Max Hauri

Max Hauri (born December 30, 1941 , † December 6, 2015 ) was a Swiss equestrian. He participated in the Olympic Games in show jumping and eventing .

Equestrian and cavalry

Max Hauri was Swiss Champion in show jumping as early as 1962 and was part of a Nations Cup team for Switzerland more than 50 times . In 1964 he took part in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo as a show jumper . With Milvio he finished tenth in the individual ranking, the Swiss team came ninth.

For the 1972 Summer Olympics , Hauri was also named as a participant. In addition to the jumping competitions, where he was at the start with Haiti (30th place individual ranking, fifth place with the team), he also competed in the military (eventing) in Munich. The Swiss military team finished sixth, Hauri did not finish the test with Red Baron .

Max Hauri competed with Beethoven at the substitute show jumping competition for the boycotted 1980 Olympic Games, which took place in Rotterdam in August 1980 . The Swiss team came in fifth here.

Other championships were the European Championships 1979 (with Liberty Hill 33rd place in the individual evaluation and 5th place with the team) and the World Championships 1986 (with Vivaldi 51st place in the individual evaluation and 9th place with the team)

In addition to the sport, Max Hauri was captain of a squadron of the Swiss cavalry . After the dissolution of the cavalry in 1972, Hauri took on the role of initiator and commander of the Swiss cavalry squadron in 1972. In 2010, he gave up the post of commander.

Family and horse trade

Hauri's father ran a cattle and horse trading business in Seon in the canton of Aargau. Max Hauri took over and expanded it into a show and trading stable for sport horses. From the 1970s he bought young horses in other European countries and trained them for later trading. He sold to Nelson Pessoa Vivaldi , with whom Pessoa won the German Jumping Derby three times in a row . Later successful horses of Nelson Pessoa's son Rodrigo also came from the Hauri stable, such as Special Envoy and Tomboy . At the beginning of the 2010s, he made several show jumpers available to Pius Schwizer (for example Powerplay and Verdi ), with whom Schwizer was among the world's best in show jumping .

Hauri also discovered the mare Jessica V , with whom his sister Heidi (who then had the name Heidi Robbiani, which was adopted after their marriage) won the Olympic individual bronze medal in Los Angeles in 1984 .

Max Hauri was married and had three children. His two sons Markus (* 1976) and Thomas Hauri (* 1979) were both successful as pony and junior riders up to European championships in their age classes, Markus Hauri also took part in the European championships for young riders in 1998 (and became team European champion here) and was also later highly successful ( Swiss Elite Championship 1994 runner-up and 1997 champion). After Max Hauri was injured in a serious riding accident, his sons continued to run the tournament and trading stables.

Max Hauri died on December 6, 2015 after falling in a swimming pool.