Spanish Team Horse Ein Traum, Under 25 Mount for Paulina Holzknecht

Dressage

Germany

Germany's multiple medal winning young rider Paulina Holzknecht will be making the transition to Under 25 Grand Prix onboard of the Spanish team horse Ein Traum.

Owner Petra Hofmann and Ein Traum's rider Borja Carrascosa agreed that Holzknecht would make an excellent team for the future. The Holzknecht family has leased the horse for one year.

"The lease proposal was very interesting from all sides and all together we decided to do it," Carrascosa told Eurodressage. "She tried him a few times and they clicked immediately. They are a very pretty pair, so I think will be very exciting to see both next year at the shows."

Ein Traum is a 10-year old Westfalian by Estobar NRW out of Floriana II (by Florestan x Weinberg x Damokles). He is bred by Stephan Borgmann, who sold the horse to Petra Hofmann for 58,000 euro at the 2013 Borgmann Hof Auction.

Under Borja Carrascosa the chestnut made a winning debut at Grand Prix level at the 2017 CDN Ankum in Germany in October 2017. They went on to compete at CDI's in Wiener Neustatd, Mannheim, Compiegne, Fritzens, Frankfurt, Le Mans, Hagen, Wiesbaden, and the CDIO Aachen twice. They represented Spain at the 2019 European Championships in Rotterdam, where they were 34th in the Grand Prix with 69.705%.

"I had a great time with “Traümchen”," said Borja, "We did so many nice international shows together. We won the freestyle in Doha and we finished representing Spain at the European Championship in Rotterdam, so I’m so grateful for all this time that we spent together. A big thanks to Petra and Dieter Hofmann for the trust and support in the last two years!"

Paulina and Wells Fargo at the 2019
European YR Championships

The 21-year old Paulina Holzknecht initially began as a show jumping rider but switched to international pony dressage competition in 2014 with Carlos WE. In 2015 she moved up to junior riders level and in 2017 to young riders' level. Aboard Wells Fargo (by Welser x Fabriano) she represented Germany at the 2015 European Junior Riders Championships, where she won team gold and individual bronze. She returned on the team in 2018 at the European Young Riders Championships and landed team gold and kur silver.

This year Paulina has also been campaigning Furst Royal (by Furst Heinrich x Sir Scholling) and Darboven (by Don Kennedy x Sandro Hit) at international young riders' level. Paulina is a working student at Wolfgang and Elke Schmitz-Heinen's Hof am Eifgen in order to become a professional rider.

Carrascosa will now focus on his other Grand Prix horses, Escort, Laponia and Bordeaux’ Barolo.