Michael Jung and fischerChipmunk FRH. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
It’s hard to say what was louder: the pole, or the crowd.
It was midway through Michael Jung’s round when it happened. Ros Canter, seconds before, had jumped a faultless clear round with her five-time five-star winner, Lordships Graffalo, which meant that Michi had nothing in hand: if he so much as tipped over the time allowed by a fraction of a second, he’d find himself on the same score as her.
Six championships to date, with Michi in the irons at least. Five previous showjumping rounds that would see the eighteen-year-old Hanoverian and the most-medalled rider of all time fight for podium places. Just one clear – at the FEI European Championships last year – to his name, when it ultimately ended up being cross-country time penalties that cost them the win. A victory gained, of course, on the final day of the Paris Olympics, despite a pole down; several lost, including the 2022 World Championships at Pratoni, where they had one in hand but took two, forgoing the podium entirely.
So when that midway moment happened, and Chipmunk’s front hooves hit the back rail of the out element of the double-double at 5B – boof, boof, one gunfire clang right after another – it felt a bit like a foregone conclusion. For the third consecutive World Championship, a German would hand the win to a Brit on the basis of a rail. Yet again, and this time at the twilight of his storied career, Chipmunk would sacrifice a medal in the final phase.
The gasp and the groan from the 25,000 or so people in Aachen’s main stadium engulfed the space. But as Michi and Chipmunk moved away from the fence, the pole – milliseconds before airborne over the cups – settled back into its original position. The fence, inexplicably, was still up. And then the subsequent reaction was even louder: the mein Gotts, the clutching of neighbours’ arms, the “I really, really thought that was coming down!” rippling through the place; the frenetic murmurings of relief; the great crescendo of shushing as they realised one after another that they really ought not to distract their hero now that he’d clawed back a chance at the win. Distracted, perhaps, if just marginally, the pair tapped 6, too. It stayed up.
The round improved thereafter, and the occasionally lackadaisical Chipmunk settled into both a positive rhythm and a degree of caution that allowed him to navigate the remainder of Frank Rothenberger’s course without any further incident.
Even the GOAT gets emotional: Michael Jung secures the championship with fischerChipmunk FRH. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
When they crossed the finish line, they did so as the newly-minted World Champions.
This isn’t, of course, the first time that Michi has held this title – nor, indeed, the first time he’s been both the World and Olympic champion concurrently. He’s just the second person to manage it: New Zealand’s Blyth Tait did it when winning gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 1998 World Championships at Rome with Ready Teddy; Michi did it the first time in 2010 when he won the World Championships in Lexington and the London Olympics in 2012. If anything, he probably feels like a bit of an underachiever: last time he held these two titles, he also had the European Championship title to his name, having won it at Luhmühlen in 2011. He is, famously, the only person to have managed that hattrick.
Michael Jung and fischerChipmunk FRH. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
“I feel very lucky to have these amazing horses and be the rider for them,” says Michi, who collects his eighth senior individual gold medal today. “Standing in the prizegiving between these amazing horses, it makes the job for the rider that much easier.”
It’s easy, now that the former Julia Krajewski ride Chipmunk is a multi-medallist himself, to fish for comparisons between him and Michi’s previous bay stalwart, the incredible La Biosthetique Sam FBW. But, he says, they’re very different horses who came to him in very different epochs of his career.
“Sam was my horse in the beginning, and I grew up with him together. He was a very powerful horse, and not so easy in the dressage, and he had not so much scope in the jumping but he was always a super cross-country machine. I had the feeling he could jump everything so easily, he could run every hill, if necessary he could do it for half an hour – it didn’t matter for him. He was super fast in hard ground, deep ground; he was such a strong and sound horse and in that time, that was really amazing. Chipmunk is a super dressage horse, with such good balance and such a super temperament – every day, he’s a joy to ride. Then in the cross-country he’s powerful, and he can run so fast. Today, he showed he can jump so carefully and in a super style, too, a completely different style of jump to yesterday.”
Michael Jung and fischerChipmunk FRH. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Today’s showjumping round was “tough – with the time, too,” he continues. “He started out very, very good; he was super calm, super to ride, really listening when I started to gallop and to the first jump he gave me a very good feeling directly. But I took a bit more of a gallop to the first combination and ended up a bit closer than I wished on the oxer – so that was a scary moment, but the rest was amazing.”
