None, that wasn’t a private family celebration on the weekend in the Westergellerser Heide. Although the idea could easily have come about. The eventing riders in Luhmühlen were pretty busy, at least as far as the obstacles were concerned. No spectators were allowed, so the hard core of the scene was among themselves. And not only that. You could even easily meet grandma, mother and granddaughter at the same time: namely Ruth Klimke, the widow of Reiner Klimke, the six-time Olympic champion in dressage, who tirelessly crossed the terrain with her dog.
Her daughter Ingrid Klimke, two-time Olympic champion in eventing, who competed in the most difficult test of the weekend with three horses and, after strong performances in dressage, cross-country riding and jumping, won her fifth German championship title with her young horse, the nine-year-old mare Asha P. And again her 18-year-old daughter Greta Busacker, who competed in the junior championship – and won the title with the gelding Scrabble.
What a triumph. And that 60 years after Reiner Klimke, who started his career as an eventing rider, became German champion in his home town of Münster. If that wasn’t a reason for an extraordinary family celebration! At least as soon as the first excitement had subsided. The experienced riding master Ingrid Klimke also had to pull herself together from time to time: “The adrenaline really goes up when Greti gallops.”
Spectacular sport, few spectators
Without the family spirit in the scene, there would only have been the junior championships at the weekend anyway. But the top riders got together, activated their sponsors and patrons in order to collect the 50,000 euros that the horse breeding and riding club Luhmühlen needed to set up the four-star test and thus a real season goal. An unnamed friend of eventing also donated the 15,000 euros in prize money.
And indeed there was spectacular sport to be seen that deserved more spectators than the few dozen people and the many venerable trees. Although the usual suspects were in front after the dressage on Friday, the parsley rained down on some cracks during the cross-country ride through the green. Ingrid Klimke rumbled with her real trump ace, the gelding Hale Bob, against obstacle 13, which pointed in the direction of a water complex, so that the safety device was triggered with a thud – for this the two were chalked 11 fault points. The rider suspects that “Bobby” remembered a previous ride, where a spraying fish in the water had frightened him, so that this time he did not dare to head for the obstacle courageously. So that’s how it goes in horse heads.
The ingenious Swabian Michael Jung had a problem with his gelding Chipmunk at obstacle 16, which was intended for the Olympics: To catch the tricky jump in front of an uncomfortable corner, he had to install a volte and was punished with 20 points for crossing his own line. After that he had nothing more to do with the outcome of the title fight and only viewed the subsequent special jumping as a training round. Another pair of favorites, the former world champion Sandra Auffarth and Viamant du Matz, however, delivered an impeccable cyclo-cross lap. Second place in the German championship ranking was the reward on Sunday after a faultless jumping course, ahead of Anna-Katharina Vogel on Quintana.
Luhmühlen also shows: The Olympics have been postponed – but the rider year is not entirely lost. If the plan with the show jumpers works in November in Riesenbeck, there will be national championships in all three Olympic disciplines. Klimke sprout Greta Busacker, who passed her Abitur this year with a grade point average of 1.5, is even concentrating more on riding this year than originally planned, because the pandemic has thwarted her plans abroad. Additional time together for mother and daughter. “She is the best trainer one could ask for,” says the daughter of her mother. Their most important advice to the next generation, despite all their ambition, is: “Listen to your gut feeling.”
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