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*Exclusive* ‘Dalera is a great communicator – I am a good listener’: Paris dressage champion Jessica von Bredow-Werndl on the home routine that yielded Olympic success
When Jessica von Bredow-Werndl brought her double Olympic champion TSF Dalera BB home from Paris 2024, the first thing she did was turn her out “as soon as possible”. The 17-year-old mare loves her daily turnout (in front brushing boots and over-reach boots). Dalera’s homecoming ritual after any competition always consists of both grazing and hacking.
We now know that Dalera has contested her final competition, although she will still appear at certain shows on a farewell tour and Jessica confirmed that the mare will stay in work.
“I think she would be super disappointed if I didn’t continue to ride her!” Jessica says. “Luckily we have got some more shows together, not to compete, but to enjoy each other and to give the audience that chance to feel that too.”
The pair have been “dancing together”, as Jessica puts it, for nine years. Jessica is proud that Dalera has never been lame, and puts their success down to a mutual partnership, where she listens carefully to what the mare is telling her.
“What we have is more than a partnership, it’s on another level. We have a very special bond.”
Jessica von Bredow-Werndl: “Dalera tells me when she wants to train”
At home, their training has always been structured around Dalera’s desires.
“She is talking to me,” explains Jessica. “OK, maybe I am a good listener, but she really tells me what she wants to do and when.
“She tells me how long she wants to hack out, or she tells me when needs a canter – or a wild canter up the galloping track. And she tells me when she wants to work. She is just too good for everyone!”
Dalera’s days at home do not consist of endless drills in the school. Besides her daily turnout – since Paris she has had a field companion, 11-year-old grand prix mare Forsazza De Malleret – she “loves her cuddle sessions” and long hacks.
“We canter through the forest, hacking out a lot and spending so much extra quality time together,” Jessica says. “We go strolling around, eating grass, massaging – that time together is special too, not just riding her.
“I think I have found a good rhythm between technical training, regeneration and conditioning training, so this keeps the whole work/life balance so good for her because when we have the regeneration part we are hacking out for days,” she explains.
“Then she tells me when she wants to train again. She is a very good communicator about what she needs, which is so cool. So when we are hacking out after a competition, she tells me when she wants to start training. Sometimes it’s day three, sometimes day five, but when she starts playing around when we’re hacking out it means let’s start to do something.”
In Paris Jessica said that this year the veteran mare was feeling “more athletic than ever – she has all the strength she needs and more”. However, with the full set of four gold medals from the past two Olympics, individual golds at the past two European Championships and World Cup titles to boot, there is nothing left for Dalera to prove. She goes out on a high – and it looks like very little is set to change in a daily routine filled with plenty of attention and human intuition on how she spends her time.
“I will continue to thank her again and again her, I kiss her and cuddle her,” says Jessica. “I will spoil her until the last day of her life.”
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Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
