Australia has done much to expand its equestrian sport horizon the past years. The breeding of an Australian sport horse has gone from nonexistent to internationally recognised. The standard of competitions is becoming higher and there are more of them. Young Australian riders are competing and training successfully overseas and top international trainers, riders and breeding associations have become interested in promoting and supporting Australian equestrian sport.

I have lived in Germany and been intensively involved in the international equestrian industry here for the past 13 years. Recently Australians have asked me “Why should Australians import a German horse?” I would like to try and answer this question statistically and put the simple justification forward of it being ‘all about numbers’.

One of the Westfalien stars at the London Games…

„Allerdings“ ( by Arpeggio / Diamantino)
Breeder: Josef Rosendahl, Greven, Germany
Rider:  Henrik von Eckermann (Sweden)

Germany has been breeding the German sport horse since 1732 with the foundation of the Trakhener stud.  In Germany as a whole more than 30 000 foals are born every year. There are 20 studbooks in Germany that have in global terms an ancient breeding history. In total there are 64 800 registered mares and approximately 3 640 approved stallions. There are approximately 38 000 stallion services each year. The Westfalian stud book for example is 109 years old. The Westfalian stud book has 7 172 registered mares and over 5 500 foals born and registered every year. There are more than 14 000 breeders. The Westfalian stud book has 7 auctions every year that are internationally broadcast and accessible via the internet. Before each auction more than 500 horses come before an approval board prior to being considered as an auction candidate.

Another Westfalien jumping star at Greenwich

„Ari“ (by Arpeggio / Salinator)
Breeder: ZG von Kanne, Steinheim, Germany
Rider: Reiko Takeda (Japan)

Overall in Germany every year there are 3610 national and international competitions with over 1.5 million starts. There are several hundred breed shows and young horse competitions including internationally acclaimed young horse championships such as the National Championships in Warendorf and the FEI World Dressage Championship for Young Horses in Verden. Riding is considered to be a profession in Germany and one must study for  3 to 5 years in order to receive German qualification and then go on and prove oneself as a rider. Course building is also a profession and one must study for up to 10 years in order to build courses at international level.  There are 81 700 competition riders in Germany and there are 140 000 competition horses registered. It is estimated that there are 2 million people in total participating in riding sport in Germany and that there are around 1 million horses.

A dressage star at London…

„Damon Hill NRW“ (Donnerhall / Rubinstein)
Breeder: Heinrich Sauer, Bad Sassendorf , Germany
Rider: Helen Langehanenberg (Germany)

The German equestrian industry is arguably the biggest, most established and successful in the world to date and Australian horse sport can only benefit from importing the German sport horse. Contrary to popular opinion the price of a German sport horse does reflect the size and integrity of this market and it is possible to buy in Germany high quality at market price. For example the average price at the last Westfalian elite auction was 29 300 euro with prices ranging from 9 000 euro to 141 000 euro. In Germany each year there are 24 competition horse auctions with over 1000 horses sold averaging  around 20 000 euro in price. In excess of 1160 foals are sold at auction per annum averaging around 7000 euro.

There were Westfalien stars in the Eventing too…

“Lionheart” (by Lancer III / Sacramento Son)
Breeder:  Helmut Korte, Telgte, Germany
Rider: William Fox-Pitt (Great Britain)

Australians have the very unique position of being able to select the best from the best and reaping the rewards from Germany’s investment in equestrian sport throughout the past centuries. Ambition alone does not make success. Success must be built by placing one solid stone upon another solid stone.

Kirsty Ansell and “Cecile” (7 y. mare by Collin L x Pit)

Bought as a three year old through Rebecca Schildwaechter at the Westfalian auction 2010. Cecile was the D Grade Champion at Tonimbuk World Cup Show in December also 1.15-1.25m Champion at Tamworth Indoor Championships

Please do not hesitate to contact me as a representative of the Westfalian stud book and German horse sport in general.

