In 1658, after Denmark and Sweden signed the Peace of Roskide, Charles X of Sweden ordered that a stud farm be established at Flyinge. This area in the south of Sweden had long been a horse breeding area. As part of Denmark, the church had been active in horse breeding, a program started by Archbishop Absalon who lived from 1128 to 1202.
When most of Europe was breeding heavy horses for agricultural work, Flyinge was always a source of riding horses. From 1100 to the 1940s, the breeding aim was horses for the cavalry, and the cavalry were still buying horses in the 1970s but by then, the main breeding aim at Flyinge had switched to breeding sporthorses.
Today, Flyinge is no longer government run, it has been run since 1982 by a private foundation and must make its own way. The CEO is Bjorn Leander, and he, along with Birgitta Bentzer who is responsible for the breeding program, kindly took time to show us around the magnificent facility and answer our questions about their breeding program.
According to Bjorn, Sweden had always relied on imported horses for their breeding stock: “The original stock was mainly German and Russian, Trakehners and Arabs and Thoroughbreds from England.”
“These days we have four core businesses: stud and sport; we have an education sector; we have a veterinary department; and finally, we have an events department. So we have four core businesses. We have about 60 employees, and the turnover is about 55 million Swedish krowns.”

The star stallion at Flyinge - Robin Z .
One of the most influential jumping sires in the world.

And you breed mainly for the Swedish market, or for export?
“Mainly for the national market, but now we have the quality that we can export horses – and export semen as well.”
Birgitta chimes in: “In this year’s breeding program we have twenty stallions that have covered about 1800 mares. We also send frozen semen all around the world – and we are sending fresh semen from Quite Easy to Italy this year. So roughly 2000 mares a year altogether. Mainly jumping stallions. We are improving the dressage breeding but jumping breeding is much bigger. We also have some stallions that are very good for eventing.”
Your most successful jumping stallion has been Robin Z?
Birgitta: “Robin Z was born in 1983 and came here as a three year old. He was one of the first stallions to improve the jumping capacity of our horses. Before then was Irco Marco and before that Cortez, Amongst the younger ones is Cardento, who will have very great importance.”
Your success has been with the Holsteiner bred horses – now with Quite Easy you are bringing in the French blood of Quidam de Revel- is this a radical step?
“Normally we don’t use French horses that much, but Quidam de Revel was approved in Holstein, and it was from there that we got his blood, in combination with Landgraf. That seems to be a very good combination, Quidam de Revel has suited the horses in Holstein.”
“We have a good stallion son of Quite Easy, Qalle who is competing well at 1.50, 1.60…”
That is important for you, that the stallions go out and compete?
Bjorn: “It is important that they compete not just for marketing purposes, but also to select the good stallions. To be a good breeding stallion they have to be a good sporthorse as well.”
At one stage Swedish dressage horses were very influential but jumping breeding has taken over in your breeding area?
Birgitta: “There are many more riders in jumping than dressage so there is more interest in breeding jumping horses. We breed 70% jumping horses, 30% dressage horses.”
You are also breeding for eventing?
Bjorn: “Yes, but we think to have a really good eventer, it must be a very good jumper as well, much better jumpers than they used to be. Our Thoroughbred stallion, Eighty Eight Keys seems to breed very good eventers. We have another stallion, Qalle who we think will be a very good stallion for eventing, he jumps well and he is very good in dressage and he is brave and a very sound horse.”
With all these imported bloodlines, is it difficult to keep the traditional Swedish lines alive?
Bjorn: “We see ourselves as breeding a European Warmblood – the difference, for example, between Holstein and Hanover, is not as big as it used to be. We want to breed an international horse. Of course we have some good old Swedish mare lines – for example, Qalle is from the same mare line as Amiral. But at the very beginning all of these lines come from the Hannoverian and the Trakehner, horses that were imported in the 1920’s.”
“We have always imported horses – Thoroughbreds, Russian horses and German horses as well.”
What bloodlines are you looking for in your dressage breeding program?
Brigitta: “We have Donnerhall, and Sandro Hit, a great grandson of Florestan, a grandson of Rubinstein. We have a Holsteiner, L’Acteur, by Lorentin, who went Grand Prix dressage – he’s a good jumper but we breed him mainly for dressage.”
Are there many private stallions in Sweden?
Bjorn: “Most of the breeding is done by private stallions – altogether there are about 180 private stallions and we have 20. Our market share is 37% which means that our stallions serve many more mares per stallion than the private stallions. For the past couple of seasons, Quite Easy, for instance, bred about 300 mares a season and that is a lot.”

Above: Birgitta Bentzer who is in charge of the breeding program - with one of the Stud’s progeny.
Below left: Bjorn Leander, CEO at Flyinge with the handsome young stallion, Richfield (Pictured right)

Are you moving in the direction of specialised lines of jumping and dressage stallions?
Brigitta: “Yes. It is much easier to make a jumping horse into a dressage horse than the other way around – you can never do that. But a horse like Qalle, he could do both.”
Do you have a 70 day or a 30 day performance test?
Birgitta: “Neither. We have a Stallion Test in February. The youngest the stallions can come to that test are as three year olds, but very very few stallions are approved at three. At this test they are shown in hand and under saddle as well and there is also a veterinary inspection, a conformation inspection, a free jumping test . They have to be really really good to get through – 40 points for conformation out of 50. Sandakan was one of the few that passed as a three year old, and he received 42 points for conformation. They have to have an average 8.5 for the gaits. At three years old they are only licensed for one year, they have to do a new test at four years old. They are then approved until they are six years old, and then there is another evaluation. If at that stage the progeny is not good enough, they are out!”
How strict are you in the veterinary examination – what about OCD?
“We have no OCD, not for the last ten years. The stallions that go into breeding are not allowed to have any OCD, they have to be absolutely clear. Of course some of the mares can carry OCD but the stallions are all clear.”

It was time to check out the stallions, and while I knew how strong the jumping lines at Flyinge were – what surprised me was the extraordinary quality of the two young dressage stallions – Richfield and Sandakan. Richfield is very interestingly bred, he’s by Riccione, a very highly priced stallion son of Regazzoni, and is dead set cute, brown almost black, and a very nice mover.
Sandakan (top right) was bought by Flyinge in Westfalia, just before he won the Stallion Licensing. He too is a wonderful type and a great mover – a wonderful combination of Sandro Hit and Donnerhall. I would happily breed a mare to either of these guys…
Of course, Bjorn and Birgitta are rightly proud of their jumper stallions. Quite Easy is a very exciting cross of Quidam de Revel out of a mare by Landgraf out of a full sister to the great Capitol! Robin Z is still king of the stallion band, and rightly so given the extraordinary number of international jumpers he has produced, but Cardento is shaping as a rival for the honours, with great personal performances, and some exciting young stock on the ground.
The team at Flyinge are right on the pulse of what is happening in all the major breeding areas (it was interesting to see Bjorn and Birgitta checking the form at the Bundeschampionate a few weeks later) and I was impressed that they had invested in a stallion by the much neglected Escudo I – and were rightly proud of the foals he had already put on the ground.
When I first visited Flyinge, fifteen years ago, the horses looked a bit as if they had been designed by a committee of public servants, all correct, nice types, but lacking that something extra. These days there is a really exciting mix of blood and type at Flyinge – it may be one of the world’s oldest studs but it is right on the cutting edge of modern breeding.