PrintSteffen Peters excels at many things. He’s a natural athlete with a balanced seat and an inherent understanding of the horse. He’s calm under pressure and has a reputation for having ice water in his veins. But his most impressive, and perhaps most valuable, trait is his ability to see a forest through the trees.
Peters has had plenty of individual triumphs in his 21⁄2 decades in U.S. dressage. But every step he’s taken along the way—every Olympic appearance and hack around his farm, every hour in the saddle and every patiently endured recovery—was with a larger ultimate goal in mind: to finally have a year like 2009.
Peters and Akiko Yamazaki’s Dutch Warmblood gelding Ravel made history, winning 10 of the 11 FEI classes they entered last year and scoring unprecedented U.S. title sweeps of the FEI World Cup Final (Nev.) and the Aachen CDI***** (Germany).
“When you have a horse like Ravel, who would be anybody’s horse of a lifetime, everybody around him—Steffen and myself, my family, his family, the owners, our whole team here—hope and dream of that kind of success,” said Peters’ wife, Shannon. “But the year they had this year was, I think, beyond anybody’s hopes and dreams of what could happen.”
“I’ve always been realistic about my horses, but realistic about myself too,” Steffen said. “In the big scheme of things, riding horses might be relatively small, but it makes a difference in peoples’ lives.”
And Ravel’s success has certainly made a difference in the life of everyone at Arroyo Del Mar, the Peters’ San Diego, Calif., home base for the past four years. The business, a manifestation of Steffen’s long-term vision, thrives thanks to the team of professionals he and Shannon have assembled over the years. In search of the most dedicated, selfless caretakers for their horses, the team has turned out to be an amalgam of cultures.
Steffen left his home in Germany for San Diego in 1985, and naturally, given his chosen sport of dressage, he maintains many close ties with European clients, students, sponsors and employees. But Yamazaki, who’s of Japanese descent, was born and raised in Costa Rica, and several members of the Peters’ team, including Ravel’s groom, Rafael Hernandez, and his veterinarian, Rodrigo Vazquez, are Latino. The farm’s manager, Kate Gillespie, is an advanced-level eventer from South Africa.
“We’re kind of a stew of people,” Gillespie said. “It’s great. Everybody here works really hard, and there are no slackers. But everybody has each other’s back, and they keep it fun. They’re always making jokes and doing silly things. Anyone who takes themselves too seriously around here just ends up getting laughed at.”
There’s a laid-back Southern California vibe at Arroyo Del Mar, with ’90s On 9 XM radio pumping through the speakers across the 22-acre property. One might expect Ravel to be training to dramatic renditions of Bach or Beethoven, but he’s more likely to be found falling in step with Right Said Fred’s pop anthem “I’m Too Sexy” or Coolio’s “1-2-3-4 (Get Your Woman On The Floor)” during his workouts.
