Dressage-News

Aug. 14, 2025

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

Denoix PCH is the highest ranked American-owned horse in the world but when the 13-year-old gelding canters into the arena with Katharina Hemmer for the rider’s first international championship next month it will be for Germany.

Katharina also placed fifth in the 2024 final of the highly competitive German developing Grand Prix Louisdor Prize on Slaide, a Hanoverian gelding aged nine at the time owned by medical professional Scott Zahner who lives in the Chicago area.

Her first international competition, at Under-25, was on Don Angelo owned by Diamante Farms of Wellington, Florida and competed by Devon Kane over three years from 2010 to 2012.

Although a significant part of her equestrian life revolves around American-owned horses, Katharina has never been to the United States.

Americans are a big part of her life. She describes the Kane family, Nancy Gooding and Scott Zahner as “super nice people, super nice horse owners. very, very supportive.”

The foundation of Katharina’s development into a top rider for Germany and the appeal of American owners initially was Hubertus Schmidt, on German gold medal teams at the 2004 Olympics, the 2006 World Equestrian Games and the 2005 European Championships. In a remarkable career, he has already trained well over 50 horses to Grand Prix.

He is as highly respected in America as in Germany having competed and coached there for more than 30 years and whose farm in Germany has been a summer training camp for many Americans.

Straight out of school in 2014, Katharina took a trainee position with Hubertus that she thought would last three years.

Among the Americans working with Hubertus at the time was Devon Kane who had been competing Don Angelo who suffered serious allergy problems in South Florida’s sub-tropical climate. Although a personal favorite of Terri Kane, Devon’s mother, she noticed Don Angelo thrived at Hubertus’s farm.

Through Hubertus and for the health of the horse, the Kane’s offered to leave Don Angelo in Germany for Katharina who didn’t have a horse to compete.

It worked out. In the prestigious K&K Cup Under-25 division at Münster, Germany in 2018, Katharina and Don Angelo won both the qualifier and the final. Don Angelo, Katherine reports, horse is now happily retired on her parent’s farm.

“I was very lucky because he was my first Grand Prix horse. It was a big chance for me to show my first Intermediaire II and also then in the U-25 classes and I could gain a lot of experience with him,” Katharina told DRESSAGE-NEWS.com. “I’m very very thankful to the Kane family and to Don Angelo. He’s at my parents place in retirement. He’s 25 now, he’s looking super and is feeling very good and I hope he will have a long retirement.”

With the experience on Don Angelo and what she describes as the “kindness and expertise” of Hubertus, she stayed at the farm beyond the her trainee commitment having made up her mind to “do something serious.”

Serious came when when prominent American show horse owner Nancy Gooding, owner of Plum Creek Hollow farm in Larkspur, Colorado bought Denoix at an Oldenburg auction in 2016 and sent what was then a stallion to Hubertus for training.

Katharina thinks that Denoix’s movement and “a really special appearance–she looked into his eyes and he had very clever and kind eyes–was what attracted Nancy to the horse. “She’s really a horse person.”

For the first year, Denoix was ridden by Katharina.

Hubertus made the CDI debut on Denoix at Small Tour in 2019 and late in the year placed fourth in the Nürnberger Burg-Pokal, the German developing Prix St Georges championship. In 2020 he was second in the Louisdor Cup for developing Grand Prix horses and in 2021 the duo moved up to Big Tour. Denoix was gelded.

The reins for Denoix were turned over to Katharina in early 2023. The partnership clicked.

The pairs first international victory was in Belgium, their first CDI. By the end of the year, Katharina and Denoix logged a double victory at a top ranked CDI5*, then seven victories in 14 starts in 2024.

The highlight so far in 2025 has been on the German gold medal team at the Nations Cup at Aachen, Germany, the most prestigious horse show in the world.

That success led to Katharina, now aged 31 and 12 years since she began her three-year trainee stint, and Denoix being selected for Germany’s team at the European Championships in Crozet, France along with team mates Isabell Werth on Wendy de Fontaine and Frederic Wandres on Bluetooth OLD, Paris Olympic gold medalists, plus Ingrid Klimke on Vayron NRW.

It will be the first international championship for Katharina and Denoix,

Denoix, she says, is “a very, very special horse. I have a super close connection to him. When I took him over, I really spent a lot of time with him, I still do now. For example here I go without a groom. I do everything by myself. I groom him myself. I spend all the day with him. I think this is really what is needed for him to make him feel good and to have a good connection to you as the rider.

“It’s very, very special. He gives you a very good feeling he’s very willing to work, super sensitive and just really so much fun to ride and I’m very, very glad that we are here now and we could do over the whole season already a really consistent good job and that we hopefully can go to our first championships for the Europeans this year. That would be a perfect goal.

“We’re a great team with Nancy as the owner, Hubertus as the trainer, that I took over the ride because somehow we fit together very well and yeah I’m just thankful every day and I really enjoy spending so much time with him and even if it’s just for walks and everything the way he looks at you and how clever he is it’s really so much fun to work with him.”

There was some bobbles when the partnership started. Denoix bucked off Katharina twice. As a stallion, he was also somewhat standoffish. But since beng gelded, he has become a lot more self-confident and calmer.

“I think he changed a lot,” she said. “He’s also searching more contact with people. As a stallion he was always a little bit staying by himself. Now he wants to cuddle all the time; he’s running behind really like a little puppy.”

Denoix likes lots of different food–mash after being ridden, carrots, sugar and applies.

While Los Angeles in 2028 would be fulfillment of a dream between now and then is this year’s Europeans, the World Championships in Aachen next year and then another European Championships in 2027.

“Our first look is always to keep the horses happy and healthy and keep going our way to improve a little bit day by day,” is the way Katharina explains the journey. “If that works out the other things come by themselves and so that’s the first goal and whatever we will go and do along the way, we will be happy to do it.”

High performance championships were “always a dream but I was not thinking about these things especially. So what I always love to do is working with the horses, riding the horses, educating them and this was always the main thing and is always the main thing. So this is just the cherry on the cream that it works like this and it’s a big plus of course and I really enjoy it but the main reason why I love to do it every day is really the work with the horses.”