Photo Report: A Short Trip to the 2025 CPEDI Mannheim

-- Text and Photos © Silke Rottermann

When the press application form for Maimarkt Show in Mannheim arrived in my mailbox, I didn’t need second thoughts and sent it back the same day. I live near Heidelberg, ever since I am a child this show is firm on my calendar as it is almost around the corner.

Making Sense

However the closer the Mannheim date came, the more I got doubts if it would make sense to attend. The workload of my real job, which brings home the money, is huge and I knew it would mean I could at most afford one single day away from the desk. Would it make sense just to see a fraction what is a five-day-show for the para riders? Should I go to see the training and vet-check (Friday) or the first day of competition (Sunday)? Should I call it quits altogether?

When the first day of the para-show arrived on Friday 2 May 2025,  my feet twitched and I knew I would regret it if I stayed home on a day like this: The weather was absolutely stunning with a blue sky, sunshine and almost 30 degrees. I checked the weather app and it forecast significantly colder weather and no sunshine on Sunday, so it was decided: It would be vet check and training.

A Short Drive Into a Different World

I tried to get some work done before I left after lunch, but I was dispirited and not on the job, so I took my camera and left earlier than intended. The drive to Mannheim includes a crossing of Heidelberg and seeing the town with its old core, where I once spent happy studying years, always makes me feel good. People were milling at the brink of the Neckar river, cruise ships were at bursting point, and the old bridge full of tourists taking photos looked like an anthill.

Fifteen more minutes on the motorway and I reached the familiar show-grounds at Mannheim right next to the motorway exit. I was lucky to get a parking at the cramped lot between the motorway and the dressage arena, while I heard that others were less lucky.

Reminiscing

There was not much going on when I arrived at the dressage arena between 3 and 4. The Nürnberger Burgpokal warm-up class was just over, so I sat down on a chair in the deserted VIP tent at the short side at A and chilled.

My thoughts drifted back to the early days I spent at Mannheim, back in the early 1990s.  I still remember that I almost peed in my pants asking George Theodorescu for an autograph at the German Championships 1990 when he sat on a chair supervising his daughter Monica, but I got one in the end. Or when a few years later a little boy wanted to enter the dressage ring while a very famous German rider competed and when I tried to prevent him from doing that, I was getting the full blast after the ride, because the medal decorated lady wrongly assumed he was my brother…so much for early Mannheim anecdotes...

Vet Check - Take Badminton as an Example

Finally the clock neared 6 pm and I wandered back to the lorry park to attend the vet-check of the para horses.

The small uninspiring strip of tarmac between the stable tents and the fencing of the property might be quiet and practical as the horses just have a few meters to be back in the stable area, but inside I complain about it every year because it allows for little variation in photos.

While I am typing these lines the first vet inspection at the world-famous five-star-event in Badminton takes place. Like at many other big three-day-events it is set at a central place and is a real happening, with hundreds of spectators attending and horses and riders groomed to perfection, proud to show off their horses to them. Couldn’t this be a role model for dressage?

Wouldn’t a public vet-check be a chance to allow more transparency how horses are assessed to be declared „fit to compete“ in times of so much public criticism? Perhaps then a dressage trot-up wouldn’t appear like a necessary evil anymore…but like an important event in itself.

Enjoying the Training

The vet check over, my last task for today was to take some photos of the first para training in the warm-up rings and the competition arena behind. Most of the para-riders, except of two of the three Danish ladies, had waited for the vet-check to be done and dusted before joining the training.

Like the year before, with the clock now nearing 7 pm, the sun began to disappear and clouds took over, taking care for a strange light to deal with. And like usual para training means that 5 different grades mix and mingle, with trainers, carers and grooms milling around the arenas, ready to give advice or just a helping hand when needed.

Traditionally the Maimarkt Show is a very important one for the Germans and so German national coaches Silke Fütterer and Rolf Grebe had their hands full to coach their charges.

However, it was already felt at CPEDIs like Waregem, which took place before Mannheim and it was also obvious here, we have a year between the Olympics and the World Championships next year at Aachen. Fields seem smaller and the riders from overseas are mainly missing in a season which has the European Championships in Ermelo (NL) in September as the main goal and event of the para dressage year.

Run for the Rain

After 30 minutes photographing from the edge of the competition area and down the tribunes, the air was sticky and humid and the light got increasingly worse. Just when I decided to trundle back to the parking lot, heaven opened. Of course I had no rain protection, neither for me nor my camera, and so hurried to one of the trees behind the dressage arena tribunes for shelter. I did not get one single rain drop under the dense foliage and the rain interlude disappeared as fast as it had come after just a few minutes.

Leaving the show-grounds, I turned around one last time: Goodbye Mannheim, see you next year!

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