Günter Seidel’s Sundayboy Injured & Out of Competition for 2 Months
14 years ago StraightArrow Comments Off on Günter Seidel’s Sundayboy Injured & Out of Competition for 2 Months
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
AACHEN, Germany, July 13–Sundayboy, restored by Günter Seidel to international Grand Prix level after a long layoff recovering from an injury, is out again for about two months with a new injury.
Günter of Cardiff, California, told dressage-news.com that the 12-year-old KWPN gelding by Kennedy injured himself last week at the training facility of Klaus Balkenhol, the former U.S. team coach with whom Günter has trained for several years.
Sundayboy placed second with a score of 70.390 per cent in a CDI4* Grand Prix at Fritzens, Austria, on June 26. At the same competition, Günter won the Freestyle on U II, his primary horse that, like Sundayboy, is owned by Jane and Dick Brown.
That competition was the first European show and a year since the American was thrown from U II, a 10-year-old gelding in an accident that broke his pelvis and kept him out of the saddle for six months.
Günter, a three-time Olympic bronze medalist and the winner of team silver at the World Equestrian Games in 2002 and team bronze in Aachen, Germany, in 2006, said that he close to 100 per cent recovered.
“Some days I feel it a little,” he said, “but when I get on a horse I’m fine.”
He is competing in Europe for the first time since the 2006 WEG at these show grounds where he is a member of the U.S. team in the CDIO Nations Cup, one of the most prestigious and competitive dressage events in the world.
Team mate Steffen Peters of San Diego, California, on his WEG double bronze-medal mount Ravel is the only American ever to capture the Grand Prix of Aachen in a sweep of all three CDIO classes–Grand Prix, Special and Freestyle–in 2009.
The other two members of the U.S. team are the 2011 World Cup Final combination of Jan Ebeling of Moorpark, California with Rafalca and Todd Flettrich of Wellington, Florida, with Otto, who was on the 2010 WEG team.
