Steffen Peters: The Six-Time Olympian on the Dark Place Behind the Medals (Part 1)

When did you make it?

Ask most riders that question and they'll point to a medal. Steffen Peters points somewhere else — to the darkest place he has ever been, and the way back out of it.

This is Part 1 of my conversation with a six-time Olympian, and we barely touch a rein. Forty years of horse training sit behind this man, and the first thing he wants to talk about isn't a horse. It's the thing underneath the ribbons.

The neuropathy in his hands and feet after Paris that twenty-five doctors couldn't explain. The cold plunge and the vagus nerve, and the natural experiment that gave him relief when the medications didn't. The one ride in Tokyo — September 27th, 2018, a date he can still name — that sent him spiraling, and what it taught him about himself that no arena ever did.

He says you cannot manage stress. You can only manage yourself. He learned it, in his own words, way too late. The quality of your thoughts becomes the quality of your life, and for a while his thoughts were trying to take him under.

We get into the ego leaving, and the pride that stays. Why he loves that strangers in an airport call him "the rave horse" and never say his name. Why exposing weakness became the strength he's known for. What radical acceptance looks like at a Grand Prix, standing at the gate. And how the same sensitivity that can tip a person toward anxiety is the exact instrument that reads a horse — the sensitivity that is the whole art of his horse training, and also the thing that nearly broke him.

Dr. Reiner Klimke is here too, in a story Steffen didn't learn the truth of until five years after it had already set the course of his career.

If you have ever carried a bad day home and let it live in you overnight, this hour is for you. It is a rider telling you what the podium doesn't show.

Steffen Peters is a German-born American dressage rider, a six-time Olympian and multiple Olympic medalist, and one of the most decorated dressage athletes in United States history. He returned to competition this year after stepping away following the Paris Games, opening his season with wins in the Prix St. Georges, the Intermediaire I, and the Grand Prix.

Chapters:

00:00 When It Got Dark 02:04 Neuropathy After Paris 06:36 Managing Thoughts Not Stress 08:28 World Games Spiral 12:34 Why Horses Deserve Credit 17:55 Flow Junkies Explained 20:15 Stepping Away To Heal 22:30 Las Vegas Highs And Lows 25:07 Vulnerability And The Brain 27:23 Tools for Dark Days 29:15 Radical Acceptance Practice 30:34 Sensitivity as Superpower 33:05 Awareness in the Saddle 35:05 Judged Sport Pressure 36:35 How Dressage Judging Evolved 41:02 Modern Horse vs Tradition 42:10 Klimke Sponsorship Story 45:26 What Made Dr. Klimke Great 47:29 Flow State Principles

Want to go deeper into the training behind a clean, confident flying change?

In his new NOËLLE FLOYD Masterclass, six-time Olympian Steffen Peters breaks down the entire process—from developing the right canter, balance and response to the aids to introducing the change and troubleshooting tension, anticipation, crookedness and changes that are late behind.

Learn more and watch Training the Flying Change with Steffen Peters:
https://noellefloyd.com/pages/flying-changes-with-steffen-peters

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Thank you for your listening!