ANNA Merveldt’s nickname ‘Peetzy’ came from her aunt calling her ‘peachy’ as a child and it has stuck as the name of choice by many for the two-time Olympic dressage from Co Kildare.

Based in Italy since 2007, Anna escaped her home near Milan for Germany when the country became the worst affected European country by the global Covid-19 pandemic during the early weeks. On June 3rd, Italy had recorded 233,515 cases of the coronavirus.

“‘What happened in Italy was absolutely horrific - a nightmare. With the borders reopening today (Wednesday) though, we are feeling more positive and are hoping for things to get back to the some sort of normality soon,” Anna said about the Italian situation.

The daughter of Count Paul and Countess April Merveldt, Anna and her sister Lorli (Higgins) were born in Canada and returned to Ireland when Anna was just six months old, where their brother Ben was later born.

They grew up on Ballylea Stud in Colbinstown, Co Kildare, and Anna has the fondest memories of her childhood. Her late mother, who passed away in October 2018, was held in the highest regard within the equestrian community in Ireland. Her fascinating life included service during WWII with the Auxiliary Teritorial Service (then the women’s branch of the British Army) in Egypt.

April was one of the first members of the Irish Pony Society and had a great love for Connemara Ponies, which she bred under the Donode prefix.

“Living on a stud farm and with my mother herself being nearly a horse, we had great opportunities to have our ponies. Our mother was so amazingly passionate about horses and riding and the whole equestrian scene. We literally grew up in the saddle; I can’t even remember the first time I was on a pony,” Anna explained.

“We did absolutely everything from the local gymkhana, hunter trials, hunting, pony clubbing, we were in the Kildare Pony Club and went to Punchestown for the Pony Club camp, we rode at the Dublin Horse Show…we just did everything.”

One wonderful memory for a young Anna was riding off against the winning British Aga Khan team in the Pony Club Games in the main arena at the RDS. “It was 1970 something…we won the Pony Club Games and we had to go against the British team that had won the Aga Khan, in the main arena. It was fabulous fun. They got the loan of a couple of ponies; David Broome was on the team.

“I have fantastic memories from childhood. I don’t think you could have had a better upbringing, living out in the countryside with such amazing freedom.”

Spreading her wings

By her late teens, Anna was an accomplished rider doing plenty of eventing but wasn’t yet concentrating on dressage. She did her Leaving Certificate at Cross and Passion college in Kilcullen and studied a secretarial course for a year before deciding she wanted to improve her flat work.

“I spread my wings to Germany because I wanted to improve my dressage and then I ended up staying. In my early 20s I was working with an elderly man named Prince Auersperg, who had worked in the Spanish riding school. I worked for him in Germany for five years and learned the basics of dressage from him. Then I took over the stables when he retired.

“From then on I worked with Johann Hinnemann, we have been working together a long time,” she said of the current Irish High Performance director.

Her rise through the international ranks came quick after moving to Germany. She made her championship debut at 1990 World Equestrian Games in Stockholm with Goldfinger, and two years later, qualified for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, where she became the first Irish rider to make it through to the final to finish 11th, Ireland’s best result to date, with a horse she wasn’t overly familiar with.

“I hadn’t done very much international competition but we decided we wanted to go to the Olympics. Goldfinger went lame so about eight months before the Olympics, I got the loan of a horse named Rapallo, a 16-year-old that had previously been put out in the field.”

That was a fantastic achievement, I comment. “Yeah, absolutely it was brilliant,” she said. “I was training with Johann who was a great help, it has been a long road for us,” she added about her lifelong trainer and friend.

Her next great equine partner was the DSP gelding Coryolano, who took her to three of her eight European Championship appearances and the 2012 London Olympic Games, 20 years after her first Olympic appearance. The lead-up to London wasn’t straightforward either, when she was injured and missed out on some valuable qualification points.

