Congratulations to Laura Bechtolsheimer who married Mark Tomlinson in Switzerland yesterday.

Read Larua's story.  This article first appeared in Issue 1 of Equestrian Life Magazine.

As she started to rise through the ranks of dressage in Britain, this ability to ride tricky horses started to pay off. In 2005, at the age of 20, Laura, riding Douglas Dorsey, became the youngest British dressage champion, and at about the same time she came across the 17hh chestnut gelding Mistral Hojris (by Michellino).

“I got Alf just before he turned ten and at that stage he had done up to Small Tour level. He was pretty wild, but with obvious talent and I fell in love with him straight away ... however we did get a lot of criticism for buying him. My parents got phone calls from people who couldn’t believe that we would buy him. He had a bad reputation – he had ‘taken off’ a lot with previous riders, crashed through arenas and things like that. When I first got him he fell over with me on board and would ‘take off’ with me all the time.”

“A lot of the top riders who had tried him out said he was not going to cut it as a top horse simply because of his temperament. But as soon as I sat on him I had a connection, I just felt that he and I could work together. I was only 19, just about to turn 20, obviously not an experienced Grand Prix rider and looking back I think that was good for him. I was his friend and we learned together, we spent an awful lot of time together. I took him out hacking and made him go cantering around fields which he thought was very scary! I think that maybe if he had been ridden by an established professional who was very regimented in their training of him it could have gone very wrong. It’s through Alf that I’ve gained a lot of confidence – not just because of the success we’ve had but because of the way he has changed. A lot of the top riders on the continent have come up to me and said lots of nice things about how they didn’t believe it was possible he could change so much. They have said such positive things and that has gone a long way to giving me a lot more confidence and made me a lot more secure about what I’ve achieved.”

Laura adores Alf. Her blue eyes light up as she talks about him and the obvious joy in the partnership she has with him is refreshing and inspiring. It isn’t sentimental twaddle; it comes from a real understanding of her horse and the years spent working together through good times and bad.

The partnership this young girl and her talented but tricky horse have forged together over the past five years resulted in a team and individual silver medal for them at the WEG in Kentucky in 2010.

“In Kentucky, I was very emotional at the end of my Grand Prix test, even before I knew the score. For me the most special thing about the whole show was the fact that he and I had done the best test we’d ever done. It was the most in-synch Alf and I had ever been and it was the most clean, powerful test,  just perfectly on the buttons. He gave me exactly how much of what I wanted when I wanted it. When a horse gives himself so completely to you it is such a special feeling that it beats any moment, even the moment when you hear the score.”

“Warming up we had a few problems with the microphone that Klaus (Blakenhol) and my dad use for training, so my mum and I now tease them that my best test happened when they couldn’t talk to me during the warm-up! In the morning when I had ridden him he was settled but on the ball, just the right amount of sharp but listening to me and I felt pretty confident. There was obviously a lot of pressure – my teammates had gone well the day before and then Carl went in the morning and did very well so a medal was clearly in the bag and all eyes were now on me!”

“After Carl’s test I went back to the hotel. I thought that if I stayed awake I would drive myself crazy and I wanted to switch off, so I went to sleep for a bit. I gave myself the right amount of time to be on the ball and thinking what I wanted to think about. By the time I was on him and warming up for the actual test it felt good and although it sounds stupid, by that stage it was pretty easy to just go and do the job. I knew he was 100% with me, all I had to do was press the right buttons and not mess up.”

Since Kentucky, the gold medal winning partnership of Totilas and Edward Gal has broken up and Laura regrets that she and Alf will not be given the chance to compete against that formidable combination in the future. It also makes her very aware of how lucky she is to be in a position where her horses are all owned by her family and therefore will never be sold from under her. She has huge respect for the ‘Totilas and Edward’ combination who beat her in Kentucky, but she is not overawed or complacent. She muses that maybe if Totilas and Edward had continued to compete together, she and Alf would have had the chance to beat them as the ‘Totilas phenomenon effect’ may have eventually worn off a little with the judges. Ironically, Totilas’ new rider, Matthias Rath, is Laura’s ex-boyfriend so there is plenty of friendly rivalry there which may come out in the competition arena in the future!

Following on from the WEG where one of Laura’s main rivals, Adelinde Cornelissen and Parzival were eliminated, Laura felt there was a point to be made at their next head-to-head at Olympia, London, in December 2010 and had a word with Alf about what had to be done!

