August 23, 2026 
Steve Guerdat is standing atop the podium at Aachen, tears streaming down his face. The Swiss anthem echoing across the Hauptstadion. The individual gold medal pressed to his lips just moments before.
He’s the picture of an athlete taking stock of a moment. Of a medal that means more than a title. Of the realization of a dream few will ever imagine.
On a clear Sunday in Germany, 14 years after his gold medal journey began, Guerdat has completed his collection.
Olympic champion (2012).
European champion (2023).
Three-time World Cup champion (2015, 2016, 2019).
And now, world champion. At Aachen. The best show in the world and the Moby Dick of Guerdat’s career.
“There’s not one day in my life that Aachen doesn’t come in my mind,” said the Swiss rider. “I had a few good results here, I had few good shows but I was never able to win that Grand Prix and that’s every day a disappointment for me. Every year, I look at [the Wall of Fame] a hundred or two hundred times and I never see my name.”
Add the weight of a world championships on Aachen’s hallowed grounds and Guerdat was feeling the pressure this week. And it only grew every time he rode into the sprawling arena to wage war against the challenge set by Frank Rothenberger.
“I was very nervous all week,” he continued. “I thought normally my championship gets better [in nerves] once I get into it. But, to be honest with you, this week it kept getting worse and worse because I thought world championship is every four years. It’s not every four years that you have a horse like Dynamix. It’s not every world championship that you’re in a situation where you can bring a medal and maybe the gold, which I was dreaming of.
“So I kept getting very nervous [that] it might be my last chance to get it.”
Get it he did. Five clear rounds. Over four days of gruelling competition and towering 1.65m tracks. On courses that grew tougher and tougher with each rotation.
But Guerdat and his super mare just kept climbing. They were tied fifth after Wednesday’s opening speed round. Tied third after the second qualifier. And then tied first after the Team Final. Neck in neck with Germany’s Daniel Deusser throughout.
And then came a gasp of breathing room.
The top 25 returned for the first round of the individual final on Sunday and Deusser drops a rail. Guerdat, last in the ring, goes clear. He’s one of only six to do it.
The top 12 come back to decide the medals and it’s a bloodbath. Scott Brash falls off at the triple. Abdel Saïd stops out at the first combination. Nina Mallevaey ticks one hundredth of a second over the time allowed. Four pairs fault at the double. Two more at the last. It’s carnage in the ring.
Only three combinations find the elusive double clear to stand on the podium—Thibeau Spits (Impress-K van’t Kattenheye Z) and Harry Charles (LT Holst Freda)—and at the top is the man who found it all week.
The only one to jump five consecutive clear rounds.
The Great Steve Guerdat.
And he knows it as he gallops to the last. The result writ on his face as he digs deep to the final oxer and sighs with relief through the timers.
“I never wanted to finish my career before having won Aachen. To win the world title, the one I was missing, in Aachen that I never won, I don’t think it gets any better than that.”
And now all that’s left to do is soak in this moment—and process the achievement.
“The week has been very, very long. But once I jumped the last fence all the emotion came up and the feeling is— I have no words for it. I don’t really know what it means. I have what I wanted. And I’m somewhere now that I never dreamed of. I have a lot of pride, obviously, for my horse first, and then all the team around me, my family. It takes so many people to bring you here. I’m the one that has the luck to be on the podium, but I wish I could take a few other people with me up there and share that with them,” he shared.
“There is so many mixed feelings in my head. But I don’t really want to come down off my cloud, it feels quite good up there. And I don’t know, my life is different now, because I have what I wanted. So, I don’t know what is going to happen, but it’s definitely something new starting for me today.”
