Winners in the FEI Awards 2020 five categories have been revealed with Eventing legend Ingrid Klimke taking back-to-back wins as Peden Bloodstock FEI Best Athlete.
This year the task of choosing the best of the best from the past decade’s previous awards winners was entirely in the hands of the public who cast their votes for the 55 nominees from 19 nations. Over 70,000 votes were cast on FEI.org and on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. Podiums in each of the five categories were occupied by a global spread from Germany, Great Britain, Australia, China, Ireland, Palestine, South Africa, The Netherlands and Zambia.
With the FEI Awards Gala cancelled this year due to the pandemic, the winners were revealed to their online audience in a moving video narrated by British Paralympic champion Natasha Baker.
Ingrid accepting her Award in Moscow in 2019 Photo courtesy FEI/Liz Gregg
Double Olympic Eventing team gold medallist and five-time Olympian Ingrid Klimke (GER) was delighted to win a second Peden Bloodstock FEI Best Athlete Award, together with a horse transport voucher from title sponsor and Official FEI Equine Logistics Partner, Peden Bloodstock.
“This is all still a little bit unreal but I’m so thrilled and happy,” she said. The 52-year-old, who was also nominated for the Award in 2015 and 2017, going on to win in 2019, is only the second person in history to win back-to-back European titles on the same horse, claiming individual gold with SAP Hale Bob OLD at the Longines FEI Eventing European Championships in 2017 and 2019.
This year she took her fifth German National Championship, having won previously in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2009, sharing the spotlight with her daughter Greta Busacker, who was crowned German National Junior Champion on the same day.
Although Ingrid Klimke has set her sights on winning her first individual gold at the Tokyo Olympic Games next year, she is not shy of stating her longer term ambitions.
“I’m already thinking of Paris 2024 which is not so far away. I love to ride, I love to compete and I love to keep going.”
There was further cause for celebration at the Klimke stables when Carmen Thiemann, head groom for more than two decades, won the 2020 Cavalor FEI Best Groom Award
Ingrid and SAP Hale Bob at Luhmuhlen 2019
