Interview with stadium announcer Arnaud Petit
A Luxembourger at the microphone of a World Championship – that’s not something you see every day. We spoke with the Munich resident during the World Championship in Aachen.
Mr. Petit, when and where did you first come into contact with equestrian sports?
Since the age of ten, I’ve been a member of the “Club Étrier Pegasus,” my home club, in Waldbredimus. I’m very good friends with Jean-Jacques Mangen (editor’s note: the owner of the riding stable in Waldbredimus). People used to ask if Jean-Jacques had his brother with him, I was with him so often. As a teenager, I went to tournaments with him, and at some point, we decided to organize tournaments in Waldbredimus.
An announcer was needed, and I offered to take on the role. As a student, I worked for a company in the audio sector that equipped tournaments with sound systems. I was familiar with them from an early age, and I was given the responsibility of installing such a system in Waldbredimus. Eventually, I was asked to speak into the microphone, which I did.
Have you ridden horses yourself, and if so, in which discipline?
I still ride, at a semi-professional level. I started when I was eight years old in Waldbredimus. Until I was about eighteen, I was active in show jumping. After that, I went to boarding school and didn’t ride at all for two years. Then I started again, but in dressage.
I briefly dabbled in Working Equitation, competing for Luxembourg at the 2018 World Championships in Munich. I finished 18th out of 65 competitors. These days, I only ride dressage. My wife and I run a boarding and training stable near Munich.
You left Luxembourg and moved to the Munich area. How did that come about?
At the age of eighteen or nineteen, I was in Germany at this boarding school; that must have been around 1999 or 2000. At that time, my brother was working in Munich. I didn’t really want to go back to Luxembourg, so I went to stay with him since I found a place to live there. I ended up staying there, among other things as a student rider.
Good friends of mine, such as Joelle Beier-Kinnen, who is now an FEI steward and rode Petit Prince in Aachen in 2006, also lived near Munich at that time. I lived there for a while; we had a wonderful time, during which I also met my first wife, that was in 2003. That’s how I ended up staying there.
And how did you come to be a speaker at world-class tournaments such as the World Championships in Aachen?
I was very fortunate when I moved permanently to Bavaria around 2004. Through connections with the student riding club and the stable where I was based, I met tournament organizers who relatively quickly hired me as an announcer. From then on, everything happened very fast. Within a year, after a few tournaments in the Munich area, my phone was already ringing and I was receiving bookings to announce international tournaments. In 2007, I was called to Aachen for the first time. To this day, I am the youngest announcer ever to have started in Aachen.
In the early years, between 2004 and 2006, I was booked through the agency Escon Marketing. They provided announcers for tournaments in Dortmund, Frankfurt, and elsewhere. Contracts with them were quickly finalized. At peak times, I covered eleven tournaments a year through this agency. This amounted to a total of 25 to 30 tournaments annually. Then, in 2007, came the ultimate accolade when Frank Kemperman (editor’s note: the former chairman of the Aachen-Laurensberg Racing Club) called me to Aachen.
You were working at the European Championships in Aachen in 2015, and now you’re at the World Championships. When we called to arrange an interview, you were commentating on a tournament in Verden. Does everything run so smoothly that you can even answer your phone at the same time?
No, you definitely have to be on top of your game in this job, always ready and highly focused. It’s like any other job: there are situations or circumstances where you don’t take a phone call, like during an awards ceremony in Aachen. But during normal operations, that’s not a problem. After thirty years, I’ve gotten pretty good at juggling things.
Petit: “Equestrian sports have a specific vocabulary”
Is the multilingualism that one possesses as a Luxembourger an advantage in gaining a foothold as a stadium announcer at an international level?
As Luxembourgers, we have the advantage of being multilingual. However, to do it really well, you have to feel very comfortable in another language. Equestrian sports have a specific vocabulary, after all. But it’s not just the technical aspect that matters, but also the atmosphere. Take the opening ceremony of Aachen 2026: you have to be attuned to the mood, sense how the spectators are reacting, and react instantly. That’s why you really have to be fluent in the language you’re announcing in. After 25 years, German is my main language; I hope my accent isn’t too noticeable (laughs).
