Sandra Auffarth can't make it to Adelaide but team mate Dirk Schrade is stepping in to help out
With the Individual World Champion Sandra Auffarth unable to attend the Australian International 3 Day Event due to German Federation commitments, her spot conducting the dressage masterclass on Friday 14th at the event was soon filled by another World Champion – Dirk Schrade.
Dirk was already committed to attending the AI3DE and presenting a cross country masterclass on Saturday afternoon (which he will still be doing with Chris Burton) but he will now also present the dressage masterclass. Well, it sad we won’t be seeing Sandra but you can’t complain when another Olympic and WEG gold medallist takes her place
Dirk was part of the gold medal winning team at the London 2012 Olympic Games riding King Artus, the horse who also brought him CCI4* victory at Pau in 2009. Tragically King Artus died in 2013 after the cross country at Wiesbaden CIC*** due to an aortic rupture, having just completed the cross county course, finishing in second position.
"A horse like King you might only have once in a lifetime. He had everything you needed to achieve something big: heart, quality, intelligence, character and the right attitude. To see him die has been the hardest moment in my career so far” said Dirk at the time
Dirk with Hop and Skip at the WEG first horse inspection
However, despite the setback of losing his top horse at the height of its career, two years later Dirk won another team gold medal at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Normandy riding Hop and Skip, a horse bought for Dirk at the end of 2010 from the Japanese rider Kenki Sato. Good performances in 2013 including sixth at Aachen and being part of the gold winning German team at the European Championships, finishing on their score, set them up for Normandy where they didn’t get quite the result they were hoping for individually but still helped the team win gold
Sandra Auffarth’s partner Ed Holloway was also going to be making the trip to provide the event commentary which left another little hole to be filled and again an excellent replacement has been found in the British rider and commentator, Spencer Sturmey. Many of you may have seen Spencer interviewing riders at the Burghley Horse Trials as they exit the arena – not an easy job but Spencer does it with great humour (and a very long microphone) – let’s hope he does this in Adelaide too. Despite struggling with spinal injuries after a broken neck Spencer has enjoyed a long career in eventing and dressage, having ridden to 4* level and has also worked with Carl Hester, so he certainly knows his stuff. Spencer will be joining Sarah Nevile-Lavingdale and Michael Clark in the commentary box
As they say every cloud has a silver lining (or maybe gold in this case ....) so make sure you put those masterclasses in your Adelaide diary
Spencer Sturmey interviewing Andrew Hoy at Burghley
