Dressage: exceptional mare Weihegold by Isabell Werth retires – Sport

Does Weihegold have any idea that the time for great performances in the dressage arena will be over after this weekend? Is she happy to just be a mother now, or will she miss the laps of honor, the music, the applause, the vibrant atmosphere of the big tournaments a bit? Nobody knows. But after the dressage World Cup finals in the Leipzig exhibition halls, the 17-year-old Oldenburg mare is retired, from a sporting point of view, and Isabell Werth has to try with new horses to keep up with the front runners.

Weihegold and Werth – that was a bank, for their own success and that of the team, for the trainers and the German Equestrian Federation (FN). The world association FEI has recorded 76 starts by the pair since 2014, with Werth and Weihegold taking first place 56 times and second twelve times.

So Weihegold did everything possible for horses for many people, and you could see it in her eyes. Ears pricked, concentrated, not afraid of a camera or a colorful flag, she danced to the difficult programs that her rider had devised, with highlights in the piaffes and pirouettes. She seemed to enjoy the whole thing. “She is extremely honest and focused, a thoroughbred athlete,” says Werth.

In the beginning, Weihegold was something of an emergency solution. A year and a half before the 2016 Olympic Games, Werth’s top horses Bella Rose and Don Johnson were ill, and the Rio start for the multiple Olympian was in jeopardy. In her stable in Rheinberg was nine-year-old Weihegold, already a highly prized broodmare and mother of promising foals. She was supposed to be presented at tournaments by Werth’s rider, Bea Buchwald. But then the plan was quickly rearranged and a leasing contract was negotiated with the owner Christine Kroogmann for the coming years, which also forestalled high purchase offers. Buchwald had to give up the saddle for her boss.

Weihegold’s son Total Hope has a famous father: dressage legend Totilas

According to the contract, Weihegold had to be available for the embryo transfer during the breaks in tournaments: in the spring, several embryos were taken from her and carried by other mares. Eight foals were born in this way, some of Weihegold’s children are already successful at tournaments themselves, others made them grandmothers. Her son Total Hope, whose father is the dressage legend Totilas, enriches Paul Schockemöhle’s stallion collection. And a Weihegold grandson was auctioned for 140,000 euros.

Life as a working horse mother only worked because Weihegold was left completely alone during the time of breeding. Mares with a less balanced character would probably not have survived the rollercoaster of hormones – several consecutive and repeatedly interrupted pregnancies – so unscathed. But Isabell Werth could rely on it: As soon as Weihegold felt the saddle on her back again, she knew what was on the timetable. “You could really flip the switch and ride.”

The 52-year-old says that she believed Weihegold could win championship medals from the start. Even if the mare is very different from many of the horses that Werth has brought to Grand Prix racing. Not a horse that challenges its rider every day and always demands new solutions. At most, their overzealousness had to be slowed down occasionally. She was able to cover up her weaknesses, which of course she also had, with other highlights. But in the strong trot, for example, she found it increasingly difficult over the years to hold her own against younger competitors, such as a Dalera owned by Jessica von Bredow-Werndl.

Now she doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone and can finally indulge her true passion: eat, eat, eat, preferably carrots. It’s reassuring to know that the trotting perfection called Weihegold also has a little vice.