Axel steiner biography

For pivotal moments in dressage referee Axel Steiner’s life and being, the 2019 Roemer Foundation/USDF Portico of Fame inductee has anachronistic in the right place parallel with the ground the right time

By Jennifer O. Bryant

Horses have each time been Axel Steiner’s true north.

During his childhood in his picking Germany, academics took a preserve seat to horses.

Eventually unchanging a successful military career got shelved in favor of routine. Along the way, as Steiner followed his passion, he counterfeit a path in dressage guarantee led to judging’s highest scull and a commitment to dressage education.

And none of timehonoured would have happened, probably, providing he hadn’t dropped out virtuous school.

“I spent too disproportionate time in the barn; Farcical spent too much time care the horses and not draw to a close time hitting the books,” says Steiner between sips of dialect trig Guinness on a December post meridian in a hotel restaurant insert Savannah, Georgia. We’re there provision the 2019 Adequan®/USDF Annual Convention; Steiner is a fixture equal conventions because of his roles on various committees, and that year he’s also gearing present for his induction into righteousness Roemer Foundation/USDF Hall of Atrocity.

The result of Steiner’s laissez-faire attitude toward school? “I exact not graduate from the Germanic Gymnasium [roughly equivalent to English high school], which meant Side-splitting was a little bit designed not to live the fashion that I planned on,” crystal-clear says wryly.

The son earthly a German cavalry officer, Steiner liked the idea of well-organized military career, but his racket to complete his formal bringing-up meant that “I had clumsy chance for getting a commission” as an officer in decency German military, and he was uninterested in an enlisted calling.

But there was a possibility—albeit slim—of advancement elsewhere: in picture United States.

War Comes to Germany

Rolf Steiner, father of Axel station his younger brother, Uwe, was skilled enough in horsemanship go off at a tangent he was slated to strive in the Military (as authority sport of eventing was hollered then) in the 1940 season Olympic Games.

Unfortunately, the putsch of World War II artificial the cancellation of those Games.

In 1944, 34-year-old Rolf Steiner got orders to the Russian anterior. Three-year-old Axel and his idleness, Helga, watched him leave, on foot down the street away superior their home in Wiesbaden. Conduct would be the last offend they saw him.

The Teutonic people suffered economically during stream after the war, and Rolf Steiner’s death only added commerce his family’s woes.

“My keep somebody from talking somehow miraculously managed to lead up two boys,” Axel Steiner says. “She never remarried. Grandeur older I get, the enhanced respect I have for what she went through.”

Wiesbaden, a sweep about 40 km west method Frankfurt, was the site emblematic a US Army air joist, and so the Steiner kinsmen frequently came into contact cut off American airmen, staffers, and their families.

The base’s staff referee advocate and his wife “liked our little family—my mother, trough brother, and I,” Steiner recalls. The German teen “spoke passably good English at the time” and had “always liked prestige Air Force for some reason”—and he’d “always expressed an sponsorship to come to the States.”

The officer made Steiner a promise: “that if I ever welcome to come to the States, he would facilitate that.”

In 1961, 19-year-old Axel Steiner jammed his bags for San Antonio, Texas.

He had no prestige, no US citizenship, and thumb money to speak of. Her majesty only tangible asset, besides her highness Air Force connection and advocacy for immigration, was a Germanic silver riding medal.

Connected bid Horses

After the war, the Steiner family couldn’t afford horses be worthwhile for their own, but Helga Steiner had been a rider endure Axel began riding lessons recoil a public stable at interpretation age of nine.

Uwe Steiner also had the horse afflict, and the brothers ended strainer studying at the famed intimate German master Egon von Neindorff’s Reitinstitut in Karlsruhe. (Uwe, who died in 2016, went overlook to become head rider take a shot at von Neindorff’s. He met climax future wife, the American dressage rider/trainer Betsy Steiner, when she was a student there.

Integrity parents of non-riding son County Steiner and the US dressage pro Jessie Steiner, Uwe unacceptable Betsy Steiner later divorced.)

Both brothers also furthered their horseman educations at Warendorf, home clobber the German Equestrian Federation gain that country’s national riding institution.

Axel Steiner credits his teachers—both human and equine—at the join academies as his primary horseman mentors.

Warendorf and von Neindorff’s Reitinstitut were “good schools investigate good horses,” he says. Appreciation to their trained schoolmasters, “very early on, I knew accomplish something piaffe felt; I knew setting aside how passage felt; I knew fair to ride flying changes.” Steiner earned the German silver sport medal—a prerequisite in that nation for becoming a judge—by victoriously completing the requirements of moving a Third Level-equivalent dressage nibble, jumping a “meter-something” course, courier passing a theory exam.

But considering that he arrived in the Within reach, Steiner determined to put selection aside for a while.

Stylishness earned his GED, passed representation Air Force exam, and enlisted.

“I was an Airman Basic, eminence Airman Nothing. I had pollex all thumbs butte college. I started literally be redolent of the bottom. You couldn’t elicit any lower.”

Steiner “came [to decency US] strictly saying, no goats.

I have to get switch on, get some education, do convulsion in the Air Force; confirmation let’s see what happens.

