Someone should check Gustav Steinbrecht’s grave. I’m sure the earth is moving on top.

Once again we in dressage seem to be involved in a huge controversy concerning overbending the poor horses’ necks. It is ridiculous to place the lion’s share of the blame on Anky van Grunsven and Sjef Janssen, as if this is something that they created. The politics suggest the Germans are blaming the Dutch for this black eye for competition dressage. And the Dutch are claiming the Germans are just crying sour grapes because they’re losing competitions to them.

The great psychologist Carl Jung said one of the most pernicious qualities in humans is imitation. This is not unique to horsemen, but it does seem to shine in our field, as anyone who has ever attended a few horse shows knows. If a rider is successful with a jumper and it is wearing an unusual bit, within the year thousands of those bits will be sold.

In the case of “rollkur,” or “deep riding,” one has to look some 20 years ago when Nicole Uphoff burst onto the dressage scene with an eventual gold medal at the 1988 Olympics. She was 21 years old and was training with Uwe Schulten-Baumer. The Schulten-Baumer family did not burst onto the scene; they had a lot of success over a number of years. They were sophisticated and experienced competitors and trainers.

It is unthinkable that Rembrandt’s deep training was Uphoff’s idea. His warm-up and her training involved extended periods of time in a very deep position, with the neck being pulled from side to side and the nose nearly touching the chest.

At the time this posture was explained as an aberration and that she only used it at times when Rembrandt was especially skittish. Uwe Schulten-Baumer did not explain this or his training methods. Later, though, when Isabel Werth became the principal rider for Schulten-Baumer, we saw again very similar postures.

Nicole Uphoff once said, “The idea is to free the horse’s back and to develop those back muscles. The back has to come up, and the horse’s head and neck have to stretch downwards. Horses feel so much better once they have a good stretch and their muscles are loose.”

If that sounds similar to Janssen’s current comments, that’s because they’re almost identical.

Still, the press was enamored with Rembrandt’s performances; no one seemed to be asking if there was a relationship between all this forehand riding and the inability to collect the weight or balance to the rear, as in a good piaffe.

Janssen, by his own biographical notes, was not a sophisticated or experienced dressage rider. He didn’t come from any classical tradition, such as the Spanish Riding School or the Cadre Noir at Saumur. He simply imitated the work that was winning, in the same way we all imitate and copy. The same pernicious quality competitive horsemen and women in particular seem so predisposed to.

How Did It Get To This Point?
Rollkur has been an evolving system; who knows who will be its next proponent? How did it get to the point where people don’t even ask if it’s ethical to do these things to horses in order to win? How did it get to the point where, even when the scientific proof describes these horses as being on the forehand, in positions that are the antithesis of collection, no one cares?

How does it get to the point where someone like Phillipe Karl, a veteran trainer at the Cadre Noir, says that in many cases competition horses are more on the forehand in piaffe than in their normal trot?

The beginnings, I believe, came from the initial practice of letting the horse chew the reins out of the hand. This can be seen in Hans Handler’s famous book The Spanish Riding School. This method can be used as a check to see if the horse is leaning too heavily on the reins. It can also be used to let a horse, who has been working in contact in a frame, stretch and relax.

Egon von Neindorff used and taught forward and down, having riders come up in almost two-point position to allow the whole topline to stretch. For von Neindorff, a classicist, this exercise had its roots in the cavalry exercises, but was always a generous gesture, never pulling. It stopped there; no training was done in this shape. Everyone knew the horse was on the forehand; it was a simple stretch.

In parts of Germany, you saw this style being incorporated more and more in their general system of training. You didn’t see this kind of riding in Vienna at the Spanish Riding School, nor in Saumur, Spain or Portugal. But, even in Germany where riders were flirting more and more with this idea of “back stretching,” the elite riders still rode in practice with their hands well above the withers.

I think a curious thing began happening as they trained larger groups of riders in military or riding schools. The low hand position became a way to limit the inexperienced rider’s interference with the horse’s mouths. Instructors thought, “Let’s concentrate on the seat; put your hands down and leave them alone.”

Second Phenomenon
A second phenomenon was the growing obsession with the big, suspended trot of the warmbloods, a deliberate move away from the close-coupled Iberian types. This big, forward riding got hooked up with the defensive hand position being taught to the general public.

Remember, the elite riders did not ride this way. But whether riders knew it or not, they were connected with the politically strengthening modern German “system” by buying warmblood horses, or by taking less-than-elite instruction from less-qualified teachers, and if they did not have experience with the classical schools of Vienna, France and the Iberian peninsula, then they became more and more parochial in their riding education.

To them, on the bit meant on the forehand.

To win you needed a warmblood horse–and the instructions on how to ride them were married to low riding. The great majority of riders at the lower levels logically received the same “leave the hands alone” beginner’s lesson. They imitated each other and followed orders, even though there were many examples of elite riders with their hands up, striving for a light forehand and true collection.

By the 1960s the populist hand position began to change. The plebian riding school style became the cart pulling the horse. The evolution of deep work was set in full motion. The more these horses were chased forward and down, the more sophisticated the hand brakes had to be to control them. It was only logical that theories developed to rationalize the harsher and harsher manipulations.

On the other hand, it provided an excuse as to why 8- or 10-year-old horses were still on the forehand. There was no other choice.

The one thing about history is that it does repeat itself. My only hope is that this trend will die. The evolution certainly can’t go much further, ethically or biomechanically. Maybe our younger riders will get excited again about true collection, before the only place they will see it is in old photographs.

Paul Belasik describes himself as “a scientist, scholar, painter, poet, philosopher–and avowed proponent of classical equestrian ideals.” His most recent book is Dressage For the 21st Century. He owns and trains at the Pennsylvania Riding Academy in Dillsburg, Pa.