Which Stallion Should I Use?

The deputy breeding director of the Hanoverian Verband,
Dr Ludwig Christmann takes a look at the stallions on offer, and comes up with the radical suggestion that perhaps we should be looking to certain jumping horses to breed our top dressage performers!

Chris Hector asked the questions

My first question was whether Weltmeyer was still the number one stallion in the Hanoverian team?
"Weltmeyer is one of those stallions that are born only rarely - Absatz, Bolero, Weltmeyer - they leave their mark on the offspring, they are timeless. It is just not possible to reproduce such a stallion, you can try to breed them, but everything has to click and fit for it to happen. He is the number one stallion."
Looking at the mares at your big Ratje-Niebuhr show, Weltmeyer is still such an influence on the results...
"The reserve champion of the three year olds was a Weltmeyer, when you looked at the mares under saddle, there was so much Weltmeyer blood, directly as a sire or a grand sire."
The criticism of Weltmeyer is always that the horses won’t collect, that there are 5000 offspring, where are they in Grand Prix?
"There are Weltmeyer offspring in Grand Prix. Weltmeyer definitely has his place in the breeding of dressage horses because of the active hind end he produces, and the regularity with which he produces that movement. It is also a question of how many Grand Prix riders we have."

Wie Weltmeyer - one Weltmeyer that is starring at Grand Prix

"I think if Weltmeyer has the right partners, then he produces Grand Prix horses."

What are the right partners for Weltmeyer?
"For most breeders the first aim is to produce sellable riding horses, not many are looking to produce a Grand Prix dressage horse, they want a talented riding horse with three good gaits and rideability. We find that Weltmeyer works well with mares with Thoroughbred blood, he has always worked well with Bolero, and he also seems to work well with Lauries Crusador. He himself is not a refining stallion and he is not a stallion to put longer legs on the offspring. Sometimes the walk could be better for the Weltmeyer offspring. So I would say long legged mares with a certain proportion of Thoroughbred blood."

What other stallion is going to play a major role in the next few years?
"Definitely Lauries Crusador xx and his sons. A Thoroughbred stallion like him who in the first generation produces Grand Prix horses, is very rare. Already there is Lesotho with Ellen Schulten-Baumer, and Le Beau in northern Germany with Mr Koch. Falk Rosenbauer has been very successful at Prix St Georges with Little Big Man."

Do you think Dr Bade even dared to hope that a Thoroughbred could produce such horses in the first generation? Or was he hoping that in the second generation his choice would prove itself?
"We don't expect this of a Thoroughbred stallion. Often it is the second cross, not the first cross, but we are lucky with Lauries Crusador who has produced good stallion sons like Longchamp and Londonderry, and they will play a big role."

Londonderry - set to play a big role

What are the qualities that Lauries Crusador brought to Hanoverian breeding? What is his stamp?
"He improves the frame of the horse. He puts on the long legs that we like, and the big shoulders that we hope from a Thoroughbred. What is also very important is the rideability of his offspring. They are very good in their mind, very co-operative, also good for collection. They have good movement and they are really trainable so the movement gets better under saddle."
Did he come straight from the racetrack to Celle?
"No, he came to Celle from England via Holland through the Dutch stallion owner, Henk Nijhoff and the legendary Maas Hell."

And what other lines will be important, Rubinstein??
"Rubinstein will be very important because we see the rideability and trainability of his offspring, they leave their mark at Grand Prix levels."

Will Rotspon be the most important carrier of Rubinstein blood for you?
"I think that is still too early to say but the first crop of two year olds look very promising. Of course there are the other Rubinstein sons as well, like Rohdiamant and Royal Diamond, they are very good horses and available in Hanover. Rosentau has his first crop under saddle and they also look very promising."

Rusty - the new wave - Rubinstein over Weltmeyer

"I am a little sad that the old G line is no longer so popular. Stallions like Garibaldi, Grande and Graphit produced a lot of Grand Prix dressage horses. Now we don’t have so much of this blood any more. That is why I think Grand Cru is an interesting stallion. He is a half brother to Walk on Top, and is the carrier of the Garibaldi line. He is a very versatile stallion. His offspring are often good jumpers, and they are strong horses but good types. I think he has quite a bit to offer."

There have been quite a few Donnerhall sons taken into Hanover in the past few seasons, what are you looking for with them?
"It is very valuable to have the progeny of a stallion who has been the most successful dressage stallion in the world. He has quite a bit to offer like the willingness to work which he had himself, and his trainability. The Donnerhall horses seem to be good horses for the amateur and also for the higher level riders. Donnerhall has not been so prepotent in regards to type, but the offspring have all been very rideable. Most of them have a good walk, a lot of rhythm and balance, this is very important."

