Cees Slings & Victor Kerkhof

In-House Composers for Anky van Grunsven

In 1996, though, they saw Anky van Grunsven and her equine partner Bonfire perform a kur to Music on television and decided to send Anky a fax telling her that they music was bad and they could do a better job at composing a freestyle. Van Grunsven was baffled by the blunt outspokenness and crude offer but at the same time intrigued so she hired the duo to design a new freestyle for her and Bonfire.

The world première of “Bonfire's Symphony” took place in 1996. It was the first time Slings & Kerkhof had written music for a horse and Anky van Grunsven and her Bonfire won the individual silver medal at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

From that moment onwards, all of Anky's musical kurs were exclusively composed by Slings en Kerkhof, resulting in the highest triumph ever: Individual Olympic Gold at the Games in Sydney (2000) with "Something Old, Something New" and gold again in Athens (2004) with "L'Esprit Chanson".

In 2003 Slings and Kerkhof composed the ceremonial music for the 2003 European Dressage Championships Dressage in Hickstead (GBR), which was done in collaboration with Mike Rutherford (Genesis, Mike and the Mechanics).

Robert Dover, 2004 American Dressage Champion and seven time Olympian, asked Slings and Kerkhof to compose and arrange his 2004 Athens Olympic freestyle. With Robert’s new test, the composers duo had two riders at the 2004 Olympic Games with their music.