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International Jumping Riders Club
Steve Guerdat and Dynamix de Belheme Crowned World Champions in Aachen
Steve Guerdat and Dynamix de Belheme are the new FEI Jumping World Champions. In an individual final that came down to the very last combination in the ring, the Swiss rider produced a foot-perfect final round to take gold at the FEI World Championships Aachen 2026, denying the home crowd a fairytale German double and closing out the championship with one of the tightest finishes in its history.
Silver went to Belgium’s Thibeau Spits with Impress-K van’t Kattenheye Z, and bronze to Great Britain’s Harry Charles aboard LT Holst Freda, a podium in which two medals belong to graduates of the Young Riders Academy, the talent programme run jointly by the International Jumping Riders Club (IJRC) and Rolex.
A final decided on the last horse in the ring
Going into Sunday, the individual standings could hardly have been closer: with the top ten separated by under four penalties in total. It was, by any measure, the kind of final where a single rail could reshuffle every medal.
Guerdat, last to jump, went into the ring with a fence in hand. He and the mare who has now carried him to a medal at three straight championships kept every pole up, sealing gold in what one reporter on-site described simply as the pair doing it “in perfect style” under immense pressure.
It is the third individual championship medal in a row for the Guerdat Dynamix de Belheme
partnership: European gold in Milan in 2023, Olympic silver in Paris in 2024, and now World Championship gold in Aachen. Guerdat becomes the 19th rider in history to hold the FEI
Jumping World Championship title, and adds a second individual world title to the bronze he
won with Albführen’s Bianca in Tryon in 2018 making him the only rider in Sunday’s field
to have previously stood on an individual World Championship podium.
Two days earlier, after Switzerland’s team finished sixth and out of the medals, Guerdat had
struck a notably different tone.
We came for a medal and we missed, so we’re obviously not happy about that, It’s not a bad result, but it’s just not good enough.
he said after the team final. His only unqualified praise that week was reserved for his mare:
The horse is exceptional,
he said after their clear round in the team competition.
Earlier in the championship, reflecting on the pressure of a long build-up, Guerdat had put
into words what every rider in Sunday’s final was carrying with them:
You don’t win it the first round, everybody knows you can lose everything, so it’s always very stressful.
Silver and bronze: the Young Riders Academy podium
If gold went to one of the sport’s most decorated champions, the two minor medals told a
different story, one of a development pipeline delivering exactly what it was built for.
Thibeau Spits, who claimed silver for Belgium, was named to the Young Riders Academy’s
Full Programme team in 2023, the same year he won team gold at the European
Championships.
Harry Charles, third with LT Holst Freda, joined the Academy back in 2018 and has gone on to Olympic team gold in Paris in 2024. Both riders are part of a list that already includes Bertram Allen, Richard Vogel and Sophie Hinners all of whom competed in this same Aachen final.
Charles’s bronze arrived with a horse he has ridden for only a few months. Speaking after LT Holst Freda’s clear round in Friday’s team final, the same partnership that carried him to Sunday’s podium, Charles described the emotion of finally delivering with her:
The atmosphere is amazing, and I’m very happy to get a clear, finally. She’s not knocked a jump all week, it’s been me, so I felt a lot of relief after the finish line; the feeling was again incredible.
He added that the mare had come into his life almost by accident:
In May, I wasn’t even planning on coming, I didn’t have a horse, then Freda kind of showed up.
A champion who also sits on the IJRC Board
Alongside his riding career, Guerdat has been for several years part of the Board of the International Jumping Riders Club. Other IJRC Board Members were also present in Aachen, including Richard Vogel and Rodrigo Pessoa, while IJRC President François Mathy Jr, was there in his role as Chef d'Equipe of the Spanish team.