Abegglen Sold to Victoria Max-Theurer

Dressage

Austria

With Austria's team ticket for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo secured, Elisabeth Max-Theurer has purchased another confirmed, high scoring Grand Prix horse for Victoria to ride: the Baumgurtel family's Abegglen.

Abegglen is a 10-year old Westfalian gelding by Ampere out of Curly Sue (by Carabas). He is bred by Christa Nagelschmidt-Terwort. He was named after the Swiss footballer Max Abegglen.

Discovered by Baumgurtel

Baumgurtel acquired Abegglen as a 2-year old at the 2012 Westfalian Stallion Licensing in Munster-Handorf.

He was first started by Matthias Bouten but in 2014 Marcus Hermes took over and trained the horse from novice to Grand Prix level.

Hermes competed the 6-year old Abegglen at the 2016 Bundeschampionate in Warendorf and placed 15th in the finals after coming 4th in the consolation finals. In 2017 they were 12th in the Nurnberger Burgpokal finals for Developing Prix St Georges horses and in 2018 they were 5th in the Louisdor Cup Finals for Developing Grand Prix horses.

Hermes and Abegglen made their international Grand Prix debut at the CDI Oldenburg in November 2018. In 2019 they showed at CDi's in Le Mans, Mannheim, Munich, Fritzens, Verden, Waregem and Stuttgart.

At the CDI Stuttgart in November their scores peaked to 74.652% in the Grand Prix and 75.106% in the Special, which qualified them to be submitted to the German B-squad.

Austrian Olympic Iron in the Fire

The high scoring potential of Abegglen in Stuttgart pushed Max-Theurer's interest in the dark bay gelding even more as a top Grand prix horse for Victoria in the 2020 Olympic year. Her other ride, Benaglio (by Breitling), was purchased as a youngster at Baumgurtel's yard so the two families were familiar with one another.

Max-Theurer also has a third iron in the fire, the 10-year old Quantaz (by Quaterback x Hohenstein), which was previously ridden by Ronald Lüders and which they bought in 2018. Quantaz was put in training with Victoria's coach Isabell Werth and she has competed him to secure the movements and give him more mileage. Max-Theurer and Quantaz did their first and only CDI so far in Cappeln in July and scored 70.00 in the Grand Prix.

Victoria Max-Theurer's top horse at the moment is Benaglio (by Breitling x Partout), which she took over from Kira Wulferding and began competing in the medium tour in 2018. This year their Grand Prix high score of the season was a 72.109% achieved at CDI-W Salzburg.

With the acquisition of Abegglen, Germany loses a top squad horse for the future and Austria gains one for the Olympics.

"We are sure that Abegglen will be in the best hands and have the best life with the Max-Theurer family," said Bea Baumgürtel. "And it was Marcus' decision to hand over Abegglen to Victoria Max-Theurer. We are a team and we took this decision together as a team."