Feeling the change: meet the bridleless rider who opened the World Championships in Aachen

Meet the rider and trainer who combines competing with liberty work, and teaching chemistry – and who opened the World Championships in Aachen, the biggest stage in the world, without a bridle.

Lisa Röckener turned heads in the championships opening ceremony last week, as she jumped through the Welcome Home arch, pulled a golden flag from its ceiling and galloped around the ring – with the horse who helped change her life.

Lisa told H&H she has ridden since before she could walk; she grew up on a small farm surrounded by ponies, a donkey, dogs and chickens.

“It was an amazing childhood,” she said. “My father is a blacksmith so my whole life has been about horses.”

Lisa’s first competition was when she was two, her father leading. She went into eventing, representing her country, and was on an elite programme for up-and-coming riders.

“It was an amazing time,” she said. “But then I had a big accident with my horse, a week or two before the European Championships. We had a rotational fall, I broke my bones and my body wasn’t looking so good.

“I went to hospital, had a lot of operations, and after that my parents thought I would stop riding, I’d never get on a horse again. I was very lucky to survive – it was my second birthday – but although I tried and tried to ride cross-country again, I was scared.”

Lisa, who was 17 at the time of her fall, thought she would stop riding and concentrate on her studies. But then Valoo came along.

“He was three and a half years old, so he didn’t know anything,” she said. “It gave me a new project, a way to go back to riding. Every day I drove three to three and a half hours to study, then I rode the horse in the afternoon.

“Before him, I sometimes tried groundwork but trainers didn’t smile when I did it! I did a small show at our riding club at home, at Christmas, but I didn’t film it or tell anyone because I was a bit shy, I thought ‘I’m a rider, not a groundworker’. But I lost my fear of riding through the groundwork.”

Lisa Röckener: building relatinships

Having built the relationship with Valoo on the ground, she tried riding him with a neck rope.

“I felt the connection with the horse so much deeper than with a bridle,” she said. “I realised I could go left and right, do this and that without the bridle – it was amazing for me.”

Lisa rides both with and without a bridle, competing and giving displays, and as well as teaching chemistry – and PE – at school, she has built a reputation as a trainer.

“When I started with this, people would say ‘Oh it’s Lisa Röckener, she does fancy dress on the horse, she doesn’t do big competitions’,” she said. “Now, Ingrid Klimke and all the big riders ask me for training, and I train the Olympic riders in Germany. It’s so cool because they can help me with ‘normal’ riding, a flying change, jumping or cross-country, and I help them with the everyday work.”

Ingrid even rode Valoo at the Ball des Sports, a major German festival of all sports.

“She rang me, after a show I did, and said ‘Hi Lisa’, and I said ‘Oh, hey Ingrid Klimke’! As I only know her from TV, it was very special. We were there five days and at first I trained him over the jump, then she came and rode my horse. We’ve been friends since.”

The pair have put out educational videos as well as working and training together; Lisa said Ingrid’s horses have learned to lie down when asked.

“That’s a thing I do at the end of the training,” Lisa said. “People sometimes say they want to learn only that, and I said ‘Ok but for this you need a very strong connection with your horse, and the trust’, it’s not something for the beginning. But in every lesson, with every rider, there are moments of ‘Yes, I feel it, this works’. It’s like all riding, and you get another feeling and connection with the horse when you do the groundwork.”

Lisa said friends of hers sent video of her riding to the organisers of a “talent show” that led to her participating in the World Championships opening ceremony.

“It was amazing,” she said. “Before the show, I was so nervous; normally I’m not as I’ve been doing shows 10 years but in Aachen I was nervous. Because an hour before I got on the horse, they said ‘You’ll jump, then maybe 10 seconds later we’ll have fireworks’. I said ‘Ok, you know I’m on the horse without a bridle?’! But ‘Yes, ok, I can do this’.

“I did have one hand on the neck rope; normally I’d have both hands on the golden flag but my horse was fast!”

Lisa now has more shows planned, and hopes to go bigger, as she tries to spread the word of another way of riding.

“I have people who only do groundwork, Olympic riders, young people, old people, everyone in my lessons,” she said. “It’s amazing to see how much you can do with one lesson, for the feeling as the beginning, then the open mind for everything else. You don’t have to do 100 hours’ groundwork to feel something, you feel it in the first lesson. I often see open eyes of people, and I say ‘Yes, this is the feeling’.”

Lisa added that she heard and saw events at the first British Bridleless Competition in the UK this year, and thinks there is a change in the air.

“I feel it, after Aachen,” she said. “The internet is full of ‘To change the World Championships’. I say I’m not changing it – but maybe I’ve given a little kick towards the other side.”

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