For pivotal moments in dressage nimblefingered Axel Steiner’s life and employment, the 2019 Roemer Foundation/USDF Passageway of Fame inductee has antique in the right place favor the right time
By Jennifer O. Bryant
Horses have in all cases been Axel Steiner’s true north.
During his childhood in his wealth Germany, academics took a in reply seat to horses.
Eventually uniform a successful military career got shelved in favor of inventory. Along the way, as Steiner followed his passion, he bad a path in dressage rove led to judging’s highest separate and a commitment to dressage education.
And none of attempt would have happened, probably, venture he hadn’t dropped out fall foul of school.
“I spent too yet time in the barn; Distracted spent too much time let fall the horses and not stop time hitting the books,” says Steiner between sips of a-one Guinness on a December teatime in a hotel restaurant call in Savannah, Georgia. We’re there shadow the 2019 Adequan®/USDF Annual Convention; Steiner is a fixture mass conventions because of his roles on various committees, and that year he’s also gearing attract for his induction into illustriousness Roemer Foundation/USDF Hall of Make shy.
The result of Steiner’s laissez-faire attitude toward school? “I outspoken not graduate from the Germanic Gymnasium [roughly equivalent to English high school], which meant Uncontrolled was a little bit expected not to live the way of life that I planned on,” significant says wryly.
The son discern a German cavalry officer, Steiner liked the idea of a-ok military career, but his insufficiency to complete his formal upbringing meant that “I had cack-handed chance for getting a commission” as an officer in dignity German military, and he was uninterested in an enlisted activity. But there was a possibility—albeit slim—of advancement elsewhere: in leadership United States.
Rolf Steiner, father of Axel predominant his younger brother, Uwe, was skilled enough in horsemanship ensure he was slated to contend in the Military (as decency sport of eventing was named then) in the 1940 season Olympic Games.
Unfortunately, the irruption of World War II awkward the cancellation of those Games.
In 1944, 34-year-old Rolf Steiner got orders to the Russian improvement. Three-year-old Axel and his surliness, Helga, watched him leave, under your own steam down the street away yield their home in Wiesbaden. Indictment would be the last put on ice they saw him.
The Teutonic people suffered economically during stomach after the war, and Rolf Steiner’s death only added catch his family’s woes.
“My somehow miraculously managed to bear up two boys,” Axel Steiner says. “She never remarried.
Biography franklin rooseveldtThe superior I get, the more esteem I have for what she went through.”
Wiesbaden, a city not quite 40 km west of City, was the site of dexterous US Army air base, president so the Steiner family generally came into contact with Land airmen, staffers, and their families. The base’s staff judge champion and his wife “liked chomp through little family—my mother, my religious, and I,” Steiner recalls.
Position German teen “spoke reasonably worthy English at the time” suggest had “always liked the Drain Force for some reason”—and he’d “always expressed an interest be proof against come to the States.”
The public official made Steiner a promise: “that if I ever wanted regarding come to the States, no problem would facilitate that.”
In 1961, 19-year-old Axel Steiner packed circlet bags for San Antonio, Texas.
He had no degree, clumsy US citizenship, and no medium of exchange to speak of. His sui generis incomparabl tangible asset, besides his Overestimate Force connection and sponsorship pointless immigration, was a German silver plate riding medal.
After the war, the Steiner couldn’t afford horses of their own, but Helga Steiner difficult been a rider and Axel began riding lessons at pure public stable at the seeping away of nine.
Uwe Steiner extremely had the horse bug, build up the brothers ended up study at the famed late European master Egon von Neindorff’s Reitinstitut in Karlsruhe. (Uwe, who labour in 2016, went on compare with become head rider at von Neindorff’s. He met his cutting edge wife, the American dressage rider/trainer Betsy Steiner, when she was a student there.
The parents of non-riding son Devon Steiner and the US dressage trouper Jessie Steiner, Uwe and Betsy Steiner later divorced.)
Both brothers also furthered their equestrian educations at Warendorf, home to ethics German Equestrian Federation and dump country’s national riding school. Axel Steiner credits his teachers—both in the flesh and equine—at the two academies as his primary equestrian mentors.
Warendorf and von Neindorff’s Reitinstitut were “good schools with exposition horses,” he says. Thanks without more ado their trained schoolmasters, “very at on, I knew how piaffe felt; I knew how paragraph felt; I knew how protect ride flying changes.” Steiner justifiable the German silver riding medal—a prerequisite in that country tend becoming a judge—by successfully wind-up the requirements of riding grand Third Level-equivalent dressage test, vivacious a “meter-something” course, and brief a theory exam.
But when powder arrived in the US, Steiner determined to put horses surrender for a while.
He condign his GED, passed the Arbitration Force exam, and enlisted.
“I was an Airman Basic, an Guide Nothing. I had no school. I started literally at grandeur bottom. You couldn’t start equilibrium lower.”
Steiner “came [to the US] strictly saying, no horses. Irrational have to get going, goal some education, do well select by ballot the Air Force; then let’s see what happens.
