Emotional World Champion Stefan Ulrich: “I’m so happy!”
It is worth saying once again: Stefan Ulrich is the new 2026 World Champion for Single Horses in Munich! We spoke to Stefan, Swiss team coach Daniel Wüthrich and course designer Michael Mayer about this fantastic World Championship in Munich and asked them to reflect on the competition.
Starting with Stefan Ulrich: he competed with the eleven-year-old bay Westphalian gelding Bombardier, bred by Wilfried Albers. Bombardier is a true family horse who seems to do just about everything. He is ridden, jumps and competes in single horse, pairs and Four-in-Hand with Stefan and his father Werner.
An emotional Stefan can barely find the words in front of the microphone: “I’m just incredibly happy. My horse has done such a good job all week! And our whole team strategy worked; everything went so perfectly. After I won the dressage, everyone was so happy and after that it felt as if we were carried to victory.”
Swiss team coach: “The best team you could wish for”
Swiss team coach Daniel Wüthrich is equally delighted: “We won gold last time with Mario Gandolfo, and now with Stefan and Michael Barbey we have three incredibly good guys. They are easy to coach, they train very well, they make a great team and they are incredibly friendly.”
“This has been a very important championship for the recognition of driving in Switzerland, with two individual medals as well as team gold for Switzerland. I’m proud that we also have some great competitions in Switzerland. After this World Championship, there isn’t much more I could wish for. I’m very happy!”
Michael Mayer: “I was quite nervous beforehand”
Michael Mayer designed both the marathon and cones courses, and his work received plenty of praise from the competitors. He was very pleased with how his cones course played out.
“I felt a lot of pressure this morning and I was quite nervous about how the course would work out. You hope that the best cones drivers will come out on top and that this part of the competition will really make a difference. And that’s what happened. The course wasn’t easy, but I was very happy and relieved when several drivers managed to go double clear and a number of others finished with fewer than ten penalties. Not only the marathon but also the cones brought changes to the standings, and that is what you want to see as a course designer.”
Looking back on the marathon, he says: “The competitors did a very good job and I’m grateful for that. We expanded half of the existing obstacles here on the grounds with additional elements, while the other half were designed and built at home. Once everything is set up, you go into the obstacles as if you were a competing combination yourself, to see whether there is enough opportunity to maintain speed and whether they are challenging enough to drive.”
“That always shows you where you need to make changes and improvements to make an obstacle work well. It has to remain a good mix of technical driving and speed. And at the end of the competition, we must always be able to thank the most important pillar of our sport: the horses!”
Source: Hoefnet. Reproduction without permission via info@hoefnet.nl is not permitted.
Photo: Melanie Guillamot
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