June 26, 2026 
I think I’ve got a new crush: Willem Greve.
I didn’t want to say it during my previous recaps of Faultless: The Riders, The Horses, and the Pursuit of Excellence, but I knew very well who underdog Kyle King is (now riding for Team Canada), but I was unfamiliar with “the bald guy.”
Well, it turns out I am familiar with the bald guy—he’s Willem Greve, whom I know to fear on a start list, but couldn’t actually pick out of a lineup. Well, too bad for him now—if he commits a murder I’m gonna easily be able to pick him out in his bright orange dutch team jacket. Blame this docuseries Faultless, because there’s almost nothing I’m more into than a perfectionistic, melancholic rider.
And this episode brings me more than one. We also got Christian Kukuk, who delights me with his post-bad-round self-flagellation. I consider him the baroque poet of bad rounds.
Sometimes, in this world where everyone has a “LIVE LOVE LAUGH” banner hanging in their kitchen, I’m accused of being “negative,” something people who can’t handle reality throw at people in the midst of wrestling with it. I respond to this accusation by saying, “Anyone unwilling to have their heart broken is barely alive!”
I can tell you one thing: Kukuk doesn’t have that banner hanging in his kitchen. What he does have is an Olympic gold medal. Ok, it’s not hanging, it’s in a box, which he opens on his counter and gazes at as the most besotted lover gazes at his beloved.
We are in Germany and we are going to Aachen, oft-referred to as the “Wimbledon of Equestrian Sport,” although I personally like to refer to Wimbledon as the Aachen of Tennis.
Are you wondering who Kukuk is and what he does? This is what he says: “I ride horses. That’s my job.” And there’s his mentor, Ludger Beerbaum, who says of himself, “I’m actually quite old”—he looks healthy and robust—“and came a long way in this sport, so if you want to call that legend, I’m not so sure about it, but of course I appreciate it.”
To Kukuk, Beerbaum is the best in the sport.
To Beerbaum, Kukuk is an OCD perfectionist who must make a plan and stick to it or the world spins off its axis.
He’s also a new father of daughter Lilah and the best thing about it? “You get to know a little human.” We are shown Kukuk at the grill cooking up slabs of meat like a proper man providing for his clan.
And next we move to Willem Greve in the Netherlands, where he remembers his life as a boy, which began with a love of horses that sprouted from the cradle. We are shown photos of him on the back of a horse, his legs so small and so new I doubt he was even walking before his father, a vet and horse breeder, stuck him up there.
“I have to prove I am a winner,” he says in his quiet and serious way.
We learn that this pressure has never left him, except in his relationship with his mother’s partner, a man named Ben, who entered his life after his parents’ divorce. “He allowed me to be Willem,” says Greve.
He lost Ben in 2018 and his absence is still considerably felt: “I would love to have just spent one hour more with him.”
This episode delights in showing us quite a bit of action in the 40,000-seat Hauptstadion in Aachen. We begin with the Nations Cup, where Team USA triumphs with a double clear from one of our principals, Lillie Keenan, and the performance of McLain Ward and the late Imperial HBF.
(That summer, I did not attend Aachen, but had the privilege of seeing Ward and the magnificent Imperial HBF during their summer campaign in Rome and La Baule, and hardly ever was there a more brilliant performer.)
But the class that everyone has their sights set on is, of course, the Grand Prix. Here’s Richie Vogel again, and we get to visit him at the stables he shares with Sophie Hinners and David Will.
Hinners, we are told, has been Vogel’s girlfriend for 8 years and I find myself wondering how two people so young can put in nearly a decade of commitment while I, old like Beerbaum, can’t get through a weekend with someone without tapping out to get back to my cats and piles of unread books.
Both Vogel and Hinners were bred like Fuchs and Guerdat, horse-family stock with loads of Greve-like infant photos of them on horses.
But let’s get back to the Grand Prix. We are happy to see Fuchs again, recovered after his sh-t week at La Baule: he goes clear in the first round. He’s followed by Guerdat, recovered from food poisoning but still nursing his back, who also goes in for a clear.
Greve, unfortunately, especially for his new admirer, gets a rail, ends on 4, and exits the episode.
After his round, we are treated to a montage of rails, disobediences, and stops, Spruce-style.
But our other principals are hitting it: Vogel’s in for a clear, along with Hinners, Kukuk, and Lillie. In this Grand Prix, tough as any aside from the Spruce Meadows Master, the first round is followed by a second, nearly as long, which brings back 18 riders.
We got Guerdat double clear and Lillie double clear and Sophie double clear and Kukuk and Fuchs and Vogel! In fact, the second round only eliminates three first-round-clears from the jump off, going from 14 to 11, so one kinda wonders why they do it.
Oh, yeah—because we’re at the Aachen of Tennis and this thing cannot be easy!
So here we go into the jump off: Kukuk gets a rail, Lillie gets a rail, Hinners and Vogel each get two.
That leaves our rebel Swiss, struggling in the last episode, ready for a beautiful redemption arc.
In goes Guerdat, and he’s clear! That makes it a triple clear, a rare feat in our sport. And here comes Fuchs, not ceding a damn thing to his teammate, crossing the finish more than two seconds faster!
Yes, Fuchs, after his day at the beach in La Baule, has decided not only to stay at the show on Grand Prix day, but to win it!
Interestingly, looking back (and reading back), I realize I had a run in at La Baule with what must have been the Faultless film crew. Before I noticed they were there, filming, I had accosted Fuchs for a hat, proclaiming how “embarrassing” I found my KENT4EVA hat.
I realized quickly upon seeing the camera that I would bring great shame down upon myself trying to replace my Kent hat with one from Fuchs, being Secretary-General of the Kent Farrington fan club, if this interaction were to show up on the RokuChannel in the future!
But now I see the danger has passed and absolutely no one will know of my inconstancy, as I am strangely absent from the finished product.
Stay tuned for the next recap—we are headed to Hickstead!
Watch Faultless on Roku Channel.
