Max KühnerOlympian

About Max Kühner

Max Kühner (born 15 January 1974 in Munich) is an Austrian showjumper, sport-horse producer and entrepreneur whose senior career is defined by long-term horse production and repeated top-ten performances at the sport's hardest championships. German-born, he rode for Germany — including regular Nations Cup service from the mid-2000s — before changing sporting nationality to Austria with effect from 1 January 2015, a switch rooted in the Kitzbühel/Mauring connection where he first learned to ride during a childhood ski holiday. He won the Upper Bavarian Championship at sixteen with his first horse Rilana, earned the Golden Riding Badge at eighteen, completed a business-economics degree in 1998 as Diplom-Kaufmann, and has combined elite sport with business throughout: he founded his equestrian operation MK Sporthorses in Starnberg-Hadorf, Bavaria, in 2004 and the specialist leasing company LeaseForce AG in 2007.

His championship record for Austria began at the Aachen European Championships in 2015 with Coeur de Lion 14 and now spans six European Championship appearances. With Chardonnay 79 he finished sixth individually at the 2018 World Equestrian Games in Tryon, standing second before the concluding round; with Elektric Blue P he repeated individual sixth at the 2022 World Championships in Herning. At Milan in 2023 he helped Austria to European team bronze — the nation's first team medal at the European Jumping Championships — while placing seventh individually, a result that secured Austria's Paris 2024 Olympic team quota. He is a one-time Olympian: at Paris 2024, his only competitive Games, he and Elektric Blue P finished seventh in the individual final, the last fence falling, with Austria 13th in the team qualifier. No earlier Olympics is counted — no competitive start was verified at Rio 2016 or Tokyo 2020.

Kühner has made six completed FEI Jumping World Cup Final starts between 2016 and 2025, with a career-best seventh at Riyadh in 2024; his 14th place at Gothenburg 2016 made him the first Austrian Finalist in eighteen years. A 2009 Las Vegas Final qualification with Acantus GK ended in withdrawal at the venue after a transport injury and is not counted as a start, and his December 2025 London International Horse Show victory with EIC Cooley Jump the Q — the first by an Austrian — was a World Cup qualifier, not a Final. His biggest single victory is the 2021 Rolex Grand Prix at The Dutch Masters in 's-Hertogenbosch with Elektric Blue P, his sole Rolex Grand Slam Major; only Geneva, Aachen, Spruce Meadows and 's-Hertogenbosch count as Majors, so his 2021 Aachen Prize of Europe and 2023 Dinard Grand Prix wins sit outside that category. In 2024 he won the Longines Global Champions Tour season championship on 254 points, six ahead of Christian Kukuk.

The distinctive feature of his career is production. Young horses at MK Sporthorses — an operation of roughly one hundred horses across several riders and sites — are bought very young, educated gradually with substantial field breaks, and largely produced by specialist rider Helmut Schönstetter before Kühner takes over around age six or seven. Elektric Blue P was bought at the DSP stallion approval before he turned three after a single effortless jump, gelded, and developed into a Major winner, European medallist, Olympic finalist and World Cup Final horse; Chardonnay 79 retired to breeding in August 2022. Kühner served as the international riders' representative on the FEI Jumping Committee from 2012 to 2014 and remains active in the International Jumping Riders Club. In May 2019 he suffered a multiple fracture of the left shoulder at La Baule but returned to competition by the end of June and was third in that year's Spruce Meadows Masters Grand Prix.

One adjudicated matter is on the public record: penalty orders issued by the Starnberg Local Court in March 2024, concerning an alleged May 2023 use of active barring, were resolved by discontinuance of the proceedings under §153a(2) of the German Code of Criminal Procedure with the consent of Kühner and the prosecution; after fulfilment of a €6,000 monetary condition payable to a local animal-welfare association the discontinuance became final in January 2025. There was no trial, no conviction and no judicial determination of guilt, and the presumption of innocence remained in force.

As of 4 August 2026 Kühner is world No. 20 with 2,413 points, against a career-high of No. 3 on the August 2024 list, with 4,659 FEI-recorded starts and 120 wins since 2010. In 2026 he won the LGCT Grand Prix of Paris on 20 June with EIC Up Too Jacco Blue, stood second in the LGCT championship after Monaco, and was third in the Dinard CSI5* Grand Prix on 2 August with EIC Cooley Jump the Q. The Aachen World Championships jumping competition is scheduled for 18–23 August 2026; no competitive start is recorded as of the snapshot date. His legacy rests on unusual breadth — two world-championship sixths on different horses, an Olympic seventh, a Rolex Major, an LGCT title and Austria's first European team medal — built through patient in-house production rather than the purchase of finished stars.