2011 Equitana, the World's Biggest Equestrian Educational Seminar

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2011 Equitana

A renowned equestrian journalist just told me the other day she remembers Equitana as "a fair to buy grooming supplies for your horse and collect a bag full of folders from equine companies, and not as an educational centre." Well, you could indeed shop until you dropped at this year's Equitana in Essen, Germany, and the masses of kids milling about the fairground with riding whips sticking out of their back packs like little autoscooter antennae were proof to that. However most of all the 2011 edition will be remembered as the world's biggest equestrian seminar

, with clinics by Klaus Balkenhol, Isabell Werth, Anky van Grunsven, Ingrid Klimke, David de Wispelaere, Eckart Meyners, Peter Kreinberg, Susanne Miesner, Frederic Pignon and countless others thrown in for free after you paid your admission fee.

It was like a giant brain with synapses making new connections every second and even stout experts learning new things every day. It brought together disciplines that don't meet very often in real life; it gave Anky van Grunsven the chance to put her sense of humor into action in the lion's den and it put the focus on horses and their well-being, not on politics.

The Equitana press officer boasted that Klaus Balkenhol's Xenophon seminar on classical dressage had a full house of 5,500 people whenever the trainer was there making his sessions the most successful of all educational clinics held at Equitana this year.

If you missed it, like my colleague did, have fun with the pictures