Nadja Minder and Toblerone. Photo by Hannah Cole Photography.
A scant few years ago, you’d have been forgiven for not being able to name a single Swiss event rider. Now, though, the times are a-changing – or have been changing, really, for an Olympic cycle-and-a-half. There’s a recent Swiss five-star winner making headlines – that’s Felix Vogg, who took the Luhmühlen title in 2022 with Colero, breaking a 71-year fallow period for the nation – and a young Andrew Nicholson ride-alike who simply cannot stop winning four-stars (Robin Godel, of course). There’s the direct qualification for the Paris Games that they earned at the 2022 World Championships, a huge feat for a nation that wasn’t always guaranteed a team ticket at all; there’s the very-nearly-bronze finish that they got at that Games (they were fifth, ultimately, in a close-run showjumping finale).
It’s all adding up to be a pretty impressive resume for an up-and-coming eventing nation, but at first glance, it feels like a textbook continental approach, doesn’t it? It’s as though Switzerland, like many of the superpowers of European eventing, have found themselves at the point where two roads diverge in the wood – one toward championships and the twisty, technical four-star tracks that get them there, the other toward ‘traditional’ five-stars and the galloping terrain en route to them – and decisively chosen the former. Perhaps the very best of the Swiss, like the Germans, are only ours to enjoy when we go to European Championships, or Worlds, or Olympics, or when we hop onto that ferry across the Channel for the events unfolding on the other side of it.
Nadja Minder and Toblerone. Photo by Hannah Cole Photography.
Or… not, actually. Two Swiss competitors came forward for last week’s Defender Burghley Horse Trials, and both of them made it look as though they’d been training over British courses their entire lives.
When we talk about that divergence of the sport, which is a phenomenon that’s been ongoing for at least fifteen years now, there are certainly some spectrums involved. And on the far end of the ‘traditional’ spectrum? Burghley, a few steps along from, say, Bramham CCI4*-L and Blair CCI4*-L (may it rest in peace), where the ‘old’ style of the sport is alive and kicking and a ‘classic’ type of event horse – bold and blood, with tonnes of gallop and stamina that overrules the need for really fancy movement and a competitive first phase – reigns supreme. To prepare for it, you need access to a certain kind of developmental course; it could also be argued that a certain kind of training, rooted in the ‘old school’ of eventing, is necessary.
So what is it that allowed Lake Constance-based Felix Vogg, who finished thirteenth with Cartania, or 24-year-old Nadja Minder, from the Zürich canton, who finished twentieth with Toblerone, to lay down such decisive performances?
For Felix, he says, it’s a happy coincidence: in Cartania, he has a horse well-suited to this type of track, and so he’ll focus on the goals that fit her skillset best, be that Burghley, as this year, or Badminton, as in the past two years when she’s finished competitively.
“I’m not sure if I’ll ever have a horse like this again, because I’m not actually looking for that type of horse,” he says. “It’s a bit by accident, but for me, it gives good experience, even for the championships. Like, yes, you have totally different questions, but they’re challenging questions, and that makes it easier when you get to a championship. You’re like, ‘okay, I already saw that [question] somewhere else – and bigger!’ It really does help.”
Nadja Minder and Toblerone at Burghley’s first horse inspection. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
For Nadja, who, so early in her Senior career, has already represented Switzerland at the 2022 World Championships and the 2023 European Championships, as well as holding down the fort as travelling reserve in Paris, it’s similarly been about gaining as much experience as possible – even, or especially, if that means leaving her comfort zone in the process.
“I just want to be a complete event rider and to get better. And, you know, we have a certain level in Switzerland, but I really want to push those boundaries,” says Nadja. “And, yeah, I love it! I love eventing over here. I love how the riders do it – like, so much more chilled than in Europe. It’s just a natural thing for them.”
And, she says, her upbringing in Switzerland, where she’s primarily trained with her mother, Therese Bischof Minder, has been surprisingly nearly tailor-made to preparing for tough, terrain-heavy courses like this one.
“I didn’t have a surface [arena] growing up, and I had a lot of hilly terrain at home, and I’m used to riding on grass all the time, and I think that was really helpful. It wasn’t a complete change for me – and that’s props to my mum, because she made me ride on all surfaces since I was a little girl.”
