Huge joy at the riding horse national championships for four-year-old mares and geldings
Fourth in the qualification, today at the top – the Hanoverian mare London Eye was in great form just in time for the final and made one person in particular more than happy.
This person is her breeder and owner Kathrin Wassmann. London Eye’s mare line has been maintained by Wassmann’s family since 1887 (!). But there has never been a national champion. Until today London Eye with Hermann Burger in the saddle, she was the first horse in the first division to impress across the board. The Hanoverian mare carries the powerful Vivaldi blood through her father La Vie. Her dam’s sire De Kooning has a proven show jumping sire as a grandfather in Calypso I. The great-grandmother’s father, Abajo xx, brings a dash of blood into London Eye’s pedigree. The highly elastic, yet light-footed black mare already showed that this pairing worked when she won her first riding horse tests this year and took bronze at the Hanoverian Championships. In the qualification in Warendorf, her performance was somewhat overshadowed by the rain, coming fourth. “Dynamic work from back to front”, “uphill and well-jumped canter”, “very balanced” – these were the attributes with which Wolfgang Egbers justified the award of the score today, which resulted in a total of 9.0. That was to remain the highest score until the end. No surprise for breeder Kathrin Wassmann: “She’s just amazing! She has a super character, she just always went all out.” The fact that she is now the breeder of a national champion feels “really, really great”. “London Eye was born in 2020, when the children were at home during the Corona period. She was a member of the family from the very beginning. She was always something special.” And because Wassmann’s father told her that she had to keep the best horses from her breeding, London Eye should “in the medium term” contribute to the carefully maintained mare line producing more horses of her kind. But first she will continue to compete for a while. Also in Warendorf? “If everything goes well…”
Silver went to the DSP gelding with an overall score of 8.4 Snickers F v. Secret – Carabas with Carina Harnisch in the saddle. The F in the brown horse’s name stands for breeder Erwin Feichtenbeiner, who is also part of the ZG Feichtenbeiner/Thalacker, which is responsible for owning the gelding. Unlike the new champion, who had not yet seen a tournament last year, Snickers had already travelled to Warendorf with advance praise. At the age of three he was DSP champion, and this year he took second place in Darmstadt. Second place was also his finish on Wednesday in qualifying for today’s final – behind the Hanoverian champion Flower v. Fürst Toto (breeder: Manfred Kregel), who took fourth place today. In both appearances, Snickers impressed, particularly in terms of rideability, which was rated 9.0 in each case. “He has a great attitude, which he showed both under his own rider and under an outside rider,” said Wolfgang Egbers for the panel of judges. Carina Scholz was on hand as a guest rider and was able to put all the horses in the spotlight with sensitivity.
After finishing fifth in the qualification, Beatrice Hoffrogge and the likeable Oldenburg mare Because of you OLD today can be happy about bronze. The Hollen/Jan Callender breeding farm is the breeder of the daughter of Benicio from a Dimaggio mother, Lara Steimle Lochmann is the owner. Because of you might even have left Snickers behind today. But the judges had to take into account in the rideability score that the mare had put her tongue over the bit once. So in the end she got an 8.3.
The Animal Welfare Award by Xenophon, the Federal Association of Professional Riders and the German Equestrian Federation was presented to Michele Schulmerig. She had brought the DSP mare E’Panthera by Escamillo (breeder: Anton Herre) into the final, who shared fourth place with qualification winner Flower under Janina Tietze and DSP champion Valentin by Vitalis (breeder: Dr. Jutta Steidl) with Johanna Wadenspanner and was thus able to improve by three places in the final compared to the qualification. This is already the fourth animal welfare award for Michele Schulmerig after 2020 and 2022. She had received the third a few hours earlier after the final of the three-year-old pony mares and geldings. UN press/Dominique Wehrmann
Starter lists, live results and an individually created schedule are available at “My FN app”There, visitors can view all important information about the event in the “HKM Bundeschampionate” section and mark individual competitions in the timetable for their individual schedule.
Tickets, timetable, starter lists and results at www.hkm-bundeschampionate.de