“The Grand Prix at Olympia was our first test since the Games and I told Alf, we have to get this one! Adelinde was directly ahead of me in the draw so the judges had a direct comparison. I thought it would be quite close but obviously I was hoping I would get the better of her, and then just before I went in, Adelinde’s score went up. It was just over 78% which was a pretty good score and I haven’t got over 78% that often. So as I was going around the ring I thought right, don’t think about the score, just do it. We came out with 82%, so I beat her by 4%. It was such a relief – we hadn’t just done it, we had done it by a big margin so no-one could say it was because of the home-ground advantage. That felt really good because I knew that it would be a head-to-head battle and probably will be for the next season.”

At this stage the future is looking pretty rosy for Laura and Alf, especially in the lead-up to the Olympic Games in 2012 on home ground in London. I mention Stuart Tinney’s description of how wonderful it was to win a gold medal on home ground at the Olympic Games in Sydney and Laura rubs her arms saying “that the thought gives me goose bumps”. It is going to be an intense campaign for the British equestrian team in the lead-up to London 2012. Apart from the riding, there is plenty of Team GB 2012 promotional work to be done along with ensuring that Alf is kept fit and well to compete at the age of 17.

Laura’s father, Dr Wilfried Bechtolsheimer, is passionate about the management of her horses and focuses intently on their longevity and well-being. He is not only her father but also her trainer. “I am a Daddy’s girl”, Laura happily admits – but this is no Jelena Dokic-type coaching relationship – her father is an experienced horse trainer and coach and they enjoy a good balance between their working and family relationship.

The Bechtolsheimer family is a close one and well-known in equestrian circles. Laura’s mother, Ursula is the daughter of German billionaire Karl-Heinz Kipp and it was her mother’s passion for horse breeding and eventing that sparked the interest for her husband and initiated the move to England.

Although his business interests lay elsewhere, Dr Bechtolsheimer became involved in coaching and worked with the great Sheila Wilcox, to this day the only rider to have won Badminton three years running. He later spotted a young rider who showed great promise for dressage, Carl Hester, and invited him to join the Bechtolsheimer yard as a rider. On his web site, Carl recalls “I was totally overawed at the interview. I had never seen a yard like it or horses of this calibre. When Dr B asked me how much I would want, I said nothing! To ride the horses would be enough! I remember Dr B smiling and saying how does £XX a week and a cottage sound. I thought all my birthdays had come at once!”

Carl has since moved on to his own yard, but the friendship has continued, and it must have been very gratifying for Dr Bechtolsheimer to see both his daughter and Carl on the podium in Kentucky for the British dressage team.

Major championships are often family affairs as Laura’s mother and her three brothers usually try to attend, as well as her father. Laura wryly recounts some of her brothers’ antics at various events, including her youngest brother, Till, walking around the WEG, Kentucky, in an old colonial English outfit – a red tailcoat complete with traditional trousers. In China, at the Beijing Olympics, he was besieged by Chinese people who wanted to take his photograph as he was dressed in an all-in-one Union Jack outfit. Laura’s older rock musician brother Felix, battled a heroin addiction, but  kicked the habit for good after the death of his friend Paula Yates. After his recovery he toured prisons helping others with addiction problems and is now writing a book about his experience. The three brothers are all based in London and the family enjoy getting together as often as possible. Skiing in Switzerland where their grandfather lives is a favourite, but the four Bechtolsheimer ‘children’ happily get together any time they can and seem to enjoy a bit of a party! Laura has no qualms about the fact that she needs to let her hair down occasionally, get away from the horses and see her old university friends who just regard her success as a part of her job.

One day, Laura would like to have a family of her own and hopes she can give her children the opportunities that she was given. Before that, however, she has other aims in mind which include not only her current top horses producing great results but also a desire to bring on her own home-bred young horses. She would very much like to be recognised as an all-round trainer, someone who can develop a horse’s potential from an early age to Grand Prix level and if some of these are bred by the family stud, so much the better. It is easy to say that anyone with the horses and resources that Laura has grown up with is bound to be successful and she admits to having struggled with the perception that certain people had of her.

“I’ve accepted that there are people who like to see the worst in people like me. It’s easy to assume that if you’re wealthy you’re going to be a horrible person or that your success has nothing to do with the work you put in or your talent. But if you can get the respect of people who matter to you, then those sorts of things aren’t important and you know that you can’t change everyone’s opinion. The important thing is that you work hard and that you’re happy in yourself with what you’re doing. I was born with fantastic opportunities and I felt that it was my duty to make the most of them, so I work hard not to miss the chances I have been given.”