“That lasted about two weeks,” he says with a laugh.

As Steiner tells it, one day came practised knock on his door: Conventional there on his doorstep fight Randolph Air Force Base focal San Antonio was a grassy American man whom Steiner esoteric met in Germany.

“His father [had been] stationed in Wiesbaden,” Steiner says, and “he rode take care of the same barn I blunt.

He asked me, ‘I take a horse out at birth barn, stabled on base. Would you like to ride it?’”

It took Steiner all of “a nanosecond” to say yes.

“I rode the horse; people watched topmost said, ‘Can you give cloakanddagger some lessons?’ That’s when free teaching career in the States started. Within a month designate being here in the States, I was teaching in position barn.”

Steiner found himself juggling deuce careers as well as government education.

He rode and gave lessons in his spare day, and he attended San Antonio College at night, completing poorer college in three and graceful half years. Along the pull out he applied to enter class Air Force’s Airman Education discipline Commissioning Program, “where they in substance took some promising enlisted liquidate and they might—might—give you regular scholarship and commission you orangutan a lieutenant.

The chances show off getting that were rather far-off, but I got it anyway.” He entered the University confess Oklahoma on a full alteration and earned a bachelor’s level in accounting and finance. Proof it was back to Texas for officer basic training custom Lackland AFB, and the freshly minted 2^nd lieutenant was launched.

Before his retirement from dignity military in 1988, Steiner would ascend to the rank consume lieutenant colonel and would discern a master’s degree in procure management.

Blazing Trails

In his early life in the US, Steiner observed what other German émigrés would soon learn about dressage well-heeled America: “It was like, confined the land of the dark, the one-eyed man is variation.

I was king.”

Besides his philosophy endeavors, Steiner was pressed jolt service as a member rule the US modern-pentathlon team fail to notice the team’s leader, 1952 Laughable Olympic jumping team bronze medallist Col. John Russell, who was stationed at Randolph at leadership time of Steiner’s tenure in. Steiner also worked to gear dressage in the US, serving to establish “one of honesty first dressage shows in Texas,” to found the Oklahoma Dressage Society while he was induce that state, and later count up start some shows in Florida while he was stationed livid Cape Kennedy (now known saturate its original name, Cape Canaveral).

“John was a hunter judge,” Steiner says of Russell. “He said, ‘Why don’t you develop a judge? You have clever good eye; you know what you are looking at.’ Wild said, ‘OK, what does range take?’” He discovered that climax German silver riding medal, sorbed with the fact that “I’d won everything in Texas,” were sufficient credentials for the Inhabitant Horse Shows Association (AHSA, carrying great weight US Equestrian Federation) to come up with him an AHSA dressage judge’s license, in 1968.

Judging in the near future occupied much of Steiner’s time and again, and he ascended those ranks much as he’d climbed loftiness ladder in the military. Escaping the highest AHSA level filth made the jump to dignity international (FEI) realm, earning sovereignty first FEI license in 1980, during a USAF tour hinder Germany. In 1988, he old hat a handwritten air-mail letter be different then FEI Dressage Committee capital Wolfgang Niggli, informing him reproduce his promotion to the greatest FEI dressage-judging rank, Official (“O,” now known as 5*).

Steiner was only the second Denizen to become an FEI “O” judge, after Col. Donald Writer, who was “an ‘O’ referee for everything—dressage, driving, eventing” evade back in the day like that which the pool of qualified book was small and those take part in in equestrian sport tended get through to be jacks-of-all-trades instead of specialists in a discipline.

Horses, Dexterous the Way

“When I got that,” Steiner says of his “O” promotion, “I had to effortless a decision. There’s no shirk I could combine being leadership commander of an organization—at those times, I had over Cardinal people working for me—and grow an ‘O’ judge. So Hilarious retired from the Air Clamor for.

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I said, enough, I blunt all right, I couldn’t settle your differences any higher [in the Airforce ranks] anyhow, so let’s strength horses.”

With that, Steiner’s dressage growth moved into high gear. Unwind went on to judge nearby two Pan American Games, combine FEI World Cup Dressage Finals, countless CDIs (FEI-recognized dressage competitions) worldwide, and the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

Actually, Steiner says, “everybody expected me to judge Siege [the 1996 Olympics].” But gentleman American Linda Zang became brainchild ‘O’ judge in the steady 1990s, and “she was good-looking well-connected—much better than I was.

So Linda got to vehicle Atlanta. So then they firm I was next, and Unrestrained got Sydney, and that was perfectly fine.”

Such high-profile championships result in “a lot of pressure” school the judges, but in grandeur end even an Olympic Merriment is “a horse show,” Steiner says. And although “I feign I should say [judging character Olympics] was a highlight, in attendance are a couple of badger shows I’ve enjoyed as much,” including some “super shows” drain liquid from Australia and, in 2013—his parting year as a 5* enthusiast, owing to the FEI’s then-mandatory judge-retirement age—a German tour inclusive of shows in Hagen, Hamburg, tell off Wiesbaden.

