The images seduce you to dream: beautiful horses with beautiful people on their backs gallop past green pastures in the sunshine. The photos come from Aubenhausen in Bavaria, “the home of dressage horses,” as it says on the Werndl family website.
Next scene: A horse tenderly nudges a young woman in the face, receives a gentle kiss in return on the nostrils, pure harmony. The woman is Jessica von Bredow-Werndl, 38, Olympic champion in 2021 and 2024. The horse is called Kismet, the mare she took over from the British Charlotte Dujardin. The 2012 and 2016 Olympic champion was suspended after a video of her abusing a student’s horse was published shortly before the Paris Games. Dujardin lost all her sponsors and had to give up the horses.
Kismet, who converted each of her four international starts into a victory under Dujardin, has landed in Aubenhausen, and Jessica von Bredow-Werndl will be using an app to let her fans know how the horse’s training is progressing over the next few months. The goal is the 2026 World Cup in Aachen. Her Olympic horse, the 17-year-old Trakehner mare Dalera, is going on a farewell tour these weeks. At the weekend she thrilled the audience in Neumünster, danced lightly through her Olympic freestyle again, accompanied by a standing ovation and tears of emotion from the rider. Love and trust – that’s how dressage works, these pictures say.
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“We can now develop a common language,” says Jessica von Bredow-Werndl about Kismet. That sounds nice, not at all like the sweat and work that is generally associated with top performance. In the pictures from Aubenhausen there is cuddling and kissing. You might get the impression that you can one day become an Olympic champion. Of course it’s not like that, and the rider vehemently contradicts that. “Of course we also show the daily work with the horses, we are completely open. But not on social media, but in the protected space of Aubenhausen clubs. That’s where the people who really care are.”
The paid club offers its almost 10,000 members a range of workshops and instructional videos, yoga courses, equestrian gymnastics and advice for young mothers on how to get back in the saddle quickly after the birth of a child. “We want to pass on our experiences and knowledge,” says von Bredow-Werndl. “We don’t hide anything. We also admit failures.” Every question is answered, the club members get an insight into the daily training and get tips on how to teach the horses certain lessons. The concept lives from the image of the horse-loving Werndl family, the siblings Jessica and Benjamin, who are also internationally successful.
The shitstorm is a new experience for her – is it the price of fame?
Recently, however, completely different pictures of the world number one appeared online. At a tournament in Ising am Chiemsee, von Bredow-Werndl was shown off by her ten-year-old horse Gatsby. The black-brown one repeatedly resisted, crawled backwards, turned around and tried to climb up. Not in the mood for dressage today, he seemed to say with every fiber of his body. Proof that you can’t force horses to take a lesson if they don’t want to. Instead of giving up, von Bredow-Werndl tried to somehow maneuver the horse through the task without becoming rough. There was nothing relevant to animal welfare here. “Maybe I should have stopped sooner, I had done that in the exam before,” she says. “But I didn’t want that this time.” If he goes straight back to the stable after every problem, Gatsby could also see that as a reward.
In any case, the internet reacted promptly, there was hatred and insults, and the dressage icon suddenly found herself exposed to an unusual shitstorm. The price of fame? “The question is rather, how does society deal with the failure and vulnerability of us as humans? “Are Olympic champions no longer allowed to fail?” asks Jessica von Bredow-Werndl. “What do people imagine, judging me based on a five-minute video?” An experience that others, such as the eight-time Olympic champion Isabell Werth, had to go through before her. What happens next with Gatsby remains to be seen. “Not every horse is born for competition,” says von Bredow-Werndl.
Above all, she experienced solidarity from her club members, at a moment when Dalera was leaving breeding and her rider’s sporting future had reached a turning point. By the way, the name of the Olympic champion is missing from the equestrian association’s championship squad. She is confident that this will change soon.
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