E-Dressage: Commitment to Competition | Weekly Interviews with Top Dressage Riders | Dressage Succes...

E-Dressage

Raised on a cattle ranch in Colorado, Lisa was at home in the saddle from a very early age. She could be found on the ranch, herding and driving the cattle, and breaking in young horses for ranch work. From there, she spent years travelling Europe, training under some of the biggest names in the dressage world. With their help, Lisa would go on to place in around 150 Grand Prixes by 2005, winning nearly 40 of them. Lisa's achievements include winning the individual silver medal at the European Championships at Hickstead in 2003, winning the German Masters in Stuttgart and being part of the team that won a silver medal at the World Championships in Spain in 2002, and bronze at the Olympic Games in Athens two years later.

Formerly a successful Three Day Eventer, Lindsay switched to competing exclusively in dressage in the early 1990s. She has trained under some of the biggest names in dressage, including former national team trainer Ferdi Eilberg, and had the privilege of competing Ferdi's Grand Prix stallion Tapster for a couple of years before his untimely death in 1997. After losing another promising Grand Prix mare in 2011, Lindsay is now working on developing her wonderful stallion Diamonit II. Aside from riding, Lindsay is also a List 1 Dressage Judge, FEI 3/4*Event Judge and an Accredited Coach with British Dressage.

Jan Brink is a Swedish-born Dressage rider. He has accumulated 7 international championship medals; more than any of his countrymen, including individual European silver in 2003. He has won 32 international grands prix and competed at the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics, placing fourth in the team dressage at the latter. In addition to these accolades, Jan has ridden his three-time Olympic ride, the world famous Björsell's Briar to victory at the Aachen Championships in 2005, and to a Bronze medal at the 2005 European Dressage Championships. Jan retired from international dressage competition in 2009, but continues to coach and compete nationally in Sweden, producing young horses to Grand Prix level in partnership with fellow countryman and Olympic show jumper Rolf Göran Bengtsson.

Katharine Farrell is a 21-year-old Australian dressage rider and member of the Australian National High Performance Generation Next Squad. She and her main ride Luxor 118 have been taking youth titles consistently since they arrived on the National scene in 2013. Together the pair have become the most successful and highest scoring Young Rider team in Australia, winning several consecutive FEI Young Rider Individual & Freestyle Tests, with an impressive personal best of 71.175% in a Grand Prix Freestyle test. At the 2016 Australian Youth Dressage Championships, the pair competed in the Intermediate II, the Grand Prix, and the Grand Prix Freestyle to Music, and won every single class.

Raised on the West Coast of New Zealand, Jody's love of horses was apparent from a very early age. By the age of 6, she managed to convince her very non-horsey parents to buy her her first pony. Initially, Jody would compete in all disciplines, with a passion for jumping- dressage took a back seat until her wonderful warmblood mare Mountain Breeze opened the door to her dressage career. From there, Jody's dressage went from strength to strength, and a string of wonderful horses helped Jody climb to Grand Prix level. Jody's passion now lies in breeding and developing Spanish horses for high level dressage. She regularly competes the Lusitano stallion Ali Baba at Grand Prix level, with great success!

Heath and Rozzie Ryan are a husband-and-wife dressage team based in Australia. Rozzie was born in Colchester, England, and started out her riding career as an eventer, competing at some of the most prestigious three day events in Britain, before turning her hand to dressage and moving to Australia with Heath, where he was born and raised. Between them, the couple have a remarkable competition record. Both have competed successfully to Grand Prix level for many years. Rozzie was part of the first Australian Dressage Team to travel overseas to the World Equestrian Games in Stockholm, Sweden in 1990. Heath was on the Australian team for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, with Rozzie as first reserve for the same team. The pair now have a very successful business, breeding and producing world class sports horses, as well as training young riders in all Olympic equestrian disciplines.

Pony-mad from a very young age, Allison Brock started her riding career at the age of 7, and soon took up dressage as her main focus. In her teens and early twenties, Allison trained as a working pupil with some very notable dressage names, including Sue Blinks. Her time with Sue Blinks included travelling to the World Equestrian Games in 2002, in which her American team won a silver medal. During this time, she also produced her first FEI horse, under Sue's guidance. With her main horse Rosevelt, Allison has won numerous Grand Prixs and Grand Prix Specials, regularly scoring well over 70%. Allison's dream is to compete internationally for her country at Grand Prix level, and she is now aiming to secure her spot on the USA Dressage team for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio **UPDATED** Allison successfully secured her spot on the USA Dressage team for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio winning a bronze medal in the Team Dressage Grand Prix Special. 

Born in Vienna in 1986, Pia did not discover her love of horses until she had her first riding lesson at the age of 14, when she immediately became hooked. Soon after, she got her first horse and began to work her way up the levels in dressage, from her home in Austria. In 2005, a new ride 'Fine Wind' brought her her first Grand Prix Victory. Over the intervening years, Pia has developed a string of wonderful horses, and collected many national and international placings. Her latest mount 'Al Pacino' is very comfortable on the Grand Prix scene, and is taking Pia from strength to strength in her dressage career.