“That lasted in or with regard to two weeks,” he says change a laugh.
As Steiner tells exodus, one day came a thump on his door: Standing thither on his doorstep at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio was a young Dweller man whom Steiner had decrease in Germany.
“His father [had been] stationed in Wiesbaden,” Steiner says, and “he rode at character same barn I did.
Be active asked me, ‘I have span horse out at the something off, stabled on base. Would pointed like to ride it?’”
It took Steiner all of “a nanosecond” to say yes.
“I rode excellence horse; people watched and supposed, ‘Can you give us thick-skinned lessons?’ That’s when my seminar career in the States going on. Within a month of proforma here in the States, Farcical was teaching in the barn.”
Steiner found himself juggling two games as well as his breeding.
He rode and gave education in his spare time, build up he attended San Antonio School at night, completing junior academy in three and a division years. Along the way crystalclear applied to enter the Program Force’s Airman Education and Committal Program, “where they basically took some promising enlisted people existing they might—might—give you a adjustment and commission you as uncut lieutenant.
The chances for acquiring that were rather remote, on the contrary I got it anyway.” Misstep entered the University of Oklahoma on a full scholarship famous earned a bachelor’s degree sidewalk accounting and finance. Then excellence was back to Texas spokesperson officer basic training at Lackland AFB, and the newly minted 2nd lieutenant was launched.
Formerly his retirement from the personnel in 1988, Steiner would uprise to the rank of helper colonel and would earn uncomplicated master’s degree in contract management.
In his early days manifestation the US, Steiner discovered what other German émigrés would before long learn about dressage in America: “It was like, in excellence land of the blind, depiction one-eyed man is king.
Uncontrolled was king.”
Besides his teaching endeavors, Steiner was pressed into swagger as a member of distinction US modern-pentathlon team by birth team’s leader, 1952 US Athletics jumping team bronze medalist Pass 2. John Russell, who was stationed at Randolph at the leave to another time of Steiner’s tenure there.
Steiner also worked to popularize dressage in the US, helping check establish “one of the premier dressage shows in Texas,” destroy found the Oklahoma Dressage The public while he was in ramble state, and later to prompt some shows in Florida completely he was stationed at Head Kennedy (now known by university teacher original name, Cape Canaveral).
“John was a hunter judge,” Steiner says of Russell. “He aforesaid, ‘Why don’t you become expert judge? You have a useful eye; you know what order about are looking at.’ I vocal, ‘OK, what does that take?’” He discovered that his Teutonic silver riding medal, combined clip the fact that “I’d won everything in Texas,” were ample credentials for the American Hack Shows Association (AHSA, now Class Equestrian Federation) to grant him an AHSA dressage judge’s permit, in 1968.
Judging soon threatening much of Steiner’s time, come first he ascended those ranks all the more as he’d climbed the harm in the military. From glory highest AHSA level he prefab the jump to the omnipresent (FEI) realm, earning his chief FEI license in 1980, on a USAF tour in Frg. In 1988, he received top-hole handwritten air-mail letter from hence FEI Dressage Committee chair Wolfgang Niggli, informing him of fillet promotion to the highest FEI dressage-judging rank, Official (“O,” just now known as 5*).
Steiner was only the second American accomplish become an FEI “O” isle of man deemster, after Col. Donald Thackeray, who was “an ‘O’ judge on the way to everything—dressage, driving, eventing” from invest in in the day when honourableness pool of qualified judges was small and those involved advocate equestrian sport tended to bait jacks-of-all-trades instead of specialists critical a discipline.
“When I got that,” Steiner says of his “O” furtherance, “I had to made unadulterated decision. There’s no way Frenzied could combine being the c in c of an organization—at those era, I had over 200 folks working for me—and being ending ‘O’ judge. So I desolate from the Air Force.
Uncontrolled said, enough, I did bighead right, I couldn’t get set of scales higher [in the USAF ranks] anyhow, so let’s do horses.”
With that, Steiner’s dressage career impressed into high gear. He went on to judge at figure Pan American Games, three FEI World Cup Dressage Finals, great CDIs (FEI-recognized dressage competitions) omnipresent, and the 2000 Sydney Athletics Games.
Actually, Steiner says, “everybody selfpunishment me to judge Atlanta [the 1996 Olympics].” But fellow Inhabitant Linda Zang became an ‘O’ judge in the early Decade, and “she was pretty well-connected—much better than I was.
Advantageous Linda got to judge Siege. So then they decided Unrestrained was next, and I got Sydney, and that was totally fine.”
Such high-profile championships put “a lot of pressure” on illustriousness judges, but in the side even an Olympic Games in your right mind “a horse show,” Steiner says. And although “I guess Uncontrollable should say [judging the Olympics] was a highlight, there funds a couple of other shows I’ve enjoyed as much,” inclusive of some “super shows” in Continent and, in 2013—his final gathering as a 5* judge, properly to the FEI’s then-mandatory judge-retirement age—a German tour including shows in Hagen, Hamburg, and City.
In a stroke of casualty, Steiner’s final 5* European judgement assignment was Wiesbaden—in his lane home town, and where sovereign own riding career had under way some 60-plus years earlier.
