Charly Van Ter Heiden: Mollie Summerland’s top horse’s return from injury

Luhmühlen Horse Trials results: Mollie Summerland wins on Charly Van Ter Heiden — (Image credit: Annette Dölger / TGL)

Mollie Summerland’s Luhmühlen Horse Trials winner Charly Van Ter Heiden will hopefully be back out eventing this season following his injury last year.

“He’s back in the school cantering and we’re just very much taking it slowly,” says the young event rider in an interview on this week’s Horse & Hound Podcast.

“Liz Brown, my vet, has been so good and so patient and she never wants to take the risk of running before we can walk. At the minute, Badminton Horse Trials is still potentially on the cards, but if he isn’t going to be fully fighting fit by then, it really doesn’t matter to me. He can just go somewhere else because I’m going to be totally led by all these experts that I’ve got around me.

“I was at a competition with another horse and it was hard because people were coming up to me saying, ‘Oh my God, it was amazing. You must be on cloud nine.’ And all I could think about was that Charly might have this injury at home and I just wanted to burst into tears in front of them all. But I couldn’t say anything at the time, because we didn’t really know what it was or how to manage going about saying about it.

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Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.

What Charly did next… Mollie Summerland on her five-star winner’s return from injury

“He’s spent the whole time walking up massive hills, so he does look incredible, he probably looks the best he’s ever looked – he’s slightly chunky and looks a bit like a dressage horse, but he feels amazing in himself.

“He has nothing to prove to me anymore or anyone. So if we get to go to Badminton together, then that would be amazing. But if not, then that’s fine.”

She says: “I went to an event not long after coming home when Charly had had his routine scan. He’d come home sound, there were no problems, but I knew he had had that scan and we were told just to wait a minute, not to try and think about picking back him back up for the autumn.

“It was hard because you’re so happy and grateful you had that result. But then also part of you wants just to fall into a puddle of tears in front of them and say, ‘Actually, it’s not quite like that at home at the moment’.”

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