the thoroughbred influence. And I think in the end, if you look at the top jumpers, they also want a little bit of blood. Perhaps they don’t need as much from a stamina point of view, but for the sharpness.

[SPEAKER 2]In the videos we have with you at Ferdia, which are also linked in the show notes of the podcast, safety is also not an issue only for horse and rider, but also for the trainer. What is the job or the task for a trainer when it comes to safety in cross-country especially?

[SPEAKER 1]One thing I would always emphasize is the person who is ultimately responsible for safety has to be the rider. The rider chooses to do it and the rider chooses to take part in the sport and should always be trying to improve their performance in order to make them safer. The coach has a role to play in that, in advising the rider. but can’t take over the responsibility. The coach can try to bring across to the rider the important elements of being safe in cross-country riding. The primary one is balance and fitness of the rider in terms of their physical fitness to hold their balance for a long time and through different situations. And then many of the aspects are also about understanding how to control their horses, perhaps too strong a word, more direct their horse and communicate with their horse effectively. But I would emphasize the fact that the coach has a role to play in improving safety in all aspects of riding. But I would not want ever for the rider to feel that they’re just riding under orders of the coach and that they don’t have a responsibility themselves. They must make the decision.

[SPEAKER 2]And there’s also a mental perspective to it. In the sport nowadays, it changed that it’s not only the technical part, but also the mental part. Why is the mental fitness of the rider so important?

[SPEAKER 1]I think in any top sport, the mental side becomes more and more critical the further you go up in terms of the level of performance. But even at the lower levels, particularly with horses, the rider’s control of their nerves, nerves for good performance, also maybe nerves because they don’t want anything to go wrong for themselves or the horse or whatever. There are many different situations where the mental training is as important as the technical training and to be able then to apply the mental training in a competition situation is the critical thing and it depends upon in my opinion, having very clear systems for dealing with various situations that you expect to arise. There will always be more things that you learn as you go along. You learn by your mistakes, that’s normal in life. But at the same time, you can sometimes guide somebody in their mental training towards dealing with situations which they can expect.

[SPEAKER 2]In the partnership we have with the horse, that’s only one side. So the rider himself who is responsible for his mental fitness, but there’s also the mental fitness of the horse. How can we train that horses can gain experience, especially when it comes to cross-country, sometimes experience is crucial.

[SPEAKER 1]Absolutely, and this is something which I often stress to riders is we don’t want to take away from the horse’s initiative, his own responsibility for himself. So whether it be in the dressage training or then in taking that training to the cross country, we want the horses all the time to still feel a responsibility for themselves. They must of course accept direction as where you’re going to go, when and at what speed, but the end the horse must also be encouraged and given the opportunity to express itself and to look for itself and to carry itself and when one talks about self-carriage in a dressage context one thinks of a horse in a nice outline and a pretty shape but self-carriage is about the mental side of it as much as it is about the physical side and I think that is something which I would always like to stress as a coach is that whilst one tries to be as good as possible as a rider in communicating with the horse and try to train the horse in such a way that you encourage the horse to look after itself.

[SPEAKER 2]You mentioned self-carriage and you believe that dressage is the groundwork for almost anything, especially when it comes to cross-country. Why is it that dressage lays the ground for everything that’s built on top?

[SPEAKER 1]Well, dressage comes from the word dresser in French, meaning to train. It’s about training. Dressage is sometimes in the 21st century now seen as a sport in its own right, where horses perform in a 20 by 60 arena and do special movements. what I call the tricks and it’s a little bit, my worry is a little bit circus in that respect. So one has, although I’m always arguing that you know the basis of good cross-country riding is good dressage, The emphasis must be on what is good dressage, and good dressage is not about just doing the fancy movements and getting the horse into a sort of state of mind where he’s just stopped thinking for himself. and they mustn’t do it under pressure as well, they have to want to do it, you know, and then you can take that to the cross-country. So, yeah, I would say we have to be careful in talking about dressage to some riders because then they start to think only about the 20 by 60 arena and not dressage out in the countryside, on the hill, on the on the tracks and so on when we ride outside, that’s also dressage.

[SPEAKER 2]But that’s very helpful, not to only train in the 20 x 60 dressage arena, but especially on hilly grounds, in the fields, that’s important as well.

[SPEAKER 1]No question, because then the horse is in a natural environment, so that’s good for the brain. It’s also good for them physically, because in coping with the ups and downs and the variations in the ground conditions and so on, they adapt to that. They build up the strength in their muscles that are involved in carrying themselves and balancing themselves. So, going back to my dressage days, I actually had great fun with my horse that went to the Olympics and other horses that I rode dressage at the top level at that time. They did all their, well not all their work of course, but a lot of work out in the field, on the hill, doing all the fancy movements of dressage, one-time changes, piaf passage, pirouettes, everything in a natural environment.

[SPEAKER 2]So you still benefit from those days when you were training on the international Grand Prix level?

[SPEAKER 1]Oh yeah, sure. I mean, because there is not now, especially in the sport of eventing, the dressage level at the top is getting very close to, not certainly to Grand Prix of course, but Prix Saint-Georges level, that sort of thing. So there’s a lot of connection there, I would say. How far you go depends a little bit on the talent of your horse. One horse is talented as a jumper, another one is talented for the high level movements of dressage, another one is talented for steeplechasing or galloping. You have to do the best with the horse that you have. There are two ways of going about it. One is you look for a special horse or another way is you land on a special horse. That’s always been my fascination and I suppose my path has not been to go looking for special horses so much as looking for nice horses and then starting to train them and see where their talent is.

[SPEAKER 2]We covered dressage, but part of the cross-country and eventing is of course also jumping. But dressage is also here the groundwork as well, because in between the jumps, it’s dressage.

[SPEAKER 1]Yeah, sure. It’s dressage in a different way of

[SPEAKER 2]Exactly.

[SPEAKER 1]The people thinking about it. Absolutely right, yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]So the dressage work also examines or trains rhythm, for instance, we need in jumping then.

[SPEAKER 1]Yeah, exactly. All the attributes that you require in the dressage arena, we need in the dressage between the fences. The degree of collection, you go from extended canto, medium canto, collected canto, Working canter, the collected canter you require for certain obstacles and stronger medium or extended canter for another obstacle. So it depends a little bit on the situation on the course.

[SPEAKER 2]When it comes to show jumping training at home, do you train just single jumps or do you usually go for the entire course? How is, from your viewpoint, in your philosophy, the training with jumping structured?

[SPEAKER 1]There’s two aspects, of course, always to any of these disciplines. One is the rider, the other is the horse. So when somebody comes to me with their horse, I think first I must focus on the rider. If the rider is doing the best, then he gives the best chance to the horse to do his best. And then we can say, OK, now the rider is doing their best, but how can we, with exercises, improve the horse’s technique, or strength, or confidence, or focus, or ability, et cetera. So then we, of course, must relate that to riding in the competition situation. That means riding a course. And so there are some times when I would focus on an exercise especially for the rider, an exercise maybe especially for the horse as a gymnastic, but then we must test it often enough also in riding the course. So I would say it has to be a decision from horse to horse, riders to rider, the situation that is necessary at that time, whether we do course riding or gymnastic training.

[SPEAKER 2]When it comes to the seat of the rider, the saddle is also an important part, because the rider sits in it, sits on top of the horse. How do you see modern saddles compared to saddles in your active days?

[SPEAKER 1]Well, certainly in my very early active days, the saddles were much less, in one sense, comfortable. Harder leather, flatter seats, flatter sides, and therefore you were much more reliant on your own balance and stability of position and security of position. And the development of saddles over the last decades has tended towards, with the use of different materials and also different designs, starts to make them more and more comfortable in many ways. There are some positive aspects that you get a closer contact to your horse sometimes. There are negative aspects, however, is that there are some saddles which block you into a certain position, whether it be dresser saddles or jumping saddles. Those saddles which have large blocks in front and behind and block the rider into a certain position. For me, substantially a negative, both from a training point of view and a performance point of view. And to a degree, they, in the cross-country, are a risk factor because they fix a rider into a certain position when they need to be more flexible in their position or at least be able to move in the saddle, you know, when they have to move from the front to the back or move across the saddle. These saddles which have too much block are a risk factor, I think.

[SPEAKER 2]When we see your riders or the riders you train, they have regular saddles, as you say, with no blocks. It also is that they have regular bits. Do you lay an emphasis on those things, on saddle and bits, that they are mostly regular compared to those special cases you were talking about?

