Steve GuerdatOlympian

About Steve Guerdat

Steve Guerdat (born 10 June 1982 in Bassecourt, Canton of Jura) is a Swiss showjumper widely regarded as one of the defining championship riders of the modern era. The individual Olympic champion of London 2012 and individual silver medallist of Paris 2024, he has accumulated ten verified senior championship medals — four gold, two silver and four bronze — across the Olympic Games, World Championships and European Championships, together with three FEI Jumping World Cup Final titles won on three different horses. His six consecutive Olympic appearances from Athens 2004 to Paris 2024 give him a combination of longevity, range and repeatability matched by very few riders. He operates his own stable at Elgg, Canton of Zürich.

The son of former Olympic showjumper and national coach Philippe Guerdat, he began riding at nine at Roger Bourquard's stable in Glovelier and left formal schooling early to ride professionally, working with Swiss champion Beat Mändli before spending around three and a half years with Jan Tops in Valkenswaard. His first senior championship medals came early: European team bronze in 2003 and team silver in 2005, followed by Olympic team bronze in Hong Kong in 2008 and European team gold at Windsor in 2009, both with the mare Jalisca Solier. He moved to Urs Schwarzenbach's Rütihof base in 2007 and in 2017 acquired the former Weier equestrian centre at Elgg as his own operation.

The partnership with Nino des Buissonnets defined the middle of his career. At London 2012 the pair were the only combination to jump clear in both rounds of the individual final, making Guerdat Switzerland's first individual Olympic jumping champion since Alphonse Gemuseus in 1924, and he first reached world number one in November 2012. Nino added World Cup Final runner-up finishes in 2012 and 2013, Rolex Grand Prix of Geneva wins in 2013 and 2015, and individual fourth at Rio 2016 in his final championship season. Guerdat then won three World Cup Finals in five seasons — Las Vegas 2015 with Albführen's Paille, Gothenburg 2016 with Corbinian and Gothenburg 2019 with Alamo — a sequence on three different horses that became a signature of his ability to peak individual partnerships, while Albführen's Bianca brought individual World Championship bronze at Tryon 2018. In 2015, adverse analytical findings for the horses Nino des Buissonnets and Nasa at La Baule were resolved by FEI Tribunal-approved agreements that accepted exceptional poppy-seed feed contamination and found Guerdat bore no fault or negligence; the horses' results at the event were disqualified under strict-liability rules.

Since 2018 Guerdat has developed the Selle Français mare Dynamix de Bélhème into what he has publicly called the best horse he has ridden. The pair won the 2023 individual European title in Milan on 0.43 penalties — reported as the lowest total in championship history and the only faultless jumping record of the championship — and took individual Olympic silver at Paris 2024 after a three-horse jump-off decided by Christian Kukuk's clear round. Guerdat's 2025 season was disrupted by two back operations, in February and September, which forced him out of the Basel World Cup Final; he returned to win the Coupe de Genève in December 2025 and then the Leipzig and Helsinki World Cup qualifiers with Albführen's Iashin Sitte, finishing sixth at the 2026 Fort Worth Final.

As at mid-2026 Guerdat stands twelfth on the Longines Rankings (list 306, 1 July 2026) with 5,481 FEI starts and 282 wins recorded since 1 January 2010, and a 2026 campaign that includes five-star wins with Is-Minka and Lancelotta, a second successive La Baule Derby with Easy Star de Talma and a Falsterbo win with Dynamix. Switzerland has selected Guerdat and Dynamix de Bélhème for the 2026 FEI Jumping World Championship in Aachen (16-23 August), where an individual world title is the one major honour missing from his record. Beyond the medal table, his horse-first philosophy — patient, individualised development and selective campaigning that has kept partners such as Venard de Cerisy competitive at seventeen — is central to his standing as one of the sport's most complete horsemen.