Anky van Grunsven: ‘Bonfire is a fraction deeper in my heart than Salinero’

Anky van Grunsven (55) opens the door to an office in her stable complex in Erp in Brabant. She points to a large barrel with two shiny horseshoes on it. “This is it, this is Salinero. Around Christmas I want to scatter his ashes here on the meadow. I just have to find a good spot.”

In the previous hour and a half we talked in her open kitchen with Christmas decorations about the famous horse with which she became twice Olympic champion, four times European champion and once world champion. The conversation was not so much about all those successes, but about what it means to have a close bond with your horse for so long – Salinero turned 28. And what it does to you when that animal slips away from under your hands.

Van Grunsven says that Salinero, who died in early December, had been struggling with his health for some time. He was heavily built, weighed six hundred kilos and suffered from Cushing’s disease – his adrenal glands no longer worked properly. “I noticed that it started to sag in several places. Then comes the moment when you think: what am I waiting for? In consultation with the vet, we decided to put him out of his misery.”

How do you say goodbye to a horse that is so close to your heart?

She falls silent for a moment. “That afternoon we put him out in the meadow for the last time with his best friends, two ponies. Salinero lost his balance, which was not nice to see.” Salinero’s last days reminded her of the last days of her other success horse, Bonfire. The thirty-year-old gelding suffered from laminitis, an inflammation between the hoof wall and the hoof bone. She now feels that she should have put Bonfire to sleep earlier and that her hope that he would get better was in vain. “That experience with Bonfire made me very aware of the timing of Salinero’s death: not too quickly, but on time.”

She places two mugs of tea on the table and sits down. “Your question was how I said goodbye to Salinero. I was there when he fell asleep and stayed with him for an hour afterwards. During that hour I just cried, I felt so sad. I didn’t want to be there when he was picked up. I didn’t want to see him drive away in that car.”

What images go through your mind during that hour?

“Not what everyone thinks, not our successes at the Olympic Games in Athens and Beijing. No, I thought about the little things that have been giving me stomach aches and migraines for weeks, and making me realize how much he meant to me. Salinero stood in the box where Bonfire stood for a long time. When I came home in the evening and the shutters were still open, I always made contact with him first. Salinero was six when he came to me and Sjef (husband Sjef Janssen, former national coach of the dressage team). I competed with him until 2013, but even after that I often sat on his back, because I noticed that he was unhappy when he was ignored.”

You have sometimes said that Salinero provided great comfort when your father died in 2004.

She nods. “My father died not long before the Athens Olympics. The saddest period of my life. I had to participate in qualifying races, but was initially unable to do so, much to the irritation of then national coach Bert Rutten. “Then you won’t go to the Games,” he said. To which I replied: ‘Then you’ll leave me at home, won’t you? Some things are more important than the Games.’ And I meant that too. I couldn’t train during that period either. I saddled Salinero and walked him outside, but it had nothing to do with sport. Yet those rituals were important, because then a peace came over me. That’s how I finally ended up in Athens.”

“I will never have the intense bond that I have with Bonfire with any other horse,” you said shortly after his death in 2013. Do you still feel that way?

“I don’t like to say it, but Bonfire is a fraction deeper in my heart than Salinero. I grew up with Bonfire, it was real mine horse, which no one else was allowed to sit on. Salinero was ridden by Sjef the first year. Even when I broke my leg, the year before ‘Athens’, Sjef trained him for eight months. Salinero was 99 percent my horse, Bonfire 110 percent. That makes a difference in the experience. The week after Bonfire died, I couldn’t tolerate anyone being around me. The sadness was indescribably great. But they have both been very important to me. I always say: first Bonfire, then Salinero and then nothing for a long time.”

Both horses were her property, says Van Grunsven, although the American woman from whom she bought Salinero “for a serious sum” has always remained co-owner. “I never received any offers for Salinero, but there was interest in Bonfire from a very early stage, he may have just run Grand Prix. Someone from abroad once handed me a blank check. I didn’t respond to that and I’ve never regretted it. Horses like Bonfire and Salinero are priceless.”

Since Salinero’s death you have received many letters. What do people write?

“They send wonderful stories from all over the world, acquaintances and strangers. Look here – she picks up her phone: ‘Salinero leaves the world as a legend and will live on as a legend in another place.’ People describe where they saw Salinero walking and what that did to them. I only received one negative response, via Twitter. The sender called me ‘animal executioner’. I asked what prompted him to write something so unkind to someone who is grieving. The answer was not forthcoming.”

What do you think?