But to make the Burghley dream come true, just under a year after making her five-star debut at Pau last October, Nadja had to leave that driving force behind for a little while. She and her top-level horses relocated to Piggy March’s Maidwell Stud in Northamptonshire in August for a six-week period, encompassing runs at the last-ever Defender Blair Horse Trials, at which she finished second to her new mentor in the CCI3*-L with Top Job’s Jalisco, before heading onward to Burghley. It’s the first time in her life she’s ever been based away from home – and away from the daily eyes-on-the-ground of her mother, her closest confidante and the person who first heard Nadja’s intentions of riding at the event.
“I was watching Burghley TV last year while we were away at a show, and I joked to her, ‘I’m going to go there next year’,” she says. “She was like, ‘mmmm…!’ I hadn’t even ridden at Pau at that moment, so it was a big idea! Then I rode at Pau and I didn’t think a lot of myself – and so in the winter I said, ‘I want to go to England to prepare for Badminton next year.’”
Nadja Minder and Toblerone. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
It was Andrew Nicholson, one of Nadja’s closest mentors and the cross-country trainer to the Swiss team since 2019, who planted the Burghley seed as more than just a half-in-jest comment.
“He said, ‘well, if you’re going to go to England for that time period, just go for Burghley.’ And I said, ‘Andrew, I’m not you!’,” she laughs. With Pau behind her, she’d completed her five-star step-up with Toblerone, the horse who she’s partnered since her Young Rider team days, but it hadn’t been without its wobbles: they’d picked up a rare 20 on the cross-country course at the first water, pushing them down to 25th place in the final rankings. She knew that Burghley would be a whole different kettle of fish, but, she reasoned, “I had a great feeling around Pau, and it was my mistake – I wasn’t too positive and attacking. I just need to make everything right for Toblerone, and then he does it – [our success] is absolutely down to him. He’s a Burghley horse; I just had to show him the way.”
Excellent prep runs at four-stars across Europe through the spring and summer cemented Nadja’s resolve: their first aim would be Paris, and thereafter, they’d look ahead to Burghley.
Nadja’s week with the seventeen-year-old Swiss Warmblood gelding, who she rides for owner Nicole Basieux, began in fine style: they posted a 31 in the first-phase, bang on their recent average at four-star, despite this being a tougher test featuring new double coefficients on two of the flying changes.
Nadja and Toblerone tackle Burghley’s cross-country course. Photo by Hannah Cole Photography.
But who comes to Burghley to think about dressage? It was all about Saturday for Nadja and her longtime partner – and when that day rolled around, they put to use everything they’d taken from their five-star debut last year, and all the mileage of those team appearances over the last couple of seasons to deliver a classy, gutsy, and attacking round that saw them come home clear and with a respectable 21.2 time penalties.
“Maybe you saw I had Andrew Nicholson and Piggy March waiting for me at the finish — it doesn’t get much better than that! I’m so spoiled,” says Nadja with a beaming smile. “Of course, they’ve been so helpful. And Andrew really made me believe that I can do it and I’m ready for it.”
Having two former Burghley champions cheering you across the finish line is a pretty special moment, but in those adrenaline-packed minutes out on course, it was just Nadja and Toblerone against the fences.
But, she grins, “everything went to plan! It took me so much courage to come here, so I wasn’t even that nervous at the beginning, surprisingly, but it was just perfect how I planned it. I could have gone even faster, because he was, like, full [of running] in the end. So I really was able to kick up the last slope and he responded so well. I’m so, so happy — it’s an incredible feeling. This is, I think, the biggest [track] you can do, definitely stamina-wise. And he was so good!”
Nadja Minder and Toblerone. Photo by Hannah Cole Photography.
Their week finished on Sunday with a foot-perfect clear round – a double-clear Burghley debut that’s put them well on the radar of the British eventing scene, to catch the country up with a European scene that’s been sitting up and paying attention for a long time now.
“He tries very hard, but we’re not the best jumping combination, and so to jump clear here is unreal – it just means the world,” says Nadja. “It’s beyond more than my wildest dreams. I never would have thought that I’d finish my first Burghley like this, but it’s all down to Toblerone – he made it all possible for me, and I owe him everything. I grew up on a farm, and of course, we had horses, and my mum has a lot of knowledge, but I don’t have a crazy background to go for something like [a career in eventing], and from Switzerland, where eventing isn’t huge… it’s really just the absolute dream come true that I can even make it. I really believed, when I was a young girl, that I could, and I hope that some other young Swiss girls can now believe in it – that it’s possible, even without a lot of financial backing. Sometimes, one door closes, and another one opens, and somehow you fiddle your way around, and eventually, you make your dreams come true.”
We’ll raise a glass – or a Toblerone – to that.
