Skip to main content

Maikel van der Vleuten Rider of the Year 2021

The 34 year old show jumper Maikel van der Vleuten from Someren (Noord-Brabant) has been chosen as Rider of the Year 2021. The fact that he was the only Dutch rider to win an Olympic medal in Tokyo at the Summer Games, which were postponed for a year, was decisive for the committee. With Beauville Z he won the bronze medal in the individual ranking. It was not his first Olympic medal. During the 2012 London Olympics he won the silver medal with the team in the Nations Cup. At that time he was riding Verdi TN, who will officially retire after an impressive jumping career during The Dutch Masters 2022.

Round view
The equestrian delegation to the Olympics came very close to returning to the Netherlands without any medals. The dressage riders finished fifth in the Nations Cup; they did not come close to these or the individual medals. The show jumping riders found themselves in ninth place in the Nations Cup before the start of the decisive final round, and eventually reached fourth place. Fortunately Maikel van der Vleuten made this fine contribution to the Dutch participation in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.

Nominations and honourable mention
The Committee awarded one honourable mention. This was for para driver Francisca den Elzen from Drouwenerveen, who with her Welsh pony Vandijk's Superboy won the Grade II World Championships in Schildau, Germany. It is worth mentioning that Francisca won this world title for the third time in a row with a different pony each time.
The three nominees were: Bram Chardon, who became European champion in Budapest by beating his father IJsbrand; the show jumper Maikel van der Vleuten, who experienced his finest hour of the assessment year at the Tokyo Olympics by winning the bronze individual medal with the stallion Beauville Z; the para dressage rider Sanne Voets, previously Rider of the Year title winner, excelled at the Paralympics in Tokyo. Her performance with the gelding Demantur RS2 NOP was good for two individual gold medals and team silver.

The Committee Rider of the Year consists of: Anky van Grunsven, chairman, Ed van den Bent, Andries van den Berg and Henk Rottinghuis.

The historical overview can be found here.

Photo:The Dutch Masters/Digishots