HIDDEN VALLEY : Top Trainer Leads Select Riding Clinic

Carilyn Schmitt was intent on making her horse stand out.

So when dressage trainer Conrad Schumacher belted out commands at the Sandstone Ranch in Hidden Valley, the 17-year-old Westlake High School senior paid attention.

“Hind legs in,” he said. “Keep the head down.”

This was no normal training session for Schumacher, one of Germany’s leading trainers in the equestrian competition of dressage.

Eight young riders from Western states, including two from Ventura County, have been chosen by the U.S. Equestrian Team to participate this week in Schumacher’s special three-day clinic. The other county resident is Valerie Larson of Camarillo.

After this week, he goes to New Jersey, where he will conduct another clinic.

Normally the sessions would cost about $100 a day. But instead, these teen-agers are getting free coaching aimed at helping them someday reach Olympic caliber.

In dressage, a slower, more stately sport than show jumping, the aim is to display the horse’s power while looking as graceful as possible in the saddle.

That takes a lot of mental and athletic skill, Schumacher tells his students.

“Mentally, it’s a difficult sport. You have to control not only your own brain, you have to control the horse,” he said. “If you work two or three horses a day as a dressage rider, then you have a condition like a football player,” he said in his accented English.

Neither the horses nor the eight young riders are ready for the Olympics, Schumacher said. “If (a rider) doesn’t like to work or is lazy, then he has no chance,” he said. “All of them are good. They are really talented.”

Each day, Schumacher works in the arena with each rider for 30 to 45 minutes. He asks them to write four things that they want to work on. Then, he goes through the movements over and over.

“He improved my horse’s gait a lot,” said Carilyn, astride her 7-year-old thoroughbred Chrytique.

Carilyn, who lives in Moorpark, has been riding since she was 6, but she still trains four to five hours a day, six days a week. Someday she hopes to make the U.S. Olympic team, following in the hoof prints of trainer Hilda Gurney, a bronze medalist in the 1976 Olympics.

“Dressage takes years. You can never be too good,” she said. “There’s more things to learn every day.”