Now that 2019 is almost over, and we wrapped up also the last CVI of the year (you can read everything that went down here), is time to take stock and remember what has happened in the last twelve months of competition.
Bad news first: the news that this year there won’t be a World Cup Circuit isn’t very old. The decision, taken apparently mostly due to the lack of organizing committees, takes us back to a time when winter was the religious time dedicated to training, creation and development of new moves, without any 1.20 minutes freestyle to show to the audience in the arenas of the great international fairs around Europe.
But let’s go back and start from the beginning. As has been tradition for the last couple of years, the World Cup Final closed the 2018-19 season but, at least in terms of time, it has also opened the new one, since it took place at the same time of the first two cvi of the new season, CVI Saumur in France and CVI Portogruaro in Italy. The final, which took the stage at the Cadre Noir in Saumur, crowned two new winners (the pas de deux category has been won by the title holders Torben Jacobs and Theresa Sophie Bresh from Germany) and waved goodbye for the last time to three great champions, who chose to end their agonistic career in Saumur. Kristina Boe (European Champion 2017, World Champion 2018, World Cup Champion 2017-18) and the same Torben Jacobs and Theresa Bresch took the circle for the last time in the night of April 20th, giving the French audience one last unforgettable show. Unforgettable indeed will remain Boe’s Star Wars’ Rey, Mary Poppins, the flamenco by the German pair, the Swan Lake, Bonny and Clide and all the other routines with which these athletes have made exciting the last ten years of competitions.
Besides them, the World Cup Final crowned the young Colombian Juan Martin Clavijo, who already had won two junior individual Word Champion titles in 2015 and 2017, and Janika Derks (GER, Boe’s heir?) as new champions. It will be odd not being here in three months’ time to talk about who got away with the title, but we sincerely hope that 2019 won’t be remembered as the year that ultimately closed the experience of the Winter circuit. The World Cup might have had some defects, but it was the perfect moment to unify vaulting with the great Olympic disciplines, looking for new audiences and enthusiasts. A different competition, reserved to the elite and without the “boring” compulsories, in which the exceptional length of 1 minute and 20 seconds of the freestyle allowed to wander way more inside the boundaries of each one’s creativity.
Time literally flew by during the season, marked by many CVIs in the whole world down to the final appointment of late July in Ermelo, for the Senior European Championships and Junior Worlds. The sun smiled once again upon our major event: it sounds incredible, but I hardly remember an edition in which the good weather didn’t served as frame to those five days of competition you wait for the entire year, regardless of how far north we go. And so, this year as many times before in Le Mans, Ebreichsdorf, Aachen, ecc… the sun and the heat (who thought to tan more in The Netherlands than in Italy?) accompanied the crème de la creme of international vaulting. Overall result: thirteen medals to Germany, undisputed master of the event, especially in the junior categories, six to Austria, three to France, one to the United States.
With regard to the junior event, the trend was basically the one from last year. Once again Germany followed the Yellow Brick Road to Oz (or should I say El Dorado?), winning every gold medal on the plate in the major event for junior athletes. However, the World Championships in Ermelo have been anything but easy for the German eagles, who suffered the fierce competition of Switzerland in the individual categories (Sven Ris and Danielle Buergi most of all) and Austria in the team event.
The title went right back to where it departed, in that Voltigieren Verein Koln-Dunnwald to which ten years ago belonged the first winners and today gives the colours to the new golden couple, Justin Van Gerven and Chiara Congia.
More difficult and varied has been, on the other hand, the assignment of the senior medals. Two golds to Austria with Katharina Luschin, who finally managed to win her first individual title after many years of chase (her name kept coming up in the forecasts since 2015) and Team Wildegg. Two golds to France, in the individual male event for Lambert Leclezio and in the Nations Cup;. One to Germany, unreachable in the Pas de Deux. 2019 has been the first decade since the introduction of this category at the continental championships, and I find it somehow poetic, that the title went back exactly to where it departed, in that Voltigieren Verein Koln-Dunnwald to which ten years ago belonged the first winners (Bamdad Memarian and Laura Passon) and today gives the colours to the new golden couple, Justin Van Gerven and Chiara Congia.
2019 also marked the return on Austrian soil of the continental Team Title, that had been entirely a German prerogative since 2009, when Austria had won for the last time. (We are talking about European titles, globally Germany lost the fight for the World title only three times in the last decade, in 2010, 2012 and 2016, where had won respectively the USA, Switzerland and France).
If you ask me, this year’s revelation was Austria’s Eva Nagiller, born in 1996, fielded by VG Pill TU Schwaz. Together with the unfailing lunger Klaus Haidacher and her horse Pli Oreille, Nagiller vaulted throughout the whole season with consistency and precision on the notes of “Alexander Hamilton”, securing the bronze medal pas de deux together with Romana Hintner, and the fourth place (just behind teammate Jasmin Lindner) at the European Championships. If this is not a good premise for the future, I don’t know what it may be.
So that’s it, another year has passed.
If we were on a movie set, we would greet each other with “that’s a wrap, folks”. What can we expect from 2020? We can only wait. In the meantime, merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all the vaulters, lungers, horses and enthusiasts. See you next year for another great season!