I would never have dared to commentate on a tournament like the one in Aachen in French. In 2014, I was the stadium announcer for the dressage at the World Championships in Caen. Luckily, I had a very nice French colleague by my side who knew a lot about the discipline. I presented the sporting events, and together we did the entertainment. He gave me a certain amount of freedom. That was good because it allowed me to gradually become more comfortable with commentating in French. But a week after the tournament, much was already forgotten.
Do you remember the 2015 European Championships when you greeted the members of the Luxembourg dressage team in Luxembourgish in Aachen? Does something like that happen spontaneously or is it planned?
I usually implement things like that quite spontaneously. I even announced the French team in French. But Aachen is relatively close to Luxembourg, so it makes sense to just blurt things out in Luxembourgish. After a while, you develop a sense for spontaneity and you know what you can and can’t do. But you mustn’t overdo it. You can certainly crack a joke, but you have to be careful. That’s more difficult these days than it was twenty years ago.
Are there differences in preparing for smaller tournaments compared to a European Championship or World Championship, and if so, what are they?
I have a principle: whether you’re commentating on an A-level show jumping competition or the Grand Prix of Aachen, it could be the winner’s first – or perhaps his last – major success. Therefore, it makes no difference to me. I try to treat small tournaments and smaller competitions the same as large ones. We do it for the riders, for the audience, and it should be fun. I now have a six-year-old daughter, and I know what it’s like to win your first riding competition at that age. As a parent, you’re practically bursting with pride, and that’s true for every winner at every tournament.
The setting differs, however. At a rural tournament, a speaker can be a bit more relaxed and informal. If, as in Aachen, several European royal families are present, then one adheres to protocol. In a rural setting, the mayor, for example, might be an important figure. You have to adapt to the context. You have to consider the people you are dealing with. At the CHIO in Aachen, you can certainly be humorous. There’s the famous hare that often runs through the arena in the Soers. One can, of course, make a joke about that.
What does your preparation for a World Championship look like? How deeply do you delve into the subject matter, and how much experience do you bring with you?
There are a few names you really need to research. On the starting lists, whether for show jumping or dressage, you’ll find names you’ve never heard of. You should read through them carefully, which is what I and my colleagues in Aachen do. We need to make sure they stick in your mind, because there’s nothing more embarrassing than getting a name wrong. It’s our job to get it right.
As a speaker, one is generally expected to remain as neutral as possible while still being able to express emotion. How does this need to be maintained when introducing a Luxembourger like Nicolas Wagner Ehlinger?
Experience teaches you when to stop at this point. But we’re not a jury; we’re the voice for the jury, the organizers, and the audience. We accompany the proceedings with explanations and expertise that some might lack. We’re not there to judge. That’s very important; you mustn’t start doing that, because that’s the job of the judges. We offer support or comfort when something goes wrong, and we’re there to pass on the necessary information we receive from official sources.
Perhaps we’re even there to rein in the crowd if it overreacts. In the event of an accident, we try to keep the spectators engaged with a subdued atmosphere so they don’t think the world is ending. Outside of sports, there are situations where, for example, a politician is present whom the crowd doesn’t particularly like and boos. In such cases, we remind people to show the respect due.
Do you have a favorite discipline in equestrian sports, and if so, which one is it?
Top-level sport is always fantastic. In Aachen, for example, I also commentate on the carriage marathon; I’m a huge fan of four-in-hand driving and have several friends who come from that discipline. I also cover the cross-country phase of the eventing competition, and of course, I enjoy watching the dressage because I ride in that discipline myself.
Show jumping is often incredibly exciting. I also have a lot of fun vaulting with my colleague Kaj (editor’s note: Kaj-Christian Warnecke); the atmosphere at the finals in Aachen is unbelievable. Overall, I find equestrian sport, the work, and the life with horses fascinating. I’ve lived for it for thirty years.
