“Heart ripped out of my chest”
German Olympic champion mourns horse
January 6, 2026 – 1:40 p.mReading time: 1 min.
He was considered a tournament hope for Jessica von Bredow-Werndl. Now the horse Diallo is dead. The Olympic champion says goodbye.
The four-time Olympic dressage champion Jessica von Bredow-Werndl mourns the loss of her young horse Diallo. As the 39-year-old explained on social media, the eleven-year-old gelding died as a result of a sudden illness. “The investigations are still ongoing, the suspicion is Borna virus,” wrote the rider on Instagram. Diallo had already been admitted to a clinic on Monday, as the German Equestrian Association (FN) announced in a statement.
After the departure of the miracle mare Dalera, with whom von Bredow-Werndl won four Olympic gold medals, among other things, Diallo was seen as a hope for a return to the dressage elite. Von Bredow-Werndl carefully introduced him to international tournaments. Last year the pair won in Hagen, Munich, Wiener Neustadt and at the World Cup stop in November in Stuttgart. At the festival hall tournament in Frankfurt shortly before Christmas, Diallo received a prize for promising young horses.
“We danced together at the weekend, it all felt easy,” von Bredow-Werndl recalled in an emotional post. “And then this illness came like a storm, silent, merciless and unstoppable, eating through your body in hours and tearing my heart from my chest.”
Borna virus is a disease that causes mostly fatal inflammation of the brain and spinal cord in horses. It can be transmitted through field shrew excrement and contaminated food.