Sterrehof’s Dante wins Grand Prix Oliva!

Sterrehof’s Dante is aging like good wine. Our 17-year-old mare amazed again, this time by winning the Grand Prix of Oliva with Marc! The result was the perfect closure of the Mediterranean Equestrian Tour (MET) in Spain. Dante had been given the first week off, showed her quality and routine in the second week by finishing third in the Grand Prix and really peaked in the final week with Marc.

Dominance

This win was the reward of a rock-solid performance in the so-called Trofeo Oliva Nova Beach & Golf Resort Grand Prix. Just like the week before, Dante jumped a convincing clear in this 1.50m class, although this time the jump-off had a bigger line-up with ten clear combinations in total. In their final round Marc and Dante continued their dominance, with a clear in a particularly fast time of 36.94 sec. The only two other clear combinations were respectively almost 4 and 8 seconds adrift from what would be the winning time, and the other contenders had one or two fences down, with only one combination faster than ours, albeit at the cost of two jumping faults.

Great management

This victory means that Sterrehof’s Dante has won four top classes in a period of ten months’ time. Next to the win in Oliva, she stood on top of the podium at the Amsterdam World Cup, Rotterdam Grand Prix and the Turnier der Sieger in Münster and also scored second-place finishes in the GPs of Hagen and Indoor Friesland. Besides her unique qualities, this is mainly due to the great management at Stal Houtzager-Kayser, where they know like no other how to mature a good wine 😊.

Besides Dante’s highlight, our other horses regularly performed very well in her slipstream. For example, eight-year-old Mereusa finished beautifully eighth in the Silver Tour Grand Prix at 1.40m and nine-year-old Loeca N.D. jumped to a clear round and a thirteenth place in a field of 77 combinations in the Grand Prix qualifier at 1.45m.