Kristina Boe: Doctor, Storyteller & European Vaulting Champion…
It has been almost a decade since a German women won gold in the Senior Female Individual Class - a medal that has evaded them since 2008, Kristina Boe rectified that. The talented German vaulter who is a doctor by occupation dominated the female class at this year’s European Championships.

Whether she was interpreting Rey from Star Wars for her freestyle or Mary Poppins in technical test Kristina Boe is a master storyteller. Together with Don de la Mar & Winnie Schluter she gave her best ever performances to convincingly take the gold medal.
An 18 year wait…
In 1999 the team from JRG Koln won the bronze medal at the FEI European Championships – Nowadays going by the name of Team Norka - this was only their second time ever representing Germany in the team competition (8,419). It came down to a battle as they faced tough competition from Team Switzerland who finished on 8,407. It was extremely close.
We were really satisfied, it was a huge honour to compete at the FEI European Championship. The whole competition week we had a really great feeling – we knew we were going to have a great time inside the arena.
To be FEI European Champions is amazing.
Lunger & Coach Patric Looser
The Male category was full of surprises…
Erik Oese FEI European Vaulting Champion. Erik won the silver medal at the World Championships in 2012, the silver medal at the FEI European Championships in 2013 & bronze at the World Equestrian Games in 2014.

Then ensued a couple of years where he wasn’t selected for Germany. This year Erik was back on top form and together with his long term team of Calvador 5 & Andreas Bassler, he brought a haunting elegance to his freestyle routine and was more than deserving to have the gold medal placed around his neck.
Loss of Balance…
One of the biggest surprises came when Jannis Drewell was unable to control a transition into his outside bounce & in an otherwise perfect first freestyle he fell from the horse which saw him finish round 1 way down in 9th place.
However Jannis, the 2015 European Champion, fought back with a commanding technical test round & second round freestyle to win the silver medal.
Whilst Jannis may be a master vaulter with impeccable balance whilst waiting for prize giving to start his chair broke and he fell to the floor much to the delight of the audience.
Ramin Rahimi (AUT) was sat in 2nd place after the first round and looked like he could provide a gold medal challenge. However, during his technical test forward roll he kept going straight off the side of the horse which saw his medal hopes dashed – both Ramin & his lunger Manuela Barosch shared a look of disbelief as nothing had particularly gone wrong he simply rolled straight off the horse…
The Shocks….
One of the biggest shocks came a few weeks before the event when it was announced that Pas de Deux superstars Jasmin Lindner and Lukas Wacha would be unable to defend their Pas de Deux title as Lukas broke his foot in training...