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Tales from Hartpury CDI: From gold medals to giving up – and now he’s back on top *H&H Plus*


  • Nikolas Kröncke’s inter I double win at the NAF Five Star Hartpury CDI aboard the chestnut stallion Flanell were his first rides at the Gloucestershire venue since he won individual and team gold for Germany aged 15 at the Pony European Dressage Championships there in 1997.

    Riding the pony Konrad, he won each of the tests at those Europeans and, although he didn’t take home individual gold again, Nikolas won several other medals at junior and young rider level.

    Grinning despite the rain after his inter I freestyle victory at Hartpury on Sunday, Nikolas explained: “I went over to the USA to university [at Stanford], and I rode there a little bit – there was a club – but it was very different, and at some point I said to myself, ‘OK, you want to focus on studying and it doesn’t really make sense to do this half-heartedly in the USA, a million miles away from everything’. So I gave [dressage] up in 2003.


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