March 9, 2026 
A lot has changed in recent months for Germany’s Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and TSF Dalera BB.
For the last six years, the two-time, double-gold Olympic dressage medalists and reigning individual champions were singularly focused on winning gold at the highest level of the sport. It’s a mission that they accomplished often and well—first in Tokyo in 2021, then successfully defending their title in Paris in 2024.
The pair also won FEI Dressage World Cup Finals, twice, and brought home four individual gold medals at the European Championships in 2021 and 2023 for Germany. But after announcing Dalera’s retirement after Paris in 2024 at the age of 17, von Bredow-Werndl hinted that her longtime partner’s next chapter could include motherhood. “This journey has been something so special to me and fortunately it is not over yet.
“We can keep Dalera here [at my stable in] Aubenhausen until her last breath and I am already looking forward to many more wonderful years with her,” the German rider said in her post-Olympic press conference, as reported by Horse & Hound.
“I hope Dalera can have a baby one day,” she added. “Next year we will try to get her pregnant.”
Fast forward two years later and, voila! Von Bredow-Werndl’s hopes have come to fruition, with Dalera giving birth to a healthy filly by Vitalis (by Vivaldi x D-Day) in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, March 9th. “She’s here—and simply wonderful!” she wrote on Instagram. “Everything went well.”
The special, decade-long bond between von Bredow-Werndl and Dalera has been chronicled on the dressage rider’s Instagram page, from sleeping in a cot in the mare’s stall before their first appearance in Tokyo, to the ways in which von Bredow-Werndl manages Dalera’s comfort in retirement. “Competitive riding and true love for horses aren’t mutually exclusive,” she has said.
And, in fact, Dalera played a special role in von Bredow-Werndl’s own path to motherhood—first with her son Moritz, eight; and then with daughter Ella Marie, three. “Dalera was the horse I rode throughout my pregnancy, right up until the end, because I always felt like she was watching over me. And she was also the first horse I showed my children to after they were born,” von Bredow-Werndl posted in March.
“It makes me incredibly happy that I get to accompany her on her journey to motherhood.”
The new filly—named Dolce Vita BB—undoubtedly comes at just the right time for von Bredow-Werndl, who tragically lost her new Grand Prix mount, the 11-year-old Hanoverian Diallo BB, to a sudden illness in January. The gelding passed just two months after he and von Bredow-Werndl won the FEI Dressage World Cup™ qualifier in Stuttgart.
“Dalera gave birth to this little magical creature at 1:40 a.m. last night,” von Bredow-Werndl wrote on Monday, noting that, like her mother and Diallo, the ‘BB’ in Dolce Vita’s names stands for Dalera’s owner, Beatrice Bürchler-Keller.
“We’re all so grateful,” she added, joking, “but also very tired.”