The individual podium: World Champion Michael Jung, silver medallist Ros Canter, and bronze medallist Laura Collett. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Ros Canter, too, has been the World Champion previously – she won the title at Tryon in 2018 with the late Allstar B, and came into this week’s competition as one of the three firm favourites to battle it out for the gold.
But when you’re in second place after cross-country, all you can do is what you can do; namely, a clear, quick showjumping round to put the pressure on the leader. That’s exactly what she and Lordships Graffalo delivered, in ‘Walter’s’ charmingly laid-back sort of way that saw them pick their way around the colossus of the arena as though it was a working hunter class.
Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
The beauty of this podium, which features European Champions Laura Collett and London 52 in bronze after a surprise rail down, is that any of the three could have won the gold and it would have seemed like exactly the right result. But where it’s the last hurrah on the world stage for 18-year-old Chipmunk and 17-year-old London 52, a return – and a win – seems about as inevitable for the 14-year-old Walter as any result can be in this sport. He has been fourth and now second at World Championships; he has been a team gold medallist at the Olympics; he has been a double gold medallist at the European Championships; he has won Badminton thrice and Burghley twice and this, somehow, remarkably, still feels like the beginning of the story.
“I think part of [our success] is that we’ve been together from the word go,” says Ros. “I’ve been riding Lordships Graffalo since he was three years old, and from the word go, I absolutely loved him, and I think we complement each other well. The things he’s really fantastic at, like going fast, are my weakness; the other bits like dressage, which he wouldn’t have particularly loved, is one of my strengths. But I think the big thing as well is that he has the most fantastic and supportive owners behind him. Michelle and Archie Saul have been in the sport for many, many years with lots of different horses, and they’re just fully behind what we do, and they always allow me to give Walter the best opportunities in life.”
Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
His position as Vice World Champion further cements the British-bred gelding’s status as arguably the greatest event horse of all time.
“We all know that Walter loves Badminton and Burghley and he’s got an endless gallop around those big tracks,” says Ros. “So to be able to prove that he can do these three phases in a competition like this, I think that makes it the ultimate event horse.”
Laura Collett and London 52. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
For Laura Collett, riding into a highly pressurised showjumping arena on the consummate stylist London 52 is a privilege: he’s one of the most reliable showjumpers in our sport, and no doubt one of the most fun to sit on, too. But even the greats can have mistakes, and today they drew one of the biggest gasps from the crowd when, on the approach to the oxer at fence 12, ‘Dan’ spooked at the water tray and disrupted the stride pattern, ultimately taking the front rail down with his knees.
Fortunately, though, that mistake lost them no ground on the leaderboard, and a clear wouldn’t have raised them up, either.
“He jumped absolutely incredible in there, and I have no idea why he did what he did – he hadn’t done it before Tokyo, and he hasn’t done it since Tokyo, but it was basically a replica [of that rail],” says Laura. “He’s been faultless all week, and I’m just delighted that it didn’t change the standings.”
If gold was the goal for Ros and Laura, they won’t be going home disappointed: the British team has been on superb form this week, rallying robustly after a disastrous result at last year’s European Championships to show the world exactly what they’re made of. They came into today’s showjumping finale with just shy of 15 penalties in hand, and ended the day still sitting on a margin of 11.6 penalties, unusurpable in gold.
“We came here to win a team gold, and we’ve done that and added a couple of extras just for a bonus,” laughs Laura. “All the horses and all the people and all the team have been phenomenal all week, and we’re just very lucky to be part of one hell of a team.”
Team GB returns to form with a decisive gold medal victory. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Tom McEwen and JL Dublin also laid down a smart round with a rail down at fence 12 to contribute to that team result, which saw the Brits down to just three after the shock elimination of Gemma Stevens and Flash Cooley on yesterday’s cross-country. But for Tom, that single rail did spell a slip down the individual standings, and he and ‘Dubs’ had to settle for seventh place in the final order.
Tom McEwen and Laura Collett. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
“It’s a bit of a shame but honestly it hasn’t cost us anything, because I’ve finished fourth so many times before that I’m rather pleased not to have done it again,” he laughs. “And more importantly, we’ve done what we came to achieve, which was team gold. I couldn’t be happier!”
British chef d’equipe Dicky Waygood will finally be able to exhale (in the bar next door, with his madcap group of riders, no doubt): there’s the redemption arc from Blenheim to now, of course, but there’s also the matter of the 2028 LA Olympics that’s been dealt with today. This week’s competition represents the first chance that nations have to qualify teams for the Games; from here on out, everyone as-yet-unqualified will have some serious work on their hands to get the job done.
