Rolando grew up in Switzerland, surrounded by the scent of hay and the warm breath of horses. Before he was old enough to ride them, he followed them. As a child, he would slip away to the local pony ranch, telling his mother he was going to do homework. Instead, he cleaned the ponies, observed them and walked alongside them. No one taught him. He learned by being near them.
During his agricultural apprenticeship, he always chose farms with sport horses. He learned traditional foundations from military trainers, studied carriage driving and worked with young jumping horses. His physicality and presence were enough, then, to command respect. Or so he believed.

But something, deep inside, didn't sit right.

In 1998, Rolando had a serious riding accident. While his body was forced to be still, his mind began to move. He started to truly see himself. To question whether what he did every day was love or control. He realised that the riding he had dreamed of was also filled with fear, coercion and misunderstanding. Difficult horses weren't incomprehensible. They were unheard and he didn't yet have the tools to change that.

By chance or perhaps by fate, he encountered the Parelli method. At first, he was deeply sceptical. There was something in it that spoke to him. He began a long journey that, from 2005 to 2022, led him to become a 4-star instructor and specialist in equine educational development. More importantly, he found a language that felt true to him: grounded in respect, technique and genuine empathy.

He specialised in early foal education, trained teams, worked for years in racehorse breeding facilities, always seeking to place relationship at the centre of the work. His expertise became recognised internationally, for technical skill and for the rare ability to see horses and help others see them as sentient partners rather than instruments of sport.

In 2022, Rolando made a defining choice: he left the Parelli network. He felt it was time to walk on his own path, guided by a broader, more integrated vision of what horsemanship could be.

For Rolando, horsemanship and classical technique are not separate worlds. He had witnessed how they had become divided, natural horsemanship on one side, classical riding on the other, when in truth, they belong together. One informs the other. One deepens the other. Uniting them has always been his dream. And Alterreno is the place where that dream becomes reality.