By Sarah Eakin
Premiere week at the Winter Equestrian Festival was record-breaking for Germany’s Richard Vogel. Ranked sixth worldwide, Vogel demonstrated why he is a leading international contender when he took home four wins, including the $75,000 WEF Premiere Grand Prix aboard a new horse in his string, Event De L’Heribus.
Earlier in the opening week of WEF, Vogel put on a show for one of his owners and compatriots, Germany’s Patrick Mielnik, who stopped by Wellington International while vacationing with his family in Miami. Vogel took back-to-back wins on Mielnik’s horses that day. “That’s a good vacation,” said Mielnik after Vogel won the $6,000 1.40m Open Jumper aboard I’m Black Beautiful, before returning to the winner’s slot in the $35,000 WEF Challenge Cup Premiere Round with Levi Noesar, also owned by Mielnik.
“I’ve never had a start like this,” Vogel said after Sunday’s Grand Prix win with the 10-year-old German-bred gelding Event De L’Heribus (aka Sven). He also claimed a second 1.40m victory during the course of the week.
Vogel’s partnership with nine-year old Levi Noesar, which got underway after last year’s WEF, has seen multiple wins, including a victory in the Youngsters Cup final in Aachen and five-star wins in Greenwich and Toronto last summer.
“He’s quite a cool horse,” Vogel said. “I have had him a bit less actually than a year. He was obviously only eight last year and did amazing things. From the beginning, I had a good feeling about him and high hopes for him.”
Putting him into the International Arena at Wellington International for the first week of WEF was prompted by Mielnik’s U.S. vacation. “The owner is here, so we brought him out for the WEF [Challenge], but that was his only class for this week,” Vogel said.
Mielnik, an amateur show jumper, owns 15 horses and wasted no time in purchasing Levi Noesar, agreeing to buy the horse as a six-year-old, over the phone.
“A good friend called me on the telephone and said, ‘I have a super horse, and you must buy it,’” Mielnik recalled. “I said OK. I do that, and I buy it on the phone. I’ve never seen it before.”
Levi Noesar is likely to reappear in Week 2 of WEF. “Since he’s only nine, we try to not overdo it,” Vogel said of the Zirocco Blue son. “Because he has a lot of abilities, and he actually jumps it easy, so you’re always a bit like, ‘Oh, I think we can do a bigger class already.’ We try to still not overdo it, so he keeps the motivation. But I think at the end of the circuit, he can also step up into bigger classes.”
Vogel and Sven were making their partnership debut in the competition ring during WEF’s Premiere Week. Vogel first spied the horse in the stable of the Berger family in Bavaria, in southern Germany.
“More than a year ago, I bought another horse off them, and I saw him in the stable,” Vogel said. “Even in the stall, I could see that he was smart. I knew him from videos and followed the horse quite a bit, but they weren’t ready to sell. I went back two months ago to try him, and the feeling was very good.”
Sabrina Berger brought the horse up through the divisions, with considerable success in the young horse classes. “Sabrina did a super job with him,” Vogel said. “She brought him up very well so that we can take over the reins and straight away have success. That’s a nice feeling and a compliment to their work also.”
WEF runs for 12 more weeks, and there will be plenty of chances for Vogel to build on his early successes. “I think we could have not wished for a better start,” he said. “There are many weeks ahead, and from here on it only gets bigger and more difficult. So, I think we shouldn’t be too excited, but obviously we enjoyed the success. I think you could really see how happy the horses are to be back here, and how well they jump and how good they fight in the ring. It’s always good to have a good start and not a ‘wishy-washy’ start, so we’re delighted, and we will try to keep things up.”
Learn more about WEF at www.wellingtoninternational.com.
Read more by equestrian writer Sarah Eakin at www.paperhorsemedia.com.