“It’s really easy to sit here now and say our first target was Olympic qualification, but as you know, we came here with a lot of weight and expectation on the top of our shoulders,” says Dicky. “So for these guys to deal with that weight and pressure and the expectation is absolutely incredible. And of course, there is a bit of relief afterwards as well. We’ve all worked together so often. We know when someone might be a little bit hyped or not hyped or in a good place, and it just takes one glance — and that’s the same with me as well. They know when they need to give me a kick up the backside as well, which is great.”
Team GB’s supporters were among the most vocal of the week. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
It is, he says, “a really, really lovely group to work with, and it just — it’s really hard to explain. But when you say team spirit, we are, in essence, quite an individual sport. 350-odd days a year, everybody’s competing against each other. But eventing has such a family feeling, and there’s very few sports where, in individual competitions, athletes from different nations will say, ‘be careful when you go around that corner, it might be slippery’ or ‘look after yourself,’ because there is a great spirit within the sport. And then when we come together as a team, these guys have kept [that spirit].”
Team Germany dedicates silver to coach Peter Thomsen, who’s recovering from a riding accident. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Germany might have missed the chance to take gold on home soil, but their silver medal finish was met with no shortage of support from the tens of thousands of fans who’d filled out the stadium this afternoon. There was, at the helm, that excellent effort from Michi and Chipmunk, which was bolstered by a clear round with 1.2 time penalties for Malin Hansen-Hotopp and Carlitos Quidditch K (9th) and a one-rail round for first-phase leaders Julia Krajewski and Uelzener’s Nickel (17th). Team pathfinders Libussa Lübbeke and Caramia FRH closed out their week with a single rail, too, for 41st place.
Malin Hansen-Hotopp and Carlitos Quidditch K. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
They, too, secure an LA Olympic ticket with their result – and perhaps more pertinently, they pay homage to chef d’equipe Peter Thomsen, in absentia after a riding accident earlier this year.
“Aachen’s always special, and then having the World Championship at home is something you really want to be part of,” says Julia. “Peter has been working towards it more or less since Paris. A couple of weeks ago Peter couldn’t be part of it anymore, it somehow brought us all even closer together, and we really think we had to make it happen for him because a lot of work and thought and effort and planning came from him. I personally thought a lot of him and words he would say [throughout the week].”
She also shared some heartening news: “we’ve had some phone calls with him, and I’m happy to share that he’s absolutely on the up. This is as much his medal as everyone’s on our team. Everybody says it’s a team effort, but I think we should rent out the experience to be a part of an eventing week at a championship – it’s crazy, I think everybody is lacking hours of sleep and it’s very intense! But everybody, the farrier, the vet, the physio, the grooms, everybody around cross country put so much effort into it. And if you can then bring home a team medal, it’s very emotional. I’ve been crying a lot today. I mean, I didn’t win an individual medal or anything, but all this effort coming into result is just very, very special and something you can give back to everybody who’s behind you the rest of the year.”
“I think we were all riding a bit for Peter,” agrees Libussa. “He was the one who got us here, I would say.”
Malin, who grew up riding at Peter’s stables, particularly relished the daily phone calls the team had with their coach, for whom Andreas Dibowski is deputising.
“It was special, even when he was not here, to have him every day on the phone,” she says.
(Peter was also, it should be said, well represented beyond Germany: Laura sourced a young London 52 from his stables.)
Will Coleman and Diabolo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Will Coleman and Diabolo jumped a faultless clear round to climb two places up to fourth – probably the most frustrating position to finish in, with its close proximity to the podium. But it’s hard to imagine that that’ll be at the forefront of his mind, because that excellent effort also helped to secure a bronze medal for the US team, who climbed through the week from first-phase sixth.
“I think it’s a testament sitting here,” says Will. “We didn’t get off to the greatest start, but everybody kept a really cool head and I think we just sort of kept chipping away throughout the course of the weekend. Our management, Leslie [Law] and Karyn [Schuter], exude a certain amount of confidence and I think we fed off that and just kept trying to make each day count as best we could. That’s all you can really control, and I just thought all four of us did a good job at that, and we’re fortunate and very blessed to be sitting here because of it. We’ve also had a lot of fun – I can’t remember laughing so much at an event as we did this week. It felt the way it’s supposed to feel, like we were all rooting for each other, and we didn’t really care who came out on top.”
