JUNE 2006 • VOLUME 10 • ©HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Well actually the last five - six years.

What made you start?

Well at the beginning I was a great fan of Anky van Grunsen...but suddenly I was looking at the way of riding and looking at the way of training  and I realized that a lot of essentials I could see were not in harmony with everything I had learned on riding and what I could myself feel.

When I listened with what she told, it didn't fit with what she did.

Then I started to look at comments in the press..and I started to look behind the official presentations and then I started to get shocked.

I saw scenes which I would have preferred not to have seen. More and more I was convinced that this way of riding was doing very, very bad things to the horses. And that was when I started to analyze the system. The problem here in the Netherlands...that this way of riding is being taught by the hyperflexion riders and I can see the development in the basics of the sport. That there are a lot of people trying to do the same because they are told it is a successful way of riding and it is a simple way of riding. That is what is making me so concerned.

So what makes you think that this isn't good for the horses?