Steve Guerdat best of 17 in the jump-off at the 2026 Leipzig Championships

Strategically, the starting position could have been better. Steve Guerdat, silver medal winner at the Olympic Games in Paris, had to start the jump-off course in third place with his gray mare. And somehow he had not expected to win in Leipzig. For the Swiss rider, his own fitness has been the stumbling block in recent weeks. He had to have two operations due to back problems. After coming third in the Grand Prix of Calgary in Spruce Meadows with Venard de Cerisy at the beginning of September 2025, Guerdat went under the knife. The more than 550,000 US dollars he won there were probably more than enough to cover his daily hospital allowance. After the forced break, he had Is-Minka back in Mechelen at the end of 2025. The pair won a jumping competition in Basel last weekend.

Is-Minka is a daughter of Mylord Carthago. She comes from the Freiminka line, which, based on an Oldenburg mare of this name, has flourished in the Netherlands. Many international show jumpers have come from this family. But it was a dressage horse that made him famous: Totilas.

Gerrit Nieberg second with IB Queen

Second place also went to a mare: IB Queen, a daughter of the Belgian Quasimodo Z, had already been ridden by Gerrit Nieberg into the jump-off in Münster last weekend. Nieberg and IB Queen know each other well, and the mare is often presented by her owner Karin Ernsting, most recently in Riesenbeck in December. Gerrit Nieberg has also ridden the bay mare to several placings in Aachen.

Six rider-horse combinations remained penalty-free in the jump-off. The fastest four-fault ride was achieved by the Belgian Pieter Devos with Jarina. But even his 58.97 seconds would not have been enough to take the golden ribbon from Guerdat. Because he was not quite two seconds short of victory. So the Belgian had to make do with seventh place.

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