The gold medal-winning dressage horse of the Swiss team at the 1948 London Olympics was a twelve-year-old Furioso-North Star horse called Hummer, which is said to be of Hungarian origin, bred in Sárvár and owned by Captain Hans Moser.This horse is special for us because our horses Amal and Zafira are also descended from this breed, so they may even have common ancestors.
Since the balance of power changed across Europe with the Second World War, Swiss dressage riders, who were among the best in the world until the 1930s, were pressed out by the tightly controlled German and Irish stables in the last years before the war. As a result, they had to withdraw from the 1948 London Dressage Olympics and only one individual rider was entered in Helsinki in 1952. Instead, the Swiss military riders became the medal contenders: four men in uniform – one officer and three non-commissioned officers. The Swiss took the first three places at the 1947 FEI Military Competition in Turin. In 1951 Hans Schwarzenbach won the CCI Badminton Championship and in 1959 he became European Champion. In 1955, the Swiss team won the silver medal at the European Championships, and in 1960 they won two more Olympic medals.
In 1948, four officers from Switzerland rode in London: Captain Hans Moser as individual dressage rider and three other soldiers. Switzerland tried to send a team of dressage riders to the Olympics, but two of the planned horses were lame, so only Captain Moser rode the twelve-year-old Hungarian Hummer and the reserve horse Forban. Compared to the 1936 Berlin competition, the programme was shortened from 17 minutes to 13 minutes. Moser and Hummer were awarded the gold medal by the Swiss judge Max Thommen.