Marc tells about the Sterrehof horses during corona time

It’s already two months now since the last minute cancelation of The Dutch Masters horse show. Since then global horse sport has come to a standstill and for now a competition restart is not in sight. Marc tells us how he and our top horses are doing at the moment. He says: ‘It has clearly become a lot more quiet, although I currently give more instruction to students than I was used to do. There seems to be a lot of interest in that. In the beginning it is still nice if you are at home for a couple of weeks without any shows, but at a certain moment you start to miss the competition, for yourself and for the horses. Sterrehof’s Calimero is taking it easy at the moment, as we work a little bit with him. This also applies to Sterrehof’s Dante (photo below), Edinus and Cayetano. We continue to ride them and jump once a week on average, which we normally rarely do at home. Sometimes we jump a course, other times we do gymnastic jumps with the horses. In between they can gallop on the racetrack and they are turned out at the pasture daily. We try to offer them as much variety as possible. These Grand Prix horses don’t really need to be taught anything anymore. What you miss now is a goal to work towards with them and you don’t know how long it will take. That makes it an uncertain situation.’

Stay positive

Horse trade has also largely stopped, Marc acknowledges. Meanwhile the costs continue. However, he emphasises he doesn’t want to complain: ‘The weather is nice now, we can still move forward at home and there are people who have bigger problems. The uncertainty is the most annoying, although I want to stay positive. If we can start again in the long run, these top horses will quickly be back in the right competition form again. Normally we will start with two or three small shows to get them into the rhythm and then we will see to what kind of level they can grow again. Looking at qualification for the Olympics, I think the competition will be harder next year than it was this year, due to some new combinations coming up. That’s not bad, there is nothing wrong with some competition. We will just have to prove ourselves again and we all start from the same backlog. We’ll be ready when we can start again.’