Van Grunsven Is Still The Netherlands’ Big Gun
Salinero has replaced the great Bonfire, and the team’s chances of regaining their silver medal rest mostly on his exciting back, writes Birgit Popp.

The 2000 Olympics were the end of an era in dressage, since at their conclusion Isabell Werth retired Gigolo, the 1996 Olympic gold medalist and the silver medalist that year, and Anky van Grunsven retired his nemesis Bonfire, who finally defeated him to gain the gold medal in Sydney. Werth won’t be riding in Athens, but van Grunsven will be there on Bonfire’s successor, Gestion Salinero, and she’ll be one of the favorites for the gold medal again.

And, once again, van Grunsven will be the lynchpin of the revived Dutch team, a squad that observers had just about written off after the 2002 World Championships and 2003 European Championships.

Van Grunsven seems to have indeed found a worthy successor to Bonfire in Salinero. After winning three World Cup qualifiers on him last winter, she took her sixth FEI World Cup Final in April with the lofty score of 83.45 percent. And at the CDIO Aachen (Germany) on July 14-18, (see p. 112) they narrowly defeated Rusty and Ulla Salzgeber, the Olympic favorites, in both the Grand Prix Special and the freestyle, putting van Grunsven in line to claim her second consecutive gold medal in Athens.

The bay gelding is particularly impressive in his outstanding piaffe-passage tour, even though the piaffe isn’t totally balanced yet. And, as she did with Bonfire, van Grunsven makes his freestyle an artistic masterpiece.

With Gestion Krack C, van Grunsven also has a second horse of Olympic quality. The 2002 World Equestrian Games came a bit early for the now 12-year-old stallion, who dropped out of last year’s European Championship squad because he was ill. He’s able to score around 73 percent in the Grand Prix.

For van Grunsven, Athens will be her fifth consecutive Olympic appearance since her debut in 1988. Since then, she’s only missed two international championships–the 1993 and the 2003 Europeans–because her horse was ill.

In 1999 and 2000, her student Arjen Teeuwissen joined her on those teams. His horse Goliath has been injured this spring, but another student will be her teammate this time–Edward Gal.

Although he rode at Grand Prix for the first time ever at the beginning of 2003, he and Gestion Lingh were third in the Grand Prix Special in the CDI-W at s’Hertogenbosch (the Netherlands) that March and won the freestyle at the CDI Achtleiten (Austria) in May after being runners-up in the Grand Prix.

Those results put Gal, a riding instructor who runs a dressage barn with his girlfriend Nicole Werner, on last year’s team for the European Championships, where he finished 28th. But from there they took giant steps into the top group of international dressage. They won the freestyle at the CDI Rotterdam (the Netherlands) at the end of August 2003 and were runners-up in the World Cup-qualifying freestyle at Mechelem (Belgium) in December.

Their biggest moment so far came in the FEI World Cup Final in April, where Lingh, an expressive stallion, placed third in the Grand Prix (72.66%) and became the World Cup’s reserve champion by scoring 80.62 percent in the freestyle.

In mid-June the combination won the Dutch Dressage Championships ahead of van Grunsven on Krack C.

Sven Rothenberger is making a comeback after a five-year break from competition. His return last summer was more by accident than design, since his wife, Gonnelien Gordijn-Rothenberger, who has won three silver medals with the Dutch team, didn’t feel ready to compete at a local show near their hometown of Bad Homburg, Germany, after returning from a holiday.

But Sven, the individual bronze medalist at the 1996 Olympics and winner of the 1990 World Cup Final, had promised the organizer that she would participate in the show, so he finally decided to compete himself and won both Grand Prix classes. His first international show with Barclay was the CDIO at Mondorf-Les-Bains (Luxembourg) in September 2003, where they took sixth place in each of the three Grand Prix classes.

During the winter, the father of three children placed in several World Cup qualifiers with the gelding by the Hanoverian stallion Brentano II, a full-brother to Brentina’s sire Brentano I. But their performance in the final was very disappointing. Since they only placed 15th in the Grand Prix, they couldn’t go forward to the freestyle final, although they did grab second with a much better test in the consolation final. Barclay is certainly not the quality of Weyden, Rothenberger’s Olympic medalist, or of Andiamo, his World Cup winner, so don’t look for him to place in the individual final. But he’ll probably provide an important supporting score for the team in its medal quest.

Marlies van Baalen made her first Dutch championship team when Antoinette Falandt’s Jarwo injured himself while doing a canter pirouette at Aachen.

Aboard the stallion Blom’s Idocus, the 24-year-old daughter of Dutch team veteran Coby van Baalen was sixth in this year’s Dutch Championships. Over the last year the great-moving stallion, who was formerly shown in the United States by Lendon Gray and her student Courtney King, has become considerably more reliable. Falandt is also a student of Coby van Baalens’.

Team Members

Gestion Salinero: b. g., 10, German-bred Hanoverian by Salieri.
Gestion Krack C: br. g., 12, Dutch-bred Dutch Warmblood by Flemmingh–Beaujolais mare.
Anky van Grunsven: age 36, Gemeert.

Gestion Lingh: b. s., 11, Dutch-bred Dutch Warmblood by Flemmingh–Columbus mare.
Edward Gal: age 34, Harskamp.

Barclay II: ch. g., 12, German-bred Hanoverian by Brentano II.
Sven Rothenberger: age 38, Bad Homburg (Germany).

Blom’s Idocus: br. s., 14, Dutch-bred Dutch Warmblood by Equador–Zonneglans mare.
Marlies van Baalen: age 24, B