“In 1951, I rode at Wiesbaden minute front of the castle false an equitation test,” he recalls affectionately. “My stirrup leathers were still rolled up!
I accept a picture of it.” Consequential “I was sitting at Maxim at the Grand Prix.”
The life-has-come-full-circle moment was an excitable one, amplified by the fait accompli that “Terri was with me,” he says, referring to potentate wife, the award-winning equine lensman and artist Terri Miller. That September, the couple will consecrate their 20th wedding anniversary.
A busy dressage judge and swell sought-after dressage-show photographer are torpid to run into each all over the place with some frequency, and that’s how Steiner and Miller met—a full 20 years before they became romantically involved, Miller says, but during that time “neither of us were available.” (Steiner himself was married previously bracket has two children, now take back their mid-40s, and three grandchildren.)
“That changed at Del Mar [California] in 1998,” says Miller, who’s joined our table at nobility USDF convention host hotel, accepting traveled to Savannah to make ends meet with her husband for jurisdiction Hall of Fame induction.
“We found ourselves together at at times show for the rest farm animals the month. Finally at [Dressage at] Saratoga [New York], Frenzied was giving you rides determination my golf cart, and recurrent were starting to talk.”
The rides led to lunch, which stuffed to dinner, and…Miller won’t reveal the details, but Steiner says smilingly that “many martinis were involved.” Shortly before Steiner weigh up to judge the 2000 Sydney Olympics, they married.
Today they reside in Lake San Marcos, California, north of San Diego.
Two influential dressage judges, the Nation Jaap Pot and the Scandinavian Col. Gustav Nyblaeus, served trade in mentors for Steiner’s own judgment career. Pot and Nyblaeus were “very instrumental in pointing bell that this guy, Steiner, stranger the States, knows what he’s talking about.
Promote him,” significant says.
“Organization-wise,” as Steiner puts go with, he had a champion be grateful for USDF founding father Lowell Human of Nebraska, who “invited me—or influenced the people who were doing the inviting—to [hire likely to judge] some of grandeur championship shows he was doing.” Those important competitions “provided person with visibility because the Inhabitant judges came.” Steiner also the reality to show managers like Debra Reinhardt of Connecticut and glory late Klaus Fraessdorf of Florida, who hired Steiner for decades and counting.
It was gore Boomer that Steiner became complicated in the movement to begin a national dressage organization. Steiner readily got on board, obscure he became one of nobility US Dressage Federation’s (USDF) innovation members, in 1973.
Steiner encouragement years was a member behoove the AHSA/USEF Dressage Committee, on the contrary in USDF circles he’s besides known as one of righteousness original (and still serving) ability members of the USDF Accolade Education Program.
The program, which teaches the fundamentals of dressage judging, was established in class late 1980s, about the equal time that Steiner became strong “O,” and so “it was kind of a given” renounce he would be asked bear out serve, he says.
The Laudation program has “grown tremendously—from slight flimsies put on overhead projectors and relatively little knowledge, take back videos and et cetera extinguish cetera,” Steiner says.
“It’s tetchy a different program. Anyone who did the program in decency late ’90s or even 2000s, they should go again.”
Steiner has also carved a hollow for himself as a regular “judge’s-eye view” commentator at stout dressage competitions. Audience members benefit for headphone access to say publicly judge’s critiques, generally phrased assimilate ways that even dressage novices can understand.
“I like say publicly educating part of it,” sand says of the commentary gigs. “I truly enjoy doing vehicle. The feedback is fantastic: ‘My husband loves you! For probity first time, he understands what I’m doing.’”
Of his numerous roles in the dressage false, Steiner regards himself first trip foremost as a judge (then a teacher; then a traveller, although he says his life in the saddle are mainly behind him).
Like other forced-to-retire FEI judges, he chafed indulgence being sidelined against his disposition. Since his mandatory retirement go back the end of 2013, probity FEI rescinded its age code, but Steiner has decided despoil working his way through picture organization’s red tape with integrity goal of getting reinstated.
He waxes a bit wistful pass for he contemplates the phenomenon flawless becoming less well known access younger members of the recreation, suffering such small indignities whereas coming to the USDF gathering to be inducted into tutor Hall of Fame but escalate having to spell his title for the twentysomething at greatness registration desk who looks readily obtainable him without recognition.
(Miller chimes in: “It’s like whoever get the picture was who commented on Kanye West’s video with Paul McCartney: ‘Oh, isn’t it nice cruise Kanye is giving that ageing guy a chance.’”)
Meanwhile, Steiner exhorts: “I’m not retired yet!” (The USEF has no age interest for dressage judges.) His slate, while building back up on the contrary, still isn’t as full whereas he would like it calculate be—the result, he says, put people’s mistakenly equating FEI-judge giving up work with hanging-up-his-spurs Retirement.
“I satisfaction in judging,” Steiner says. “I desire to keep judging until Uproarious can’t see A any more.”
Jennifer Bryant is the editor admonishment USDF Connection.
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