Pepo Puch

Austria’s Pepo Puch is the world number one Grade II para dressage rider and has won a multitude of Paralympic and European medals.

Austria’s Pepo Puch rides Fontainenoir at the Rio Paralympics.

The two-time Paralympic champion competed at top-level eventing and switched disciplines in 2008 after breaking his neck in a cross-country fall, which left him with incomplete paraplegia.

He won back-to-back Paralympic gold medals in the freestyle at London 2012 with Fine Feeling S and the individual championship test at Rio 2016 aboard Fountaienoir, also taking home a bronze and silver from the respective Games.

Pepo, who was born in 1966, has seven para dressage European gold and two silver medals to his name, plus four silver medals from the 2014 and 2018 World Equestrian Games (WEG).

His current top rides are the Hannoverian gelding, Sailor’s Blue, who he partnered to medal success at both WEG 2018 and the 2019 Europeans, and Fuerst Chilli, who will be making his championship debut should he be selected for the Tokyo Games.

In his eventing career, Pepo competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics, Badminton, Burghley and multiple World and European Championships.

He also runs his own chimney swepping business, with his wife, Michele, and their daughter, Lou.