Anna Merveldt and Coryolano at the 2009 European Championships at Windsor Castle

Girls in Green

While, in recent years, Anna’s main focus is on teaching and she is the Italian dressage youth team coach, a position she also held in 2010 and 2011, she returned to championship level in 2019 for the good of Irish dressage.

At the beginning of 2019, Anna started to search for a horse that she could help qualify Ireland for the Tokyo Olympic Games. She found a great partner in Esporim, the 11-year-old Lusitano stallion owned by Giovanna Mazza, who only did his first Grand Prix in March, five months before the championships in August.

“At the beginning of the season, we said wouldn’t it be fantastic to qualify Ireland for the Olympics. We were looking at horses and I thought to myself ‘I am going to have to ride’. There was no two ways about it, we needed another horse and another rider. I asked the owner of Esporim if I could borrow her horse and she said yes.”

I recall someone saying in Rotterdam that “Anna could make a donkey do a good Grand Prix text!” and it is true, she is a master in the saddle and the job she did getting Esporim to perform at that level in such a short time period is proof.

The stallion has captured the hearts of the Irish public. “He’s very sweet and he has fantastic character. He is very very very ambitious which made him a little bit strong for his owner to ride. I have had marvellous fun on him.”

The championships in Rotterdam were a dream come through for Anna. “We had a marvellous time. The ‘Girls in Green’ were a great team together. The team was full of horse people, and full of sporty people and that makes a huge difference. A lot of other teams would be jealous of the team spirit we had.

“The reaction in Ireland has been magnificent. It absolutely took off, the whole thing. Of course because it was an Olympic year, that makes it very special. The Olympics are the Olympics and when you qualify it is definitely something very unique. To be able to represent your country is the peak.”

Was Rotterdam a career highlight? “Totally, totally, totally! I was in bits at Rotterdam. I was so excited and so tense. I really wanted it all worked out and when it did, it was absolutely amazing,” she said.

Both Judy Reynolds and Heike Holstein have trained with Anna in the past, with Judy basing in her yard for close to five years. Anna has won The Irish Field Dressage Rider of the Year award a record eight times, but Judy is hot on her heels after winning it for a seventh time in 2019.

Judy Reynolds, Heike Holstein and Anna Merveldt receiving their FEI Badges of Honour at London Olympia in December 2017. Pictured with Horse Sport Ireland CEO Ronan Murphy (left) and chairman Joe Reynolds (right)

A waiting game

How does Anna feel about the postponement of Tokyo by one year? “It’s a pity in one way because we don’t know whether we will have Vancouver K (Judy Reynolds), he’s not young anymore. For me personally, it’s definitely a plus for my horse as he is relatively inexperienced. But for the team, it would be more important that we have Vancouver K. But if there is one horse that can do it, it’s him.”

Anna spends a lot of her time on the road nowadays, training and coaching between Italy and Germany, so this down time has been a change to her hectic lifestyle. “Nobody knows what is going to happen. Everybody is sort of hanging in there, trying to make the most of what is happening. Our normal routine has been taken away so it is difficult to adapt.

“Competitions are beginning to start back now but nothing is 100% certain at the moment. I am waiting for an email to hopefully confirm my entry at a show at the end of the month, but it could be so full that I might not even get in.”

She has had a couple of injuries to deal with lately. Last October, a freak fall from a horse left her with a hairline fracture to her right elbow and a painful haematoma on her upper right leg kept her out of action for almost a month. Then in January, just before she was due to compete at the World Cup show in Amsterdam, she fell down the stairs and broke her arm.

“I am back riding away and ready to rock again,” she said, as is Esporim, who is currently in Germany with Anna as they avoid Italy.

Ireland is still home and she loves getting back as often as she can, as does her son Phillip, who isn’t into horses but is studying journalism in Berlin. “I get home quite a bit to see my sister and friends. We always go home for a big family Christmas. My son adores Ireland and so do I.”

With a third Olympic Games on the horizon, some 29 years after the first, ‘Peetzy’ is still loving dressage as much as ever.