IJRC Board Member Richard Vogel World Number One

Richard Vogel, member of the IJRC Board, has reached the top of the Rankings for the first time in his career. The 29-year-old German, part of the gold-medal team at last month’s FEI Jumping World Championship in Aachen, was sitting second behind the USA’s Kent Farrington at the end of July. The team medal on home soil gave him the points needed to overtake the American, and victory in the Brussels 5* Grand Prix with Gangster Montdesir on 30 August sealed the lead.
Vogel becomes the sixth German rider to top the rankings since 2000, following Christian Ahlmann, Daniel Deusser, Marcus Ehning, Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum and Ludger Beerbaum. Before this week, he had spent an uninterrupted 28 months inside the world’s top 10 without ever reaching first place.

Reacting to the news, Vogel called reaching the top spot “surreal”, and credited the achievement to the people and horses around him, among them United Touch S, Cloudio and Gangster, describing the title as a reflection of the team he has built.