After some time,  her teacher decided to give her better horses, and she improved her riding capabilities quite rapidly. Very soon the hardness of the training soon showed results: The selection from the riding scholars was rigid. After one year only three of the 60 riders were chosen, after the second year only Inessa ‘survived’. Her passion and talent was obvious and so the 14 year old started to work as an assistant instructor at the Kirow stud-farm. " I saw a woman on a beautiful black horse in the arena and I was deeply impressed by her performance. From this moment my only dream was to go for dressage!". Dimitri, an 80-year old officer managed to get her some decent school-horses for training and cared for her improvement. He also showed her how to teach the horses special tricks which are normally shown in a circus and which require confidence and a close relation between horse and rider. Actually even the Grand-Prix-horses she rides can perform those. Anyway - at that time emphasis was put on jumping and eventing which was not very much of interest for Inessa.
  At the age of 16 she had a bad riding-accident and had to stay at the hospital’s intensive-care department for months. After her recovery she at last was allowed to go for dressage.

Her trainer was Anton Jargorow, now  82 years old. He managed to supply her with Grand-Prix horses and supports her career. "This was a time of very intensive training", Inessa Potouraeva remembers. "We trained as much as four to five hours a day and I was totally absorbed by this work!". At the age of 17 she joined her first dressage competition and made it to third position in a Prix St. Georges.

Made for each other

Shortly afterwards she met with the horse that imprinted her life for the following 11 years. It was a brown Trakehnian horse which was named after an unpopular small russian car: Zaporojetz. Suffering from an injury of his shoulder, the 6 year old horse had to be resigned from racing. Inessa immediately fell in love with him and interceded for him at the stud farm to give him another chance thus saving him from the killers. She cared for him in her spare time and after one year she was able to start riding him again. After intensive training she went to competitions and both became very successful, winning many. Their career came to a sudden end, when Zaporojez partly broke his leg in a transport-accident. This again led him into peril of his life. There are more than 1,200 horses at the Kerow stud farm and there was no need for especially caring of Zaporojez. Inessa again pleaded for him and again she made the impossible come true! The Trakehnian proved the toughness of this breed, recovered and, which was like a miracle, again both won again several Russian championships!

The Representative

Since 1987 Zaporojez and Inessa besides other things have been members of the Russian team, and they took part in international A-level competitions from 1993 to 1995 at Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. But she never had the money to buy the gelding. In 1994 the brown gelding was sold to Germany. This really was a shock for Inessa Potouraeva. But only a short time after that Inessa also was sent to Germany in order to work as a trainer and rider for the imported Russian horses. In a stable near Würzburg Zaporojez and her met again. The meanwhile 17 year old horse lives in a comfortable private property and is the four-legged professor for his new owner’s children.

Close to tears after two years of separation, Inessa mounted the horse for some shots at the pasture and gallopped away with him, starting with flying changes. Under the eyes of the amazed spectators she performed - dressed up in a summer’s skirt and without a saddle or a bridal - a complete Grand-Prix-Special, leaving out nothing! When she finished, she beamed:"It’s so very easy with him, we both have a deep understanding! I hope that some day I will have the money to buy him back. Though this really is a nice place for him, but in my opinion he deserves his retirement from me!"

Inessa Potouraeva at the moment gives clinics and rising lessons at the ‘Reitclub Weinach e. V.’ close to the city of Aschaffenburg in southern Germany. Working as a trainer and a representative of the Kirow stud-farm she negotiates Trakehnian horses from Russia and shows them on horse-shows and competitions. Though she has to travel back to Russia every now and then to defend her champion’s title and to keep up her qualification for the Russian, she preferes to do next season’s preparation over here.

Though she is very successful, at home her situation in Russia is not easy. She frequently moans about the Russian training methods, that - in her opinion - are old fashioned. "In Russia, the riders still didn’t realize what it means to train a horse the soft way. The faster you get a horse to do some dubious performance the better you are as a rider. Sometimes they make a bet which rider will be the first to bring a raw horse to perform a flying change after only half a year of training!"

The Olympic dream

At the moment,  Inessa Potouraeva is pretty well equipped horse-wise. The 8 year old chestnut ‘Targim’ who is a Trakehnian-Hanoverian cross (18.2 hands!), is very promising and had been successful over here in Germany. Actually this is one of the few horses that also partly belong to her.

She hopes that the powerful chestnut will help her on her way to become a successful rider also in ‘the big events’. " I want to compare my capabilities with the best riders, that’s why I have to ride in Germany!", she says. Sometimes she just for fun also rides him without saddle and bridle. "This makes the horse more sensitive for the rider’s aids!", the sympathic Russian lady laughs, and you can’t believe how easy she sits on this real huge dressage-horse.