Arnaud Petit: “in my eyes, they’re extremists”
Finally, would you like to share your opinion on animal welfare with us?
I hope things aren’t so bad in Luxembourg, but in Germany there’s this organisation, driven by a few lunatics, that’s attacking the entire equestrian sport. They call themselves an animal welfare organization, but in my eyes, they’re extremists. Since we run a stable at home and are riders ourselves, and I also organize competitions, one thing is very clear to me: horses have never had it so good as today in the past thousands of years in our regions, especially in top-level stables.
We are constantly optimizing, and that’s essential. One thing must be kept in mind, knowing full well that extremists can’t be converted anyway: the horse has been a working animal for centuries. Without horses, humanity wouldn’t be where it is today. Only in the last fifty years we truly began to care about the welfare of horses. Not even forty or fifty years ago, they weren’t even kept in stalls, but rather confined in stalls. They were taken out when they were needed and returned there when they were no longer required.
If we abolish equestrian sports, there will be no more horses. A horse is too large to be kept as a pet that you simply take home to your garden. If we continue with this kind of restrictive approach—and incidentally, with the current price increases—there will be no more horses. Since the critics mentioned are the same ones who believe that animals shouldn’t be kept in zoos, there won’t be any horses there either. This species would then become extinct.
Would that be the end of a culture that is thousands of years old?
It is indeed a culture that has evolved over an incredibly long period. And incidentally, horses are one of the biggest economic factors there is. I don’t want to emphasize this too much, though, because then people will say it’s all about the money. But: no horse in the world can be forced to jump over 1.60 meters or walk through a dressage arena! They do it, but certainly not by force. As horse people, it is our job to enable the animals to perform the tasks we demand of them with enjoyment and ease, by optimally preparing and training them, and by ensuring they are physically fit enough to fulfill their duties.
A horse that has to be forced through the Grand Prix in Aachen might do it once, but most of the time it wouldn’t even finish the course, and certainly not more than once. No one who hasn’t ridden can understand what it feels like to sense a horse fighting for you. I can explain this from my own experience, because I’ve experienced it myself.
The third part of “Working Equitation” is “Speed.” I had known my horse for a long time by then, and it had developed the necessary ambition to push forward and keep going. Any show jumper above a certain level can confirm this: in such a situation, you become such a unit with the horse that it performs exceptionally well. It’s exactly the same in dressage.
To get back to the topic: these are the things that ordinary viewers, and also the self-proclaimed animal rights activists, don’t notice from the outside. Is the argument more difficult to make with the latter group than with the general public?
The extremists mentioned are simply fundamentally opposed; there’s no point in talking to them. A very good example: my parents aren’t very knowledgeable about equestrian sports, except that they hear about upcoming events. They also don’t know much about figure skating, for example, but they’ve watched every major championship for the past fifty years. Why? Because they enjoy the sport. They might not know every single detail of what’s being judged, but over time they’ve developed a certain feeling for it. And it’s the same with equestrian sports: dressage is very difficult for people to understand.
But if you surrender to it, simply observe it, and let it sink in, you develop this feeling for it, and that makes all the difference. Equestrian sport is under attack. We, the people who come from the equestrian world, must try not to always be playing catch-up. There’s still this hesitant notion in people’s minds, the idea of only responding when someone else speaks. But we are the experts in this sport, and we are critical. Yet the aforementioned individuals believe that we aren’t, and that we always claim everything is correct.
That’s simply not true: we are extremely critical, and we need to be more proactive in addressing this issue publicly. Our sport is fantastic and must not be allowed to fall apart, but we need to wake up now! And don’t worry: the tiny minority of bad apples will receive the necessary internal criticism. The other 99 percent need to stand up and clearly state that we are working to get these problems under control and continuously improve horse welfare. There are new innovations every year to make things even more comfortable for the horses, and we need to explain this to people.
Translated from German by AI and adjusted by Paul Krier. Original interview was also published in the “Lëtzebuerger Bauer” weekly newspaper.