Will Coleman and Diabolo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Of his Kentucky-winning mount, Diabolo, he continues, “He’s just a star. He was incredible. He’s never jumped in an atmosphere quite like that. Kentucky is one thing, but Aachen is kind of another, and he was a little on his toes when he went in there, but he just knows the job. I just knew he was going to do everything in his power to leave the rails up, and he did. I can’t say enough about him.”
The time was characteristically influential today, and Will and Dab delivered one of the thirteen clears inside the time – something that Will puts down to the time he’s been spending in the pure showjumping ring.
“I think you can’t get in the ring enough,” he says. “The show jumping now is becoming such a critical element. There’s hardly an event now where you can go and have a rail and hold any kind of position in the top 10, so I do think it’s a phase you have to get really, really comfortable in. I just happen to really love the phase; I love show jumping, and for me, it’s a passion, so I love studying it and working at it. And I’m lucky that I have a few pure jumpers that allow me to go and get practice at some bigger courses. And I do think it helps me when it comes to these kind of pressure rounds. You feel like you’ve been there and done it a bunch.”
The US, too, was down to a three-berth team after the shock elimination of Caroline Pamukcu and HSH Blake on cross-country, and they began their day in fifth place narrowly behind the Irish. That meant that there was an enormous amount of pressure on all three to secure clear rounds, after which they would simply have to wait and see.
Boyd Martin and Cooley Nutcracker. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
For Boyd Martin, the result was a fault-free clear with the former Liz Halliday ride Cooley Nutcracker, which bolstered their claim to a leaderboard climb and secured an individual thirteenth place finish, too.
“Oh, I was nervous as hell,” says Boyd. “I thought we had an outside chance of getting a medal if we all jumped clear. And you know, we were lucky with the Americans — we had three really good jumping horses. Bali’s been in phenomenal form jumping and had a great warm-up and went in and was fantastic.”
“Deep down,” he continues, “you don’t really have control over the other teams. But Denim, Cooley Nutcracker, and Diabolo are just very, very good show jumping horses, and both Will, myself, and Philip all had very good coaching, with Lauren Hough with Philip, and Peter [Wylde] with me, and [Grant Wilson] with Will, and I sort of thought we could all jump clear and see where it all unfolded.”
Phillip Dutton and Denim. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
For Phillip Dutton and Denim it was also a clear, but with a scant 1.2 time penalties, which earned them individual 27th.
“It’s rewarding because it was a bit of a tough week for us,” he says. “We were left behind a bit in the first couple of days and to be able to come back today and be sitting up here with all these great other teams is something for us all to remember and something to be proud of.”
As the 2028 Olympics host nation, the USA earns a team qualification by default, which means that the seven berths available this week skip over them and go down to eighth place on the national leaderboard.
Fourth-placed Ireland might have missed out on a medal chance by a couple of rails, but will be making the trip to the west coast in two years’ time; likewise Switzerland, who were in bronze medal position before the start of this phase, earned their ticket with a fifth place finish. Their upward trajectory continues on apace, and after this week’s result and last year’s European Championship it’s clear that the next piece of the puzzle is consolidating the final phase – then, they will end up on the podium they deserve.
New Zealand had a mixed bag of a week, beginning in fourth place, dropping to eighth yesterday, and rising again to a final sixth today, but although the sting of losing out on a medal they seemed nearly assured of this year will be a sharp one, they, too, know that they have an Olympics on the horizon to regroup for. Seventh-placed Sweden will be in LA, and in a huge moment for the sport and the fledgling eventing nation, Belgium secured eighth place in the first session of jumping today, booking their ticket.
Lara de Liedekerke-Meier and Kiarado d’Arville. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
It’s important to contextualise Belgium’s qualification history, because this really is a colossal day for the country. They were able to field a team at the Paris Olympics in 2024, which was the first time since London 2012 that they even qualified; on that occasion, they earned their spot through the European Championships pathway, which is one of the nearly-but-not-quite-last-chance-saloons of the qualification process. In the years prior, they had battled it out at the bitter end of the Nations Cup finale in Boekelo, so often tasting disappointment when doing so.
