Christopher Hector has a new rant… The World Anti Doping Authority has become an out-of-control and vicious bureaucracy, happy to persecute individual athletes – ask runner, Peter Bol, or swimmer, Shayna Jack, they both were banned and had their lives turned upside down, before WADA conceded they were innocent. But it’s a different story when faced with the might of the Chinese Sports Federation, Oh! so twenty three of your swimmers proved positive to a banned substance, we’ll just hide that result and let them go and compete at the Games, after all, our sponsors love records being broken. Th ..read more

  The companion volume to Gottard to Garibaldi – the making of the modern Warmblood, has just been published in digital form on Amazon, so it is available worldwide… Here are the chapters   And a few more pages to give you a taste…   To purchase the book, just go to Amazon, and search for: ‘Heroes – The Foundation Sires of the Modern Warmblood by Christopher Hector ..read more

In a few weeks Riyadh in Saudi Arabia will host the Dressage World Cup Final, but you won’t be reading about it on our website. This is not a decision made lightly, I find the whole cancel culture hysteria offensive. The attitude that if an individual offends, then all mention of them is banned even if what they have written is helpful, wise, and nothing to do with their offence. If it turns out Shakespeare beat his wife, we ban the plays and the sonnets! But this case is different. The sole reason the Saudis have spent billions of dollars  buying complicit sports, is to try and improve ..read more

Wellington, Fla. – April 4, 2024 – Owner Betsy Juliano and rider Adrienne Lyle announced this week that 17-year-old Hanoverian stallion Salvino (Sandro Hit x Donnerhall) will not be a contender for the U.S. team for the Olympic Games in Paris and will be retired from competition. Salvino and Lyle were members of the silver-medal winning U.S. team at the Tokyo Olympic Games, as well as the silver medal team at the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games™. Most recently, they were members of the 2022 World Championship team and finished sixth overall for the U.S.   Throughout a storied career ..read more

Influence from the sire’s side… (Photo: Hannoveraner Verband/Arnd Bronkhorst)   (Verden Press Release) Since 2009, the Grande-Prize has been awarded to a stallion between the ages of ten and twelve at the beginning of the breeding season. Toto Jr. is a stallion who is only rarely used in Hannover, but has proven his quality through his licensed sons. The awarding of the Grande-Prize to a middle-aged stallion is linked to the hope that he will have a lasting positive influence on Hannoverian breeding. Normally, this is the case when the stallion is widely used in the population, mainly vi ..read more

I was lucky enough to ride in a number of Nuno Oliveira’s clinics in the 1980’s. They were occasions of great drama, as several of the self-anointed Great Ladies of the dressage scene battled for Nuno’s attention, but if you cut out the clatter, and listened hard, there was so much to learn. Just how much, I don’t think I appreciated then, reading through two splendid publications from Xenophon press, Equestrian Art: The Collected Early Writings (1951 – 1956) by Master Nuno Oliveira, and its companion The Collected Later Works, I realise just how much of the subtly and depth of the great man ..read more

I was lucky enough to ride in a number of Nuno Oliveira’s clinics in the 1980’s. They were occasions of great drama, as several of the self-anointed Great Ladies of the dressage scene battled for Nuno’s attention, but if you cut out the clatter, and listened hard, there was so much to learn. Just how much, I don’t think I appreciated then, reading through two splendid publications from Xenophon press, Equestrian Art: The Collected Early Writings (1951 – 1956) by Master Nuno Oliveira, and its companion The Collected Later Works, I realise just how much of the subtly and depth of the great man ..read more

This is an extract from The Way to Perfect Horsemanship by Üdo Bürger. Udo Bürger was one of Germany’s most esteemed veterinary surgeons, an accomplished horseman, a learned and observant animal psychologist, and a highly respected judge of horses and horsemanship before his death in 1985. A new book, The Rider forms the horse is available from Xenophon here. The loosening-up exercises which we should do at the beginning of every lesson are necessary to warm-up, to limber-up joints stiffened by long hours of standing; they can do no more than restore the degree of relaxation of which the hors ..read more

There is a disease that right now poses a far greater threat to the future of sporthorse breeding than WFFS ever did, a disease that is spread through some of the most famous, and most used, Warmblood breeding lines. You might not have got this impression from the bland statement issued by the FEI, but talk to the breeders, the ones who are really connected with horses, and you get a very different picture. Eugène Reesink, one of the most astute observers of the sporthorse scene, suggests that the condition known as shivers is a far greater problem than WFFS. On my way to Aachen 2023, I led a ..read more

I was teasing one of my riders last weekend, asking her about the wording of the rules of a canter pirouette, which she didn’t know, but was showing PSG none-the-less.  I gave her a hard time, but reassured her she is not alone in not having read them.  I’ve said it before, and will say it again, how is it that someone competes in a sport, yet doesn’t read the rule book or guidelines that supposedly govern the sport they actively compete in?  Sadly though, it isn’t just my amateur clinic clients and friends who are either not reading the rulebook and its guidelines, or not know ..read more