[SPEAKER 1]Yeah, as far as the bits are concerned, I would always encourage riders to use the most simple bit as possible, just a normal snaffle bit. Of course, not every horse will go in the excitement of a competition as they would do in training. So sometimes it’s necessary to get some assistance from a different type of bit in a competition situation to what you use perhaps in training. On the other hand, if I can call them stronger bits, the horse has to be educated and trained in those at home that they at least understand them. Because what we must not forget in riding our horses, they are just living, breathing, thinking animals and and they don’t like pain any more than we like pain. And what they do when they have pain is that they either fight it or run away from it. And so if you put something in the horse’s mouth which causes pain or you use the rein in such a way that you cause pain, it will very often produce a negative result, not a positive result. So if the horse understands the bit, understands the communication, and then because you use a slightly stronger bit, it’s a little bit like me talking to you and then at some point shouting, because you’re not listening to me. And then I say, listen. Well, that’s what we mean by using a stronger bit, but only if the horse understands it and not for, again, talking with yourself. If I suddenly go up to you and punch you or hurt you or whatever, you’re going to be reacting either to run away or to fight.

[SPEAKER 2]In the material we have at Verdia with you, you also mention different types of seats. Could you please elaborate why we need in cross-country and event riding different seats?

[SPEAKER 1]Well, there’s a seat for every situation. So when you want to go fast, you have to have aerodynamic, you have to be close to your horse and you have to look like a jockey. And then in another situation where something is coming, a fence is coming, you need to be preparing the horse for it in terms of the right speed and be on the correct line and be in balance. So that’s why you need a preparation seat. Then of course you need a seat which says to the horse when you get to the fence, I’m here, I’m with you, yes we can. And with one horse I say stay still and another horse I maybe ride it a bit more positively from that contact seat just to say yes we can. Then, of course, the other seat I refer to often is the landing seat. That’s the second phase of the jump when we need to be thinking about landing in a secure way and balanced with the horse so that we don’t upset the horse’s balance and so that we can move on to the next fence and be in control of the next strides. to the next fence.

[SPEAKER 2]What I found quite interesting is that you considered yourself a pessimist when it comes to the seat. Why is that?

[SPEAKER 1]I often say to writers, you know, be an optimist, yeah, and have a heart of a lion and say yes we can, but at the same time be ready for every situation and therefore I say have a seat of a pessimist. Yeah, so if you’re always sitting ready for something to go wrong, then the best way to be ready or to have good luck is to be ready, you know, to be prepared.

[SPEAKER 2]Yeah. At the end of every podcast with every Ferdia star I’m talking to, we have four classical Ferdia questions I want to ask you now. And the first one is, do you have a motto?

[SPEAKER 1]Do I have a motto? Well, I have a motto which I actually gave to my team in Germany in the last three Olympics. It started, in fact, before Hong Kong. And it actually comes from the Roman philosopher Seneca. And I always say, luck is where preparation meets opportunity.

[SPEAKER 2]That’s a good motto. The second question is who inspired you most in your life?

[SPEAKER 1]Gosh, that’s a difficult question to answer because many people have inspired me. I’ve had many sporting heroes and people who’ve been models to me that I’ve tried to to copy or learn from. I must say one of the ones who springs to mind immediately since I’m talking with Ferdia and I’ve had such a close relationship with the The Klimka family, then Rainer Klimka, Ingrid’s father, was a great inspiration to me. Not that I had the opportunity to train with him. He was more a role model, somebody who was out there competing that I aspired to. to be as good as, and if I could, to beat her. I was lucky to compete in the same Olympics one time as he did, and certainly he gave me some encouraging advice at that time. But he was one, clearly, my previous trainer, Hans Blixen Finneker, who was from Sweden. It was a really, probably inspired my coaching philosophy to a large extent, his attitude and his thoughts in regard to coaching. Clearly, your parents have a huge influence on you, but neither of my parents were great competitors themselves. Just my mother in particular had a very analytical approach to things, which has rubbed off on me. I’m a bit obsessive about analyzing little details, but I always say in the end, Yeah, one of the characters of a champion is somebody who’s really interested in the detail.

[SPEAKER 2]If you could recommend one thing to a rider, what would it be?

[SPEAKER 1]Never, never, never give up.

[SPEAKER 2]Great. And the last thing is, could you please complete this sentence? Horses for me are…

[SPEAKER 1]My life.

[SPEAKER 2]That’s very great. Very cool talking to you. We have all the details to you in the show notes of the podcast, the links to the material we have on our platform, the DVDs we have with you. And yeah, thank you very much.

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