But Belgium has been putting in the work, and their performances as a nation and as individuals have been improving commensurately. At Paris, that resulting in an incredible fourth place finish; some time after, a positive dope test for Tine Magnus’s Dia van het Lichterveld Z that was traced back to a supplement meant that they lost it all, even though Tine was deemed innocent by a tribunal. They had proven themselves as competitors in Paris, which nobody can take away from them; that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
“It has not been that easy, with the story of Tine [Magnus], and then having this result, not having the result, her proving that she’s innocent – it broke a little bit some team spirit, and we didn’t know who to believe,” says Lara de Liedekerke-Meier, who was best-placed of the team in 25th with Kiarado d’Arville. “The cohesion in the team really took a shake from it. But I think we regroup here. I think we can count on Karin [Donckers’] experience, and now — I’m not that old, and I don’t have as many championships — but my experience too. So I think it’s really promising. I think the group is getting stronger. The team is getting quite experienced and also really specializing in the task they need to do.”
It has been, she continues, “a roller coaster this weekend — from dreaming, to not believing anymore, to giving up and then to finally getting it. I think that’s the pure emotions and why we do high-level sport. I’m over the moon, obviously. We have next year to really build up for LA, give time for younger horses, or even go five-star instead of running shows that maybe would have not suited the horses [in order to chase qualification]. So this changes, fundamentally, my program and my way of seeing the next years, and it excites me so much.”
It’s an interesting catch-22 that presents itself for developing nations: if they have to create their seasons around the fight for qualification, the specific pathways of that fight become more important than bespoke planning to fit each horse. That means that even if they do ultimately get the qualification through one of the last-gasp options, their preparation has been irreparably impacted, and they go into the championship even more on the back foot against established, early-qualified countries who’ve been able to focus on horse-specific programs ever since. Now that Belgium has obtained an early qualification for the first time in this modern iteration of the team, it opens the door for them to truly level up into the next phase of their identity – a phase in which they can finetune their focus immeasurably.
Alexis Goury and Je’Vall. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
There are a couple of major nations who didn’t manage to secure their qualifications this week, despite being expected to: France dropped out of the team race entirely this morning after the withdrawal of Nicolas Touzaint and Diabolo Menthe, which left just two riders in the hunt, and Australia, too, was benched when just two of their competitors completed cross-country. Both nations are well-represented individually, though: for France, Gaspard Maksud and Zaragoza followed up their 2022 sixth-place finish with a fifth-place result, individual competitor Astier Nicolas clinched eighth place behind Tom McEwen with Alertamalib’or, and team rider Alexis Goury closed out the top ten with the ten-year-old Je’Vall, giving the young horse two top ten finishes in as many championship appearances.
Gaspard Maksud and Zaragoza. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Australia went home with a sixth place finish in the individual standings thanks to the ministrations of Andrew Hoy, returning for his umpteenth championship after winning a bronze team medal here twenty years ago, this time riding the evergreen Vassily de Lassos.
Andrew Hoy and Vassily de Lassos. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Also unqualified are Japan, whose remaining two riders withdrew before the final horse inspection this morning; Italy, Austria, and Brazil, who were down to two riders apiece today. Very close but just off the pace were the ninth-placed Dutch team and the tenth-placed Czech Republic team, which should still serve as a heartening result for each as they begin to tackle alternative routes to Paris. Those options, broadly, include two spots at the European Championships next year, one spot at the Nations Cup finale at Boekelo next October, two at the Pan-American Games next July, and as-yet-unallocated qualifiers for Groups C, G, and F, which cover Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
We’ll be looking at those qualification routes in full a little further down the line as we count down to the LA Olympics, but for now, the road to 2028 truly has begun as we close the book on the 2026 FEI World Championships here at Aachen. It’s been an exceptional week of sport and an incredible line-up of talent, and we’ll be back soon with plenty of post-show analysis to further whet your whistle. But for now, it’s time to raise a glass to our champions and all the ways in which they won their week, and it’s also very much time to claw back a night of sleep that goes on for more than like, four hours, ideally. Until next time – Go Eventing!
A huge thank you to Kentucky Performance Products, who are supporting this week’s coverage. You can learn more about Kentucky Performance Products’ science-backed nutritional solutions here.
FEI Eventing World Championships for Seniors (Aachen, Germany): [Website] [Tickets] [Definite Entries by Country] [Timing & Team Scores] [Live Scoring] [Live Stream] [Official App – Apple] [Official App – Android] [EN’s Ultimate Guide] [EN’s Nations Form Guide] [EN’s Coverage] [Support Our Sponsor: Kentucky Performance Products]