“People often assume that you can force horses, just like people, to perform sporting feats. Well, believe me, you can’t force 600 kilos, that’s not possible. If Salinero had been unhappy, he would have radiated it. An unhappy horse’s coat becomes dull. The dressage pouf of an unhappy horse looks labored. And while dressage should look nice and easy. That is why we work with horses 24 hours a day. Do they eat well? Are they equipped? Aren’t they too hot or too cold? The other night I was tossing and turning at night because I was afraid one of my horses needed a thicker blanket now that it’s getting colder. The love for a horse runs deep, people don’t always realize that.”

There’s a knock on the door: an employee of a home furnishings store reports. Van Grunsven has selected a new floor for the living room, after first ordering a new bathroom. She wanted to do that twenty years ago, but she never got around to it. Laughing: “I always postpone peripheral issues.”

She lives with Sjef and their children Yannick (18) and Ava Eden (15) in the place where she spent a large part of her childhood, Van Grunsven says when she returns. Her mother and one of her brothers each have a separate home across the street. Her other brother lives a ten-minute drive away from her. “We sit close to each other, but not on each other’s lips,” she says.

A little more about that criticism. Throughout your career you have heard that equestrian sports are a form of animal abuse. Do you deal with this differently now than when you were an active dressage rider?

“That criticism still hurts, because I try very hard to do well with my horses. But it is true that it makes me less sad than before. I know my intentions are good. Instead of reacting defensively to criticism, I now try to communicate.”

Is that why you organize information days, where people can look around and ask questions?

“Yes. Then I explain here in the stable to a maximum of sixty people at a time what the life of a top sport horse is like. How we ride and care for the horses. How we spend all day with the animals. Dentist, physiotherapist, nutritionist – they can be found here regularly. People often respond in surprise: so you don’t close the door behind you after your training? Most visitors know something about equestrian sports, but recently I met a man who found what we do very unnatural. “How natural it is for you to get dressed and drive here in your car,” I replied. People and animals evolve. These horses are domesticated, but they get a lot of exercise and often grow old, which is a good sign. Prisco, my first Grand Prix horse, turned 34.”

Are animal activists also registering?

“No. They only say things on the internet.”

You don’t talk to them?

“I would love to, my door is open. But no, they won’t do that anytime soon. People with radical views are generally not open to those who think differently.”

Has criticism from an animal activist ever made you think?

“I constantly think about what I do, I don’t need an animal activist for that. Part of that is in me, that’s how my father raised me. Taking good care of horses, putting them away neatly, making sure they feel good – our dad was very strict about that. I’m not saying I’ve never done stupid things, that would make me a saint. For example, as a teenager I was very impatient and could get angry with my horse. “And now you’re going to run laps around the riding school until you cool down,” my father would say. Later there were no more laps around the riding school, but I had to cool down in the truck.”

Have you learned to control your temper?

“I have learned not to take my frustrations out on my horse. Just as a parent should not take out his frustrations on his child – and yet it happens to all of us sometimes.”

You come across as someone who does not easily share her grief with others.

“That’s how I was raised. My father used to not let me cry at competitions. You don’t do that, he thought. If you really need to cry, just go to the truck. The first time I cried publicly was at the Olympic Games in Athens. I couldn’t be stopped, Sjef and I had a lot of laughs about that afterwards. Our dad just died, now it could finally cry.”

Did your father think crying was weak?

She shrugs. “Not necessary,” he always said. I still prefer not to have people around me when I feel sad. I’d rather put on some music and then cry really hard for an hour.”

Leave me alone, alone with all my sorrow.

“Yes, sometimes that can be wonderful.”

Sjef, who has been working in the stable with his son, puts his head around the door. He is 72 and has been wearing a pacemaker for a year, after he once fell out of nowhere. “I do a lot,” he says from behind the counter. “Yoga, fitness, cycling, guiding the children (both active in show jumping). We eat healthy, what more can I do?”

Has his wife changed since she is no longer a top rider? “She has become more of a mother,” he says without thinking. “She does what her father did with her: every weekend with the children at a competition. Building obstacles, saddling and unsaddling their horses.”

“The children are my priority now,” Van Grunsven explains. “Everything about it is a bonus.”

We’ll come back to that big barrel in that office. How will she scatter Salinero’s ashes, alone or with her family? “I don’t know yet,” says Van Grunsven, who tells how she wanted to scatter Bonfire on her own, but had to deal with a protesting man and children. “Eventually we all walked to the meadow on a cold winter day. The wind was blowing hard, and I still tell my children: be careful. But no, they took that shovel and got the ash, boom, in their nose, mouth and eyes. We laughed our heads off because of our nerves. ‘Now you have Bonfire in you for the rest of your life,’ I said.”

To share





Email the editor