2012 Action Maverick Award Recipient — Bettina Drummond

While much of the world seems in conflict over the question of whether dressage is art or sport, classical trainer and rider Bettina Drummond faces no such conflict. For her, riding has always been art. Any work of art, Drummond said, should not only move people, but also serve as a catalyst that inspires more art.

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Memories of Joao, My First Dressage Teacher

By Bettina Drummond

My earliest memory of Joao Oliveira was during a visit in 1970 to his father’s old school, Quinta do Chafariz. My mother, Phyllis Field, had cliniced with Oliveira, and she arranged for my sister, Fiona, and me to join her there during our spring break.

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Young Bettina Drummond is Passing On the Training Techniques of the Great Master — In the Style of Nuno

There are three people in the world authorized by Nuno Oliveira to teach his techniques: there are two in Portugal, Oliveira’s son Juao, and Guilherme Borba. In America, there is Bettina Drummond, a slim 23-year-old who trains 12 horses daily at her barn in Vista, New York.

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Bettina Drummond – Preserving a Classical Art

As an adolescent, growing up on the backs of some of the most highly trained haute Ecole horses of Europe, Bettina Drummond had the unique and extraordinary experience of being exposed to the world-renowned classical dressage master Nuno Oliveira, perhaps the most revered classical horseman of our time.

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Spring Symposium with Bettina Drummond

Bettina Drummond was a budding pianist at the age of seven when her mother, the late Phyllis Field, pulled her from her studies in Paris and sent her off to Portugal to study with the great riding master Nuno Oliveira. For the next 20 years, Bettina was immersed in the classical system of riding, most particularly the French system.

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The Rider as Artist – Bettina Drummond Profile

Born with a love of art and horses.

Born in London, Drummond, 45, is a member of the Marshall Field family on her mother’s side and of ancient Scottish royal blood on the side of her father, Bend’or Drummond. She was raised mostly in Europe, particularly in Paris, but spent much time in America as her mother wanted to ensure she had American citizenship.

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Baucher… Still Controversial Today

This passionate 19th-century riding master’s departure from venerable dressage methods led to praise and criticism that has been debated over the last 200 years.

From Xenophon to the present, dressage masters have attempted to explain how to correctly ride and train the horse, creating a strong thread that links one generation of dressage riders to the next.

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Bettina Drummond — In a Classic Manner

Bettina Drummond is a scholar of dressage training. Her trips to the local tack shop rarely entail the purchase of horse supplies, but more likely she buys the latest literature on dressage training techniques. Years of devouring other people’s philosophies and techniques, coupled with her own lifetime of riding, training and learning experiences, have developed her as a formidable maestro in her own right.

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Was Oliveira a Baucherist?

In 1978, or thereabout, Roger Louis Thomas, the then director of the French riding magazine L’information Hippique, asked me to write a bibliographic note on Reflexions sur l’Art Equestre (Reflections on the Equestrian Art), a book by Oliveira (his first book, if memory serves), which was being reprinted. Had it been about any other author, I probably would have proceeded as is customary with this type of task:

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