At only his second show since his winter break, the KWPN approved stallion Van Gogh (v.Numero Uno) showed excellent form with his rider Marco Kutscher. Last Saturday, the pair won the Championat of Zurich at 1.50 level.

Last week, Marco Kutscher took the KWPN approved stallion Van Gogh (Numero Uno out of Movera pref prest by Bernstein, breeders Peter and Renate Stultiëns in Weert) for the first time since October to a competition. This resulted in  a placing at the opening class in Leipzig. A good warm up for the CSI5*in Zürich, as it proved. "Marco was injured on his back for a while and therefore was forced to take a step back to recover properly. Therefore, he could not go to shows during some time. Van Gogh came to us, so we could freeze some semen. During that time Caroline has trained him. When he got back, for Marco it was actually a matter of picking him up and go", says owner Daan Horn of 'De Wiemselbach studfarm'. Fresh semen available Last year, the visor was fully focused on the Rio Olympics which the pair just missed. "Therefore, we did have to disappoint some breeders and we want to make next season a bit up with them. Van Gogh will most of the time be available through fresh semen until July 1st. In addition we have frozen semen of very good quality.” At the international competitions several good van Gogh-offspring jump very well, but this Saturday, the 15-year-old  stallion was in the winners spotlight himself. “I had to follow it through FEI TV and it looked very good. Van Gogh already seems completely back to his old level and Marco was very enthusiastic. Van Gogh felt great and worked well with him, he said. It did them both good, to take it slow for a while and now we have a good set of shows on the program. Because of the winter stop, Marco somewhat dropped in the rankings, so it remains to be seen whether we will already manage to get a starting place for Indoor Brabant in example, but we are hoping for it. And in the summer the Global Champions Tour shows and hopefully some Nations Cups are on our agenda. But first to Hong Kong in February, we have had good experiences with that", laughs Horn, thereby referring to the 2016 edition of this competition where Marco Kutscher and Van Gogh won the Hong Kong Masters and the associated bonus.  

JS/YBF for KWPN