Christa Carolin Riebel was born in Germany, but grew up in India where her father was the managing director of Agfa Gevaert Industries. She is bilingual and, after school, studied languages and biology at the University of Mainz where she graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree.  

Christa worked part-time on a large thoroughbred stud in the United States during her holidays and, in 1990, joined The National Stud’s Student Training Course, finishing second in her class and being awarded a Diploma which included a scholarship to Australia. There, she worked at Segenhoe Stud and in the leading veterinary clinic in Scone. She subsequently returned to Australia in 1991 to work at Emirates Park.

The following year, Christa started conducting pedigree research for Mrs. Alexandra Scrope’s Mercury Thoroughbred Consultants. She then began writing articles on diverse breeding topics for the German racing paper Sport Welt and magazine Vollblut, as well as for international publications like Pacemaker & the Thoroughbred Breeder, Irish Field, Racetrack and Asian Thoroughbred News. She has been responsible for the annual German Stallion Book since its inception in 1995, as well as being the German correspondent and writer of pedigree notes for Thoroughbred Daily News.