Steffen Peters

The US dressage star talks to Pippa Roome about battling back from “a very dark place” following a confidence crisis

- Pippa Roome

“IT’S easy when things go well, but when they don’t and people stick by you – how can you put that into words? There’s so much gratitude for that. Last year was tough.”

Sitting in the VIP tent at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival (AGDF) in Florida, Steffen Peters appears to be on top of the world. On the day we meet, he had won the World Cup qualifier grand prix the previous night. That evening, he would win the freestyle too. A glance at his FEI record a couple of months later shows that he and Suppenkasper were unbeaten during the AGDF season, winning 11 classes, with scores up to 83.5%.

But the emotion Steffen showed after those wins tells the story, which goes far beyond a mere scorecard. Because, despite being the holder of six Olympic and world medals, the 55-year-old has suffered from severe confidence problems over the past 18 months.

Oddly, Steffen’s issues started with one horse, his current top ride Suppenkasper (Mopsie), and yet that horse has also been the key to his return.

LET us start from the beginning. Steffen found Mopsie in the summer of 2017, through his friend Dr Ulf Möller.

“He had started to work for Andreas Helgstrand, so I called up and said we were looking for a top horse for Tokyo,” he explains. “He said he might have something and called back to say it was Suppenkasper. I had heard of him, so I looked at videos and loved him.”

Steffen was heading to Europe around the same time for shows, so he tried the horse with his former rider, Germany’s Helen Langehanenberg.