Phone: +49 4167 69986787

Mobile: +49 160 361 9013

Email: australia@westfalenpferde.de

Photos – Roz Neave

Don Schufro at Aachen…

Dear me, what a borderless place the world of sporthorse breeding has become! Neither of the equal top two stallions on this year’s German FN breeding values – Don Schufro (Donnerhall / Pik Bube I) or Jazz (Cocktail / Ulster) – actually live in Germany, and while Don Schufro was at least bred there before his export to Denmark, Jazz is solidly Dutch-bred and based. While both stallions have a breeding value of 170, Don Schufro is assessed with a reliability of 96%, to Jazz’s 85%, although perhaps this may have something to do with Jazz’s Dutch progeny not being added to the mix.

Londontime makes a competition appearance..

The next highest ranked stallion is the Londonderry son, Londontime (Walt Disney) just one point behind on 169 (91%). This is one of those moves that is a bit puzzling. The stallion himself generated a share of controversy when he was purchased by a private buyer for the State Stud Celle: the story went around that when the new owner went to insure the horse he was told that his X-rays were so bad that they would not write a cover. Eventually an insurer was found and the stallion went on to stand at Celle. His competition career since then seems to have peaked with two placings at M level and €1,006 in prize money and in the 2012 Hanoverian Stallion Book, he is listed with 20 progeny in competition for winnings of €3,077.

Damon Hill – truly a star

While it is not clear just what has contributed to Londontime’s stellar ranking you would not have to look far to find the reasons for Damon Hill’s move up the ladder to 4^th on 167 (92%). The handsome chestnut consolidated his position as Germany’s number one dressage representative at the London Games, while his offspring continue to dominate at the Bundeschampionate… yes, we’ll have to wait a few years to see if his progeny make it at FEI levels but given his impeccable dressage breeding (Donnerhall / Rubinstein) we would be surprised if they did not go on. By way of contrast, Londontime’s sire, Londonderry, despite the infusion of good dressage breeding on his dam line (Warkant) has been a less successful sire of top dressage horses than his Thoroughbred sire, Lauries Crusador, which perhaps does not augur well for the offspring of Londontime in the higher levels of the sport.

Perhaps another of the shooting stars – Sir Donnerhall (Sandro Hit / Donnerhall) – is discovering that what goes up, usually comes down. Last year he ranked equal with Damon Hill on 164, this year he slips out of the top ten with a breeding value of 160, although his reliability factor of 98% is equal top, along with Don Primero (Donnerhall / Pik Bube I), whose breeding value of 152 puts him 33^rd on the dressage sires rankings.

By the time you get to 5^th place on the rankings you are starting to wonder at their usefulness – the horse is Burlington (165 / 83% – Breitling / Rohdiamant), an absolute star in young rider ranks with Charlott-Maria Schürmann… but the 5^th best dressage stallion in Germany? Hello? Where are his progeny?

Sixth on the rankings to his sire, Breitling W (Bismark / Maat I) and sure, despite only covering very few mares, Breitling has produced a startling number of Grand Prix dressage horses, the only slight worry being that the overwhelming majority of them have been trained by his owner/breeder, Wolfram Wittig or his wife, Brigitte.

Rounding out the top ten we have in 7^th, Real Diamond (Rohdiamant / Weltmeyer) with a breeding value of 163. This appears to be another shooter headed earthwards, last year his value was 166, the year before he was the surprise name at the head of the list with a rank of 173! Then comes Rock Forever (Rockwell / Landstreicher) on 163 (91%); Dancing Dynamite (Don Bedo / Fidermark – 162 / 92%) and Welt Hit VI (Weltmeyer / Hill Hawk xx – 162 / 76%).

Looking at the jumping stallion rankings it’s interesting to reflect on the difference between the German FN’s use of the Integrated Breed Value Estimation, or BLUP system (which takes into account a variety of factors: the stallion performance test, the results of mare performance tests and young horse classes, as well as the stallion’s own performances and those of his offspring) as compared to the much simpler system used to calculate the stallion rankings of the WBFSH which simply adds up the points gained in international competition by the progeny of the stallion. Under the WBFSH system, Stakkato can finish no better than 37^th on the rankings, while he has been the stand out star of the German FN rankings. On the WBFSH standings, the number one stallion is Baloubet du Rouet with 62 competitors, earning 10,328 points in international competition at an average of 166.581 – while Stakkato’s 37^th place comes from 14 international competitors, earning a total of 2361, at an average of 168.64.

