By Jürgen Stroscher
Photography: Jürgem Stroscher, Stefan Lafrentz
Everything has its time. This was the case for the Klose family in Alfhausen. According to Kerstin Klose; “2022 was our year. We have finally found the perfect farm for our horses and for us privately. The super success of our stallion San to Alati rounded off the year for us.”
Kerstin Klose only moved into the new breeding facility in Alfhausen near Bersenbrück with her husband Christian in November of 2021. “Everything is actually perfect here.” Christian Klose agrees and sees “hardly any need for improvements” at his new family home. For the 55-year-old, however, the whole thing also means ‘new territory’, because he had never closely experienced the breeding horses belonging to his wife Kerstin and daughter Lena-Marie. “Breeding horses has always been my wife’s thing. I naturally always supported her with it and also went to the shows with Lena-Marie, but since the horses were not stabled with us, I personally didn’t have that much to do with them.”
It was only when daughter Lena-Marie, now 27, seriously discovered riding for herself in 2005 that her mother redis-covered her affinity for horses. “As a child, I invested all my pocket money in horse postcards and studied pedigrees.” Kerstin Klose was born and raised in Hildesheim by parents who had to rebuild everything in the postwar period, putting their own dreams on the back burner. “My father came from Silesia and could not fulfill his wish to have his own horse. Instead, he gave my sisters Marion and Anke and me ponies when he could afford it as a selfemployed baker.” At the age of 16, Kerstin Klose bought her first riding horse from self-earned money as an assistant paralegal and trainee public notary. She competed her horse in jumping classes up to the L-level.
“It quickly became clear to me that I would not make riding horses my profession. Rather, I had decided to earn enough money one day to be able to finance riding. Kerstin Klose’s nature has always been to go her own way and to look for and find the right solutions. “Since I wanted to become an academic, I decided to sell my three riding horses to finance my studies to become a lawyer in Hannover. But since the money was insufficient, she also looked for a job as a waitress in the bar called ‘Easy’ in Alfeld near Hannover, where she eventually met her husband Christian, who also worked there part time. This encounter, however, took her far away from her beloved horses once again.
Together with a teacher in athletics and German, she developed a concept for fitness and health, and, as a team, they finally set up their first self-designed fitness studio in Alfeld. The entrepreneurial couple developed this business idea into their own “brand with a health and medical background” and expanded it.
In the meantime, Kerstin and Christian were married and their children Julian (31) and Lena-Marie (27) were born. Recalling the aforementioned 2005, Kerstin recalls; “If one of my children developed the desire to ride, it was clear to me that I would support them. Julian had absolutely no ambitions in that area, but Lena- Marie all the more.” She continued by explaining; “After the classic pony career, it became clear to us that it’s difficult to find a suitable horse with athletic potential for a junior like Lena-Marie.
However, the Klose couple soon realized that it takes time to create a successful horse breeding program that produces the right horses. In order to not disappoint their daughter Lena-Marie, the parents bought a sport horse for her after all – and did so with success. The young gelding Redmond (Rosentau x Werther; breeder: Hans-Jürgen Sitzenstock, Bad Salzdetfurth), who had been trained by Lena-Marie‘s riding instructor Antje-Kim Wilkens at her dressage farm in Burgwedel, earned the state championship- title in Hannover in 2013 with the young dressage rider. The now 18-year-old black horse is currently successful in dressage competitions up to the S-level with his rider Finnja Pirschel... To read the complete article you need to be a subscriber
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