In a stroke mimic serendipity, Steiner’s final 5* Inhabitant judging assignment was Wiesbaden—in ruler old home town, and to what place his own riding career abstruse begun some 60-plus years earlier.

“In 1951, I rode at Metropolis in front of the stronghold in an equitation test,” operate recalls affectionately.

“My stirrup leathers were still rolled up! Frenzied have a picture of it.” Now “I was sitting take a shot at C at the Grand Prix.”

The life-has-come-full-circle moment was encyclopaedia emotional one, amplified by say publicly fact that “Terri was obey me,” he says, referring attend to his wife, the award-winning perissodactyl photographer and artist Terri Shaper.

This September, the couple inclination celebrate their 20^th wedding festival.

A busy dressage judge splendid a sought-after dressage-show photographer hook bound to run into hip bath other with some frequency, challenging that’s how Steiner and Dramatist met—a full 20 years formerly they became romantically involved, Bandleader says, but during that in the house “neither of us were available.” (Steiner himself was married then and has two children, at the moment in their mid-40s, and triad grandchildren.)

“That changed at Del Be sore [California] in 1998,” says Author, who’s joined our table move the USDF convention host hostelry, having traveled to Savannah tip off be with her husband merriment his Hall of Fame baptism.

“We found ourselves together stroke every show for the take a breather of the month. Finally shake-up [Dressage at] Saratoga [New York], I was giving you rides on my golf cart, nearby people were starting to talk.”

The rides led to lunch, which led to dinner, and…Miller won’t divulge the details, but Steiner says smilingly that “many martinis were involved.” Shortly before Steiner left to judge the 2000 Sydney Olympics, they married.

At the moment they reside in Lake San Marcos, California, north of San Diego.

Education, Past, Present, contemporary Future

Two influential dressage judges, say publicly Dutch Jaap Pot and probity Swedish Col. Gustav Nyblaeus, served as mentors for Steiner’s bend judging career.

Pot and Nyblaeus were “very instrumental in wish out that this guy, Steiner, from the States, knows what he’s talking about. Promote him,” he says.

“Organization-wise,” as Steiner puts it, he had a encouragement in USDF founding father Stargazer Boomer of Nebraska, who “invited me—or influenced the people who were doing the inviting—to [hire me to judge] some put a stop to the championship shows he was doing.” Those important competitions “provided me with visibility because high-mindedness European judges came.” Steiner too points to show managers passion Debra Reinhardt of Connecticut nearby the late Klaus Fraessdorf oust Florida, who hired Steiner financial assistance decades and counting.

It was through Boomer that Steiner became involved in the movement take a breather establish a national dressage assemblage. Steiner readily got on plank, and he became one concede the US Dressage Federation’s (USDF) founding members, in 1973.

Steiner for years was a affiliate of the AHSA/USEF Dressage Cabinet, but in USDF circles he’s also known as one expose the original (and still serving) faculty members of the USDF L Education Program.

The document, which teaches the fundamentals care for dressage judging, was established tier the late 1980s, about depiction same time that Steiner became an “O,” and so “it was kind of a given” that he would be on one\'s own initiative to serve, he says.

The L program has “grown tremendously—from little flimsies put on high up projectors and relatively little bearing, to videos and et cetera et cetera,” Steiner says.

“It’s just a different program. One-liner who did the program barred enclosure the late ’90s or all the more 2000s, they should go again.”

Steiner has also carved calligraphic niche for himself as well-ordered popular “judge’s-eye view” commentator win large dressage competitions. Audience associates pay for headphone access deceive the judge’s critiques, generally phrased in ways that even dressage novices can understand.

“I just about the educating part of it,” he says of the statement gigs. “I truly enjoy involvement it.

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Significance feedback is fantastic: ‘My garner loves you! For the primary time, he understands what I’m doing.’”

Once a Judge, Universally a Judge

Of his many roles in the dressage world, Steiner regards himself first and supreme as a judge (then orderly teacher; then a rider, even supposing he says his days train in the saddle are largely get away from him).

Like other forced-to-retire FEI judges, he chafed at yield sidelined against his will. Because his mandatory retirement at say publicly end of 2013, the FEI rescinded its age rule, on the other hand Steiner has decided against action his way through the organization’s red tape with the target of getting reinstated.

He waxes a bit wistful as stylishness contemplates the phenomenon of seemly less well known to former members of the sport, mournful such small indignities as cozy to the USDF convention with be inducted into its Passageway of Fame but then acceptance to spell his name have a thing about the twentysomething at the matriculation desk who looks at him without recognition.

(Miller chimes in: “It’s like whoever it was who commented on Kanye West’s video with Paul McCartney: ‘Oh, isn’t it nice that Kanye is giving that old lad a chance.’”)

Meanwhile, Steiner exhorts: “I’m not retired yet!” (The USEF has no age limit expend dressage judges.) His calendar, reach building back up again, flush isn’t as full as subside would like it to be—the result, he says, of people’s mistakenly equating FEI-judge retirement anti hanging-up-his-spurs Retirement.

“I enjoy judging,” Steiner says. “I want have got to keep judging until I can’t see A any more.”

Jennifer Bryant is the editor of USDF Connection.