Steve Guerdat won individual gold at the FEI Jumping World Championship in Aachen, Germany, on Sunday 23 August 2026. Riding Dynamix de Belhème, a 13-year-old mare, he finished on 0.86 penalties. At 44, the Swiss rider has finally added a world title to a record that already included Olympic gold, three World Cup Final victories and a European championship. He is the first Swiss rider to win individual world gold in show jumping.
The margin was clear. Thibeau Spits of Belgium took silver on Impress-K van’t Kattenheye Z with 5.60 penalties, and Harry Charles of Great Britain took bronze on LT Holst Freda with 7.17. Guerdat’s winning margin was 4.74 penalties. Germany won the team gold.
Guerdat and Dynamix de Belhème were the only combination to finish the whole championship without lowering a rail. On the final day only three combinations jumped double clear, and all three of them ended on the podium. In a sport decided by fractions, a clean sheet across several days is the clearest argument a pair can make.
In show jumping, riders collect penalties for knocked rails, refusals and time faults, and the lowest total wins. A score of 0.86 therefore shows how little went wrong over the days of competition. The result also came at Aachen, which many in the sport regard as its most storied showground, so the setting added to the weight of the win.
The long wait
Until this week, a world championship was missing from his list. His previous best at this level was individual bronze at Tryon in 2018. The Chronicle of the Horse headlined its report “The Missing Crown”, a phrase that sums up the years of waiting. The magazine adds that he has also never won Aachen’s Grand Prix, the show’s great prize.
Guerdat told Jumper Nation that he had been extremely nervous because he thought this might be his last chance at the title. He described Aachen as the history of the sport and said nothing is bigger. He added that he does not think it gets any better than winning a world championship there. He also told The Chronicle of the Horse that he now has what he wanted, and is somewhere he never dreamed of being. About his mare, he said he has nothing but pride.
From the Jura to the top
Guerdat was born on 10 June 1982 in Bassecourt, in the Swiss Jura. He began riding at seven and was trained by his father, Philippe Guerdat, and by Beat Mändli. In 2003 he moved to the Netherlands to ride for Jan Tops, and in 2006 he moved on to Belgium.
His Olympic career began at Athens in 2004. At Beijing in 2008 he won team bronze with Jalisca Solier. Then came London in 2012, where he took individual gold on Nino des Buissonnets, the result that made him Olympic champion.
The World Cup Final, the season-ending showpiece of indoor jumping, brought three titles: at Las Vegas in 2015 with Paille, at Gothenburg in 2016 with Corbinian, and at Gothenburg again in 2019 with Alamo. He also won team gold at the European Championships in 2009 and 2021.
A partnership of horse and rider
The mare at the centre of this story is Dynamix de Belhème, a Selle Français. With Guerdat she won European individual gold at Milan in 2023, and a year later she carried him to individual silver at the Paris Olympics in 2024. Aachen gives the pair a third major individual title or medal.
That consistency is the thing professionals point to when they talk about great horses. A horse that jumps clear in one round may simply be having a good day. A horse that does so across a championship, through the pressure of the final day, has the carefulness, the scope and the temperament to keep doing it. The reports of the Aachen result stress that Dynamix was the only horse not to touch a rail.
Guerdat has won with different horses across two decades, and that matters too. Nino des Buissonnets, Paille, Corbinian, Alamo and Dynamix are each different horses, and each of them carries a title. A rider who can bring so many different partners to the same standard has a method that outlasts any single animal.
What it means
For the sport, the result is a milestone: the first individual world jumping gold for a Swiss rider. For Guerdat, it closes a gap in a record that already placed him among the leading riders of his generation. He said himself that he feared it might not come.
For BYGEARS readers in the Gulf, where show jumping draws a large following and a long tradition of horsemanship runs deep, the Aachen result is a reminder of what the sport rewards: patience, partnership and preparation. The title took until he was 44, and it came on the mare who had already given him a European title and an Olympic silver.
What follows next is up to him. He has an Olympic title, a European title, three World Cup Finals and now the world championship. The one prize named in the reports that still eludes him is Aachen’s own Grand Prix.
Sources: Jumper Nation, The Chronicle of the Horse, Wikipedia