Gaston Glock Passed Away

Dressage

Austria

Austrian gun engineer and entrepreneur Gaston Glock has died at the age of 94. His company announced the news on Wednesday 27 December 2023.

"With visionary foresight, Gaston Glock built his company and led it to the top of the world with the internationally valued Glock Perfection. Until the very end, he was responsible for the strategic direction of the Glock group of companies and its employees," the statement read.

Glock founded a weapons company, in 1963 in Deutsch-Wagram, Lower Austria, which now has branches world wide. Glock has a nearly 65% market share of the handguns in the U.S.. Glock owns 99% of the business through a trust that Forbes estimates is worth $1.5 billion in 2018.

Through his second wife Kathrin (née Tschikof), a waitress more than 50 years his junior whom Gaston first met in a doctor's practice in 2004, Glock became connected to the horse world. The couple married in 2011.

In February 2012 the newly weds signed a 10-year old contract with Edward Gal, Hans Peter Minderhoud and Nicole Werner. He bought and built Glock Horse Performance Center in Oosterbeek for them, where they are still based today as free agents, according to latest reports. The mogul also owns a yard in Austria, which was initially run by Marcel Schoenmakers until 2014. They hosted lavish CDI competitions in Villach from 2012 through 2015 with celebrity guests such as Robbie Williams, Mariah Carey and Andrew Lloyd Webber. According to Der Standard, hosting on such show cost 30 million euro.

Over the past decade, Glock supplied Gal and Minderhoud with a steady stream of horses: Undercover, Voice, Zonik, Dream Boy, Total U.S., Romanov, Johnson, to name just a few. The couple consistently competed on the Dutch team the past 10 years. They last represented The Netherlands together at the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo.