Florian Meyer zu Hartum

Birthday: 30th, December 1974
Place of birth: Herford, Germany
Business: Showjumping rider

The family Meyer zu Hartum is a real horse family. Florian's father Gustav is the chairman of the Westfalian breeder association and rode himself up to big classes. Florian's mother Christine is a riding instructor and competeted on shows in dressage and show jumping classes.
Nevertheless Florian prefered to play soccer in a club up to an age of 17. He even played as a soccer player for his region Westfalia.

Of course Florian sat on a horse from time to time though he loved soccer. In 1992 he was already Westfalian champion of the junior show jumpers. From 1994 to 1995 he was a soldier in a special company for succesful athletes (riders) in Warendorf. Though he was already quite succesful as a show jumping rider he didn't want to make the riding to his main occupation. Therefore he started in 1995 to study mathematics in Bielefeld. But beside of the university the riding took more and more from his time so he quit university in 1999 and started to work with horses full time.

Florians main aspect is a solid and gentle training of his horses. All his Grand Prix horses like Larius W, Waldrose and now Heidegirl Wichenstein have been ridden of him for many years in the sport. His good training especially for young horses can be seen each year at the Bundeschampionat in Warendorf. Since 1993 he qualified horses for this event and each year he had at least one in the final class. 1998 he won the Bundeschampionat with Fibonacci.
In 2012 he won the worldchampionship of seven years old horses in Zangersheide with Chacciana breeded by Paul Schockemöhle.

A succesful year for Florian was 2000. He was appointed to the German Team and got a special decoration of the german federation for his succes in the show jumping sport.

2001 he was for 6 months in the United States. He worked for the Family Saperstein in California as a rider and a trainer. He worked together with the nations cup rider Ray Texel. During this time he was quite succesful on shows in the United States and in Canada.

After his return to Germany he started to run his own business on the farm of his parents in Herford, Westfalia. 2003 he passes the exam as an professional rider with a decoration.

From 2007 till 2011 Florian was managing very succesful a studfarm and training centre in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Since November 2011 Florian is working for Paul Schockemöhle.