About Me
I was born into and raised in a successful equestrian family and I decided at the age of six that I was going to be a professional rider. The plan was as obvious as the goal; after finishing high school I would move to the number one spot for equestrian sports, Germany.
I basically grew up in the saddle and I was lucky enough to have parents that were working full time with horses. I got my first pony at the age of three, Galinja. A tiny pony that made me fall in love with horses, a love that seems to be never ending. She was the best possible pony for a child, but like any pony she would get extremely hungry from time to time and dip her head down into the grass. I would fall off over her head every single time.
At the age of 12 I got to inherit my mother’s dressage horse Torkel. A small, soft and sensitive gentleman who moved with such ease. Thanks to the training my mom had done with him we did very well together. He taught me all of the basics with dressage and the value of a good seat and impact. Torkel and I won several medals at the Swedish National Championships and in the Nordic Championships. Unfortunately he got injured during a show in Globen, Stockholm, and that ended our career together. Once, when my mom was away on vacation, I asked if I could try out her horse Hooch. I ceased the opportunity and competed with him in the regional championship, with my dad coaching us, and we won. After that I shared Hooch with my mom. In 2004 and 2005 I got to represent Sweden and competed in the Junior European Championships together with Hooch. We also competed in the Swedish National Championships and won two bronze medals. During my years competing at the Junior level I also competed in jumping and placed in up to 140-class. In 2005 I qualified in the Junior Swedish National Championships jumping with Avanti.
Considering the goal I set, I moved to Germany in 2006 after graduating high school. I started as an intern at Holga Finken’s place. I brought my horse Cezar with me to Germany. My tasks as an intern varied but included mucking, cleaning out the stables and prep the horses for their riders. After a while I got to warm up Isabel Freese’s horse on Wednesdays, she was a rider at Helga’s. Her usual apprentice was in school on Wednesdays. After that I got my “own” horse to ride and eventually I leveled up and was riding two to three horses a day. It took me about a year to get there. I am very grateful for the opportunity to work at Holga’s as my first stable in Germany. He and his team are such experts. Great and ambitious. Apart from that he’s also meticulous and wants everything to be in order. It was the best education possible for me.
Holga’s “school” opened a lot of doors for me. I got in touch with Dolf Dietram Keller who was looking for riders and when I mentioned that I had been an intern at Holga’s for about a year Dolf welcomed me into his team. He thought that if I had been with Holga for that long I had a solid ground to keep working from. At Dolf’s I was hired as the first rider. It was a dream come true to me. With all of my hard work it was still overwhelming to get a position like that in a professional stable in Germany at the age of 21. I had a lot of responsibilities at Dolf’s. I had to make sure the horses were in training together with Dolf, his wife Manuela and the other staff. I was teaching classes and I was responsible for the staff working together towards our common goals for the horses. I was competing a lot during this time, mostly with younger horses but also a few older ones who needed to compete to gain experience. I remember my second, or third, competition in Germany. I was still struggling a bit with German and I rode in on the center line and it turned out I had been learning the wrong program. Thankfully Manuela was quick to find a program book so she could read the program out loud while I was riding. It’s allowed to have your own reader joining you in smaller competitions in Germany. Thank God, because that really saved me.
During the nine years I spent in Germany I was also showing off stallions at different stallion tests, riding and competing a lot of young horses up to the S-level. For example I competed in the final in the Bundeschampionat in 2012. I’ve gotten to know so many people both in and out of the stables. To this day I still have a lot of my closest friends in Germany.
I moved back to Sweden and Enköping in 2015. I started my own company. Based on my parent’s farm, focusing on training and competing dressage horses. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know some lovely and knowledgeable professionals and their horses. Today I have seven to eight horses in training at a time and a couple of students with different levels of knowledge. I think it’s great to teach others to understand and get a feeling for the horse and its behavior. Why it’s acting in a certain way and how to handle it. It’s really a passion of mine.
The Swedish alpine skier Ingemar Stenmark once said that “the more I practice, the luckier I get” and that’s my favourite quote. “Kind is cool” is another favourite saying as I can inspire and be a role model for others by the way I act. Showing that determination and being humble can get you far, both as an athlete and in your everyday life.
My goals nowadays are to earn a spot on the Swedish National Team within a few years with one of my talented horses and to get the honor of representing Sweden in major championships.