Bella Rose

Isabell Werth experienced not just one, but several emotional moments of the kind she had in Aachen with Satchmo with the Westphalian mare Bella Rose. The three-year-old Belissimo M-daughter moved in with her. Werth saw Bella Rose trotting on the lunge at her breeders, the Strunk family in Bochum, and was electrified. Her first impression did not deceive her. In one of her books, Werth writes that she still has no words to describe the feeling she had when she rode Bella Rose for the first time.

Werth presented the then seven-year-old in a training demonstration at EQUITANA 2011 in Essen. She was not in the saddle herself at the time, but her stable rider Matthias Bouten, who saw Bella Rose as a three-year-old with the Strunk family and gave Isabell Werth the tip. Anyone who saw the mare at her first big show in Essen will agree: It wasn’t just Werth who had that wow feeling when she saw Bella Rose for the first time. Yes, you have to call it an experience. What a horse! What movement possibilities! But also: what a temperament!

A Star is born Part I

Just three years later, the mare had arrived in Grand Prix sport. At the age of ten, her star was shining brightly in the firmament. She was nominated for the World Equestrian Games in Caen. With 81.529 percent, she was only beaten in the Grand Prix by the then unbeatable Olympic champion Valegro and came second ahead of Germany’s top pair of the previous years, Damon Hill and Helen Langehanenberg. Bella Rose thus had the lion’s share of the German team gold. But then came the disillusionment. Werth withdrew the mare before the special. She had a hoof dermatitis, it was said. She actually competed again in Stuttgart in the fall, winning the Grand Prix and Freestyle. But this was to be the mare’s last show for a long time.

Written off

In winter she started to go lame again. A “bone defect” was diagnosed. Werth never said that the mare would not return to the sport. But most people had probably already written off the beautiful chestnut mare. Isabell Werth, however, believed unwaveringly that her Bella would one day return to the dressage arena. And indeed, 2018 was the year. She was back at the Schindlhof in Fritzens. She won and her rider cried. It wasn’t the first time, nor the last, that Bella Rose’s eagerness brought tears to her eyes.

Comeback at the World Cup

A few months later, the World Equestrian Games in Tryon, USA, were on the agenda. Germany’s goal: the twelfth World Championship team gold. Isabell Werth would have had a safe bank in her stable with the Olympic team champion Weihegold. “Weihe” always delivered just as reliably as her rider. But Werth really wanted to ride Bella Rose in Tryon. There was a lot of talk – would the mare last? She hardly has any competition experience! And wouldn’t it be better for the team to rely on the proven Weihegold? Bella Rose provided the answers in her own way: 84.829 percent in the World Championship Grand Prix of Tryon, the title for Team Germany. And then another 86.246 percent in the Grand Prix Special, the title for Bella Rose. “This ride will go down in history because it has a story,” Jan Tönjes summed it up at the time. It is the story of a rider who unwaveringly believed in her horse when others would have given up long ago, and who was richly rewarded for it. The following year with triple European Championship gold. In 2021 with team gold and individual silver at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. That was the mare’s last major tournament.

At the CHIO Aachen, Werth bid Bella Rose farewell into retirement – in tears, of course. “I can’t tell you what this moment means to me,” she thanked the moved audience in the dressage stadium at the time, sobbing, while Bella Rose chewed on her curb bit in the background. She then joined Isabell Werth’s many other pensioners in the pasture.

She now has two foals, both by stallions from Werth’s stable, Valdiviani and Majestic Taonga.