Earlier this week, American rider Bliss Heers’s prime horse and accomplice of seven years, the 15-year-old stallion Antidote de Mars, handed away unexpectedly from a stroke.
“I’m so grateful for each second that we had collectively and for the whole lot that you just did for me,” Heers wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “I really like you and thank God for you on a regular basis.”
His title was Antidote de Mars, and it suited him effectively.
Heers first met the stallion again in 2018, at a time when she wanted a little bit of a treatment herself. That spring, Heers was driving a recent, 5-year-old stallion earlier than a horse present when he unexpectedly reared and flipped over on her.
She broke the wings on her L1-L5 vertebrae, her pelvis, and dislocated a hip. However Heers miraculously escaped with out inner injury, and inside just a few brief months, she was on the barn once more—then again competing internationally. However different elements took longer to heal.
Earlier than her harm, Heers had been residing in Europe for six years, first coaching underneath Otto Becker in Germany, after which ultimately hanging out on her personal within the Netherlands. By 2018, she was beginning to really feel pissed off, nonetheless struggling to achieve a foothold within the trade.
“I wasn’t near a five-star or perhaps a two-star Grand Prix,” Heers informed Sidelines years later. “I used to be starting to really feel misplaced and like I’ll by no means actually make it as a prime rider.”
In circumstances like these, the ‘antidote’ for changing into a prime rider is, after all, a prime horse. And Heers discovered that in each title and expertise within the then-6-year-old, Selle Français stallion by Diamant de Semilly.
“My dad and mom had been trying to help me with a pleasant younger horse that doubtlessly had a giant future forward to sort of get me again into the game,” Heers defined in a video for Genesis Horse Breeding, which listed Antidote’s sister on the market.
“His coronary heart is his highest quality. He’s very cautious, he’s very scopey, however it doesn’t matter what you do, he’ll undergo fireplace for you. He has all of the qualities, however for me, the center and the mind are most essential.”
Collectively, Heers and Antidote jumped clear for the profitable U.S. Workforce of their first CSIO4* Nations Cup look in Wellington in 2021, a efficiency that helped to each put them on the map and the short-list for the Tokyo Olympic Video games.
That August, they gained each the Welcome and the CSI3* 1.60m Grand Prix in Traverse Metropolis, happening to leap 0/1 for the USA within the CSIO5* Nations Cup at Spruce Meadows in September, an look that Heers has known as “her greatest reminiscence.”
Their reign continued all through the autumn, with constant, top-10 placings at Spruce Meadows and in Main League Present Leaping (MLSJ) competitors at occasions together with San Miguel de Allende and Monterrey (La Silla) in Mexico, and Thermal, California.
In 2022, the pair earned a career-first, CSI5* Grand Prix win in Workforce Competitors at MLSJ San Miguel de Allende, a feat they repeated in Workforce Competitors at MLSJ Thermal two months later.
“I can at all times depend on Antidote,” Heers mentioned after that first victory. “He’s a present from God. He’s a unicorn. There are not any phrases to explain him.”
That very same yr, Heers and Antidote completed third on the rostrum in each the 1.60m ‘Saturday Evening Lights’ CSI5* Grand Prix in Wellington and within the LGCT Grand Prix of Valkenswaard in August. In the summertime of 2023, they made their debut collectively within the 1.60m Turkish Airways-Prize of Europe and the RWE Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia at CHIO Aachen.
This Friday, July 4, Antidote de Mars was taken to the vet clinic after he started appearing surprisingly. On Saturday morning, July 5, he handed away from a stroke.
“You’ve been my greatest pal since we’ve met,” Heers wrote to Antidote in her Instagram tribute. “You made me imagine that we might, since you might.”