Do you see yourself having to look for a more radical out-cross as the gene pool becomes dominated by Weltmeyer / Donnerhall / Rubinstein? A horse like Sandro Hit perhaps?
"I think Lauries Crusador is a horse that should not be forgotten. He is perhaps not so well known because he himself was not promoted as a competition horse. I would like to see more of our own traditional bloodlines upgraded, like the G line and Grand Cru. Prince Thatch is another good producer of dressage horses. I think we have a wider variety of lines available to the breeder than it appears from the outside. There are some young stallions coming up, like Fabriano and Federweiser who produce some very rideable horses. They trace back to Wendekreis."

In the jumping lines, what is hot in Hanover right now?
"We are going in a very good way with our jumping lines, also with the help of Holstein, but the lines that are now emerging to be successful are the Hanoverian lines. We can look at the old A or E line. Escudo seems to produce quite good offspring, we have his son Embassy who has a very good foal crop this year. He was the winning foal at the RN show, a beautiful colt foal."

The Escudo son, El Paso - starring at the Bundeschampionate

But the Escudos have always had that quality, they can jump but they are good looking horses that look as if they could do dressage as well?
"They are very pretty and nice moving, he seems to fit well on big mares, especially mares that are a bit long, he seems to put them together a little bit. He seems to go well with Holstein types. We have For Pleasure of course, he is very successful, and the semen is now available through the State Stud. He left some very interesting sons, like Forsyth FRH, also For Feeling. I think he is pretty hot at the moment."

Has Stakkato bred on?
"This Semper Idem line has been revived through Stakkato. Graf Grannus seems to be successful reviving the G line with several sons, Drosselklang II has continued success with offspring on international level and we have some Holstein stallions."

Which of the Holstein stallions look as if they will be most successful?
" Calypso II of course left his mark. He produced horses both for dressage and for jumping. Maybe the most successful Holstein stallion was Landadel, he was also very successful in Oldenburg. He was a stallion that also improved the type and gave wonderful performance abilities."

Who has carried on his line in Hanover?
"There is Landor S, he has been very popular, he is a private stallion. Another private stallion is Landclassic. A similar line in Hanover, tracing back to Ladykiller xx is Laptop, he also produces good offspring that are interesting for dressage. There is the opinion, expressed for example by Mr Gerd Rietbrock who is a member of our Stallion Licensing Commission and a well-known judge and trainer, that we will get some good dressage horses by using horses with jumping blood and good movement."
"Laptop for example produces some horses with good movement. Wanderer is another example of a jumping stallion that produces horses with lots of suspension. It can be good if you have jumping blood with movement and add this to a dressage-breeding program, not just sticking to pure dressage stallions like Wenzel, Bolero and Donnerhall. You get the power from behind and the strength through the back. But you have to be careful with the bloodlines you choose. Calypso II and Contender have bred some dressage horses. Stakkato offspring, though still very young, seem to be versatile too. I think perhaps we have to re-think the way to produce dressage horses."
"In Hanover we have seen the old G line that has been very successful in producing horses for both dressage and jumping, also the F line, with a stallion like Fabriano who produces both. We have a gene pool of stallions with both talents."

But this is heresy! For the past ten years the trend has been more and more to specialisation of the lines. In the mare show this week, for the first time the classes were divided into dressage and jumping mares, and now you are questioning the wisdom of this trend?
"We have to specialise when we produce jumping horses. I don’t think we would be successful if we used Wenzel or Bolero in the jumping lines, that does not work but I think we have to consider using some jumping blood to produce especially dressage horses for Grand Prix. Breeding horses to win the Bundeschampionate at the age of four is different from breeding Grand Prix dressage horses. When you look at many top Grand Prix horses they are not the ones that win as three and four year olds. Five and six year old classes have more of a correlation to later competition success."
"At the State Stud they brought in a stallion like Conteur, he is bred on classical Holsteiner jumping lines, by Contender and on the mother’s side he has the R line, and he is a very good dressage horse. It should be interesting to try and get some of this blood into our dressage horses. But the stallions to use for this have to be good in their dressage ability, you cannot use any jumping stallion."
"If you look at Drosselklang, he has been very successful in producing international jumping horses but he would be a pure jumping specialist as a stallion, better not to try dressage with his offspring. The same with some of the French horses, the idea is not so much to cross jumping over dressage, but use some of the versatile stallions that combine both qualities."