Horse lovers can indulge themselves at CH De Wolden in Veeningen. During the hippique competition, this and next week, hundreds of riders and amazons from home and abroad will participate with their horses in the jumping competitions. One of them is Bert-Jan Zuidema from Linde.
He has been riding horses from an early age and this event around the corner from him feels like a home game. “The people who help you, the volunteers. You know a lot of people. That is something extra,” says Zuidema on the CH De Wolden site.
He used to work at the competition and now he has his own stable with horses. CH De Wolden he thinks is a well organized event. “People here come from all over. In any case, from all over Europe and the Middle East. It’s never wrong for your network to have a chat. What attracts me?”, Zuidema wonders aloud. “The level of the sport. The accommodation is abnormal. The horses learn a lot. There is fun.”
Horses are his passion and he has been able to turn his hobby into his profession. Zuidema trains horses and wants to bring them to the highest possible level. He came to the competition with four young horses to give them more experience. During the first two competition days he won prizes with a horse that he trains for other people. “That is a good and consistent result anyway. I am very pleased with that.”
According to Zuidema, a horse’s pedigree is very important when he wants to train an animal for the top level. “Horses with the right attitude and qualities often come from the same bloodlines. Then you first have to make an assessment of how a horse is put together. Then you let the animal jump loose and then it turns out that it still has a talent for jumping Then of course everything can go wrong. It’s a long way…”