Helgstrand Sends Fiontini to Patrik Kittel

Dressage

Sweden

Danish horse dealer Andreas Helgstrand has decided to pass on the ride on his 2021 Tokyo Olympic hopeful Fiontini to Swedish colleague Patrik Kittel.

Fiontini is an 11-year old Danish warmblood mare by Fassbinder x Romanov. She is bred by Hanne Lund and Henrik Hansen.

Sold to Sweden

Under Spanish Severo Jurado Lopez the dark bay mare won gold at the 2015 and 2016 World Championships for Young Dressage Horses in Verden and Ermelo

In 2016 Swedish young rider Beata Soderberg bought the then 6-year old mare as her future horse, but Severo Jurado Lopez retained the ride at the time.

Jurado and Fiontini completed a hattrick and won the 2017 World Young Horse Championships in Ermelo.

Sold to Denmark

In March 2018 Beata Soderberg sold Fiontini back to Andreas Helgtrand who partnered with investor Martin Julius Klejs Jensen of Stutteri EVO to re-acquire the horse.

Soderberg moved on with a new Grand Prix horse which she sourced at Helgstrand, Heuberger TSF (Anabel Balkenhol), and switched to Patrik Kittel as her new trainer.

Without making a lay-over at small tour level in 2018, Jurado and Fiontini made their national Grand Prix debut in 2019. The mare went lame in the spring of that year, though, and missed out on team selection for the 2019 European Championships in Rotterdam.

However, they successfully returned to the arena in October 2019 and March 2020. They were short listed for Spanish Olympic team selection, but in April 2020 Jurado decided to leave Helgstrand and lost the ride on Fiontini.

Tokyo Goal

Helgstrand had set his sights on returning back on the Danish Grand Prix team with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as goal. Andreas rode Don Schufro to a historic team bronze medal for Denmark at the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong and the Olympic fire was rekindled with Tokyo approaching.

Fiontini was the horse to fulfil this dream as both Ferrari and D'Avie were sold.

With all the buttons there, Helgstrand took over the reins and made his show debut on Fiontini at the CDN Hjallerup in July 2020, good for a first place with 75.200%. Their international debut was in October 2020 at the CDI Aarhus, where they posted 73.913% in the Grand Prix.

At the team selection and observation trials in 2021 for the postponed Olympics, Helgstrand and Fiontini scored between 71 and 72% at the CDI Hagen and Compiegne. Although long-listed, they did not made the cut of four riders to travel to Japan as member of the Danish team.

Move to Germany

With the Olympics done and dusted, Helgstrand has now turned his attention to his ever expanding business and decided to hand over the ride on the mare to Swedish horse dealer and dressage rider Patrik Kittel, who has competed and sold Grand Prix horses for Andreas before (Delatio, Bonamour).

"The growth ambitions of The Global Equestrian Group, which recently culminated in the acquisition of Ludger Beerbaum Stables and Riesenbeck International in Germany as well as the impressive Palm Beach International Equestrian Center in the US, take a lot of time," Helgstrand communicated.

He continued, "COVID-19 made it possible for me to devote more hours to training, which breathed life into the dream of competing at the Olympics again. Unfortunately, this was not the year, but let’s see where we stand as the Olympics in Paris approach."

Helgstrand has marked Jovian as his Paris Olympic hopeful.