Sophie Hinners

About Sophie Hinners

Sophie Hinners, born on 2 December 1997, is a German international showjumper whose senior breakthrough accelerated from the 2021 German Ladies Championship to five-star, World Cup Final and senior championship level. She began riding at four on her aunt and uncle's farm, completed a two-year equestrian education with Hergen Forkert and joined Stal Hendrix in the Netherlands in 2018, riding many horse types in a dealing stable and joining the Young Riders Academy programme in 2019. In 2021 she returned to Germany to join V & W Equestrian in Pfungstadt, which she runs alongside Richard Vogel and David Will, initially working with the operation's young horses.

She won German Ladies Championship silver in 2019 and the title in 2021, both with Vittorio 8, and made her first Nations Cup appearance that year with a double clear as Germany won the EEF semi-final in Budapest. Her early senior string also included the BWP stallion Million Dollar, her 2022 EEF Nations Cup horse at Bratislava and Budapest, and VDL Lucie 91, with whom she won the CSI2* Grand Prix in Damme in 2021.

The Iron Dames project supplied her with established 1.60m horses and a place in the all-women Cannes Stars GCL team from 2024, a season in which she won the Abu Dhabi World Cup qualifier with Iron Dames Singclair, helped Cannes Stars win the GCL championship in their debut season, was named GCL Rider of the Year, and became the first female winner of the Italian World Cup leg at Verona with Iron Dames My Prins. The same year she swept gold, silver and bronze in the six-year-old final at the Bundeschampionate - reportedly the first rider to do so - after winning the five-year-old title earlier that day.

In 2025 she finished fifth on her World Cup Final debut at Basel with Iron Dames My Prins, as the best German and highest-placed female competitor, then won European team bronze at A Coruña and finished sixth individually at her first senior championship. She jumped fourteen clear Nations Cup rounds across the season, with team wins at Mannheim and St Gallen on Iron Dames Combella, and was named PferdeWoche's most successful Nations Cup rider. She became a Rolex Testimonee in 2025 and finished the year second in the German national jumping rankings.

As of 4 August 2026 she is world number 22. Her 2026 season includes seventh at The Dutch Masters Major and third in the Aachen Rolex Grand Prix - her first Rolex Grand Slam Major podium - with Iron Dames Singclair, a CSI5* win at LGCT Miami with Iron Dames Combella, and the Valkenswaard CSI4* Grand Prix with Iron Dames Kaleni Jo. She holds a 2026 German A-squad designation, which is a squad place rather than a championship start. She has not made a competitive Olympic start and is therefore not described as an Olympian.