Four weeks as a groom at Helgstrand Dressage: Rebekka Klubien

Her research caused a stir: Danish tv journalist Rebekka Klubien
worked as a groom at Helgstrand Dressage in Denmark. At the big
sale stable operated by Danish Olympian Andreas Helgstrand she was
able to create video footage with a hidden camera. In this podcast
the journalist talks to podcast host Jan Toenjes, editor in chief
of Germany’s oldest equestrian news outlet St.GEORG. Rebekka
describes how she managed to get the hidden camera positioned in
the indoor arena and what she experienced in the stable doing her
daily routines there. In this talk the two journalists discuss
about the consequences that the documentary called “the horse
billionaire” – billionaire because the yearly revenue at Helgstrand
in Danish Crowns (DKK) sums up to more than a billion Crowns
(146.083.500 US Dollar) – have had already in Denmark. The
documentary’s first episode was aired on November, 22 last year and
it raised worldwide about the way horses were treated at Helgstrand
Dressage. CEO Andreas Helgstrand had tried to avoid the broadcast
of the footage taken in his stable early in the year 2023 but
judges in Denmark saw a public interest because of the animal
welfare issues the program made visible. Who is Rebekka Klubien?
Born in 1996 Rebekka Klubien graduated from university in 2021. She
started working at the public broadcast tv station TV2 in 2022.
Currently she holds the position as a TV producer in the
investigative journalism department. https://www.tv2.dk What ist
St.GEORG? St.GEORG is Germany’s oldest equestrian publication
founded in 1900. Operated from Hamburg it covers everything of
interest in the horse world. Amongst other topics it was St.GEORG
that first came up with a discussion about dressage training and in
what frame dressage horses should be warmed up. The term “rollkur”
often quoted for horses ridden in a position with the nose line
behind the vertical was first used in a headline of an article
discussing training methods that later were called LDR (low, deep
and round).