Since joining the pony club at the age of 9, Lucy Straker has competed successfully in various equestrian disciplines, including show jumping and dressage. In 1993 she became Junior National Dressage Champion at the Malvern Championships. After working on a showjumping yard for several years and competing up to 1.25m classes, Lucy was well and truly bitten by the dressage bug in 1999, and this became her passion from then on. Lucy now rides her own Lionheart II, which she bought from a just-backed 4 year-old to a Grand Prix success, including placing at the Hartpury CDI3* in 2010. Lucy is also producing her other horse 'Farramir', having had some good results at Intermediate level at Hartpury in 2013, as well as progressing 'Deejy Hello' through the Young Horse Classes. VISIT HER WEBSITE  LIKE HER ON FACEBOOK 

Bobby has spent a lifetime with horses, riding in her first show at the tender age of three on her beloved Shetland pony Polly. Having competed at the Pony, Junior and Young Rider Europeans, aged just 22, Bobby now competes at Grand Prix level.  She was selected as a member of the World Class Programme in 2010, a UK Sport funded initiative, which supports equestrian athletes with Olympics potential.  In 2013 Bobby was the only Brit to compete in the Under25s big tour classes at Roosendaal CD13*/U25. VISIT WEBSITE  LIKE ON FACEBOOK  FOLLOW ON TWITTER

Special episode with host, Roseanna Sunley, as she talks about how the podcast started, some of the challenges that she has faced actually getting it out there, along with some of her personal thoughts and highlights from the interviews.    LIKE HER ON FACEBOOK 

A former European Championship pony selectee, Paul Hayler began his riding career as an event rider, but it was when he took one of his event horses to Sarah Whitmore's dressage yard that his love affair with the discipline began. With a formidable career that kicked off when he was selected for the Young Rider European Team Championships in Italy, Paul has competed on a vast number of horses at both international small and big tour level. He has competed internationally at Grand Prix, ridden at Olympia for World Cup Qualifiers, twice won the 4-Year-Old Dressage Championship and is now a list 1 BD judge and the Training Director for British Dressage.   VISIT WEBSITE  LIKE ON FACEBOOK  FOLLOW ON TWITTER

We have a bit of an interesting episode for you today, because we've actually got a bit of a double whammy for you! We have Bobby and Paul Hayler, the daddy-daughter-dressage-duo, who have actually taken quite a lot of work to pin down together, considering they are daddy and daughter. To get them online at the same time for half an hour has actually been harder than you guys think, but we have them here, so really excited to have you both. How are you guys today? I'm good thank you and I'm glad we've managed to get together.  It has been quite trialling, hasn't it?  To try and get both of us together, even though we're on the same yard, but we're either riding or teaching or competing so it has been quite traumatic really to get it sorted. I know.  You would think you guys are based at the other end of the country sometimes, where obviously you both lead very busy lives.  It was very difficult, but we have you here.  Just to get straight into it, what is your personal life like at th

Full transcript.  Hi Daniel, thank you very much for joining us on this podcast today.  How has your day been?   Thank you to contact me and give me this opportunity to speak with you and with the people who are following your programme.  I am here in Mijas at home, my day was very good.  I was riding this morning and teaching a little bit this afternoon so we have a very nice day.   Fantastic, so to start off this interview, one of the questions that we ask all the people that we interview is something a little bit different. We would like to know an interesting or a weird fact about yourself and something that maybe that most people listening or most people following you would not know about you.  It doesn't have to be horse related.  It can be anything about you, something that maybe most people following you would not know.  Do you have anything that you can share with us?   Well, no my life is a very standard life.  I get up in the morning and I got

Full Transcript Hi Heather and welcome to the podcast- super excited to have you on!  I know it has been quite difficult to pin you down because we have such a big time difference, it's actually ten o'clock in the evening where I am right now, but how are you and how has your day been?  I think it's about five o'clock where you are if I'm right?   Yes, it's a nice sort of day here in Florida.  We've actually got our first break from the heat.  I know that most of the world has been more temperate this year, especially down here as well.  We had a nice 85 degree Christmas and now we're getting into January and it's starting to cool off and be absolutely beautiful weather out and it's a nice sunny day and had a great day actually off from the busy schedule today so I'm quite relaxed and feeling great.   Fantastic.  I'm just listening to you now talking about the nice Florida weather and we are over here in the UK and it's just been rain, rain and I know a lot of parts of

Full transcript: How are you today? Fine. It's an absolutely beautiful sunny day here in Devon. That's lovely, it's actually dry where we are as well. Obviously lots of rain up north but we've actually got a dry day today for a change, absolutely fantastic. It just makes your horsey lifestyle so much easier when we have nice days. It certainly does. It's been quite challenging this winter. It's been very wet. To start off this interview, what we like to do is to do things a little bit differently. I'd like to know an interestingly weird fact about yourself. Something that maybe most of the people that follow you or have lessons off you or know you as this dressage rider might not know about you. It doesn't have to been horsey related but some type of interesting weird fact about yourself. I think most things to do with me are horsey related and that I look after 30 horses almost single handedly here. People always seem to assume that I've got lots of staff and lots of people around and just a few horses but t

Full Transcript  Hi Tom, I'm so excited to have you on this podcast today; thank you very much for joining us.  How are you today?   I'm very well thank you, how are you?   Yes, I'm not too bad thanks.  I'm actually really excited to interview you and to hear more about your story.  I've heard your name an awful lot in the dressage scene so this is quite a bit of an honour for me to be able to interview you.   Well I'm pleased that you are interviewing me and I'm really excited to be able to share some of my way of life here with you.   Brilliant.  Fantastic so let's get going.  First of all, to start things off, I'd like to know something a little bit different about you.  Could you tell us maybe an interesting fact about yourself that most people listening or most people would not know about you?  It doesn't necessarily have to be horse-related, but maybe something a little bit interesting or a little bit quirky that you think most of the people t