Harrie Smolders, the €1 million Flying Dutchman

From the Longines Global Champions Tour to the team-based Global Champions League, the Longines FEI Nations Cup Final to the European Championships, the 37-year-old Smolders has been at or near the top of the podium almost everywhere this year. Indeed, in the LGCT alone, as one report calculated, Smolders won €1,099,736.00 in prize money during this year’s season. That total included a bonus of €294,500.00 for winning the CSI 5* Tour at the penultimate stage in Rome — before this month’s Final had even taken place at the Al Shaqab equestrian centre in Doha, Qatar.

Nevertheless, the resident of the small village of Lage-Mierde near the Belgian border travelled to the Middle East for the year-end competition, adding to his near-perfect attendance record at the 15 stops on this year’s circuit. Why? Not only to be crowned Individual Champion of Champions on the Tour, but also because his Hamburg Diamonds team was battling to secure the title in the parallel Global Champions League. And after a dramatic, rollercoaster competition, Smolders and his teammate in Doha, Canada’s Eric Lamaze — visibly suffering from a rib injury — held off a strong challenge from the Valkenswaard United squad, which included Ireland’s young phenom Bertram Allen. Predictably, Smolders rode crisply, clearly, and consistently in Doha, with Lamaze and Fine Lady 5 also fighting to pull off a gritty clean round and do enough to capture the GCL series victory.

From Miami Beach, Florida to Chantilly, France (where he won the LGCT CSI 5* Grand Prix in July), Hamburg to Shanghai, the current World No.6 was all-conquering in 2017, including in the historic Longines Nations Cup Final team competition in Barcelona at the end of September, where Smolders helped the Dutch team win the global title. The month before, he had come back to capture Individual silver at this year’s Longines FEI European Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden.

With his small group of top mounts, Zinius (KWPN, Nabab de Rêve x Kannan), Emerald van’t Ruytershof (BWP, Diamant de Semilly x Carthago), and Don VHP (Z, Diamant de Semilly x Voltaire), Harrie Smolders has staked out an indisputable claim to being one of the best riders on the planet. And after his impeccable, unequalled balancing of individual objectives and national team service in 2017, it looks like he will remain among that group for a long time to come.