Stakkato at the Bundeschampionate 

Be that as it may, Stakkato hit the top of the German FN values in 2005, and he has dominated the FN standings ever since. In 2012, he is once again number one with a value of 170 and a reliability of 98% (equal highest reliability with Contendro I and Cassini I.) The stallion with the second highest breeding value (169) the Celle Stud sire, Comte (Contendro I /Granulit) underlines the problems with the German system. The horse himself competed to Novice level, and a search of the excellent SJA database fails to produce any record of him or his offspring. Okay he is by the excellent sire, Contendro I but his dam sire Granulit was hardly a superstar. His reliability estimate is low, 80% but it does seem somewhat odd that he has a breeding value higher than Cornet Obolensky, Heartbreaker, Cardento, Carthago, Contendro I, Chacco-Blue, Galoubet or Cassini I!

Comte – just why is this horse ranked so highly?

Third with a breeding value of 167 (87%) to another modest performer, Perigeux (Perpignon / Stakkato). Neither Comte nor Perigeux make it to the WBFSH top 50, and neither produce even a flicker of recognition on the SJA base. According to the 2012 Hanoverian Stallion Book, Perigeux placed twice at S level jumping for earnings of €25,409 and he has produced 19 competitors with winnings of €1,800.

Diarado at the licensing

Fourth to that splendid amalgam of France and Germany, Diarado (Diamant de Sémilly / Corrado) on 166 / 79%. Given that the Holstein licensing winner is jointly owned by the Holsteiner Verband, Paul Schockemöhle and Joop van Uytert, he has had every opportunity to cover good mares, but does seem to be producing some interesting youngsters, even if a few of them are somewhat short.

Stakkato Gold – real gold?

Fifth, Stakkato Gold ( Stakkato / Werther – 166 / 83%), his competition career with Jan Sprehe peaked – and seemingly came to an end – in 2009 when he won the final of the Youngster Tour in Neumünster in 2009. His oldest progeny are still in young horse classes.

Just when we were feeling a little desperate, we get to three mature stallions with fine competition careers and progeny competing at the highest levels: Cornet Obolensky (Clinton / Heartbreaker – 165 / 96%), Montender (Contender / Burggraaf – 164 – 79%) and Heartbreaker (Nimmerdor / Silvano – 163 / 79%).

Then it is back to the Stakkato follies, with Sallito (out of a Calido mare) in 9^th with a value of 162 (87%). Here is a horse that has done a few young horses classes, won a Hanoverian championship, and then was exported from the State Stud Celle to Canada in 2008. Now the German breeders are no fools, they don’t sell stallions that they think are the real deal, anyway the economics don’t add up, why would a horse leave a very large breeding market for a rather small breeding market if it was going to survive in the large one? I know that Stakkato’s sire, Spartan was summoned back from North America when the Hanoverian authorities realised that they had let a good one slip through the net, but he was perhaps the exception that proves the rule.

Rounding out the top ten we have an obscure son of Darco, Douglas (159 – 74%) while languishing in spots 11-13 we find three more proven sires: Cardento, Carthago and Contendro I. I really do not know what the German FN values are supposed to prove. It has been put to me that they are an indicator of good young sires that may otherwise be over-looked, but it seems to me that every time there is a name at the top of the list that you go ‘why on earth is that there?’ and after a few years the horse has disappeared without a trace. In 2008, the For Pleasure son, Fly High ranked 2^nd on the list of jumping sires, I expressed incredulity at the time, now he has disappeared from the FN topliste altogether. In the 2012 Hanoverian Stallion Book Fly High is credited with five placings at S level and €16,811 in winnings, with 61 competition progeny earning €76,365 – with the best of these, Flying Boy winning €24,318, the only one to top €15,000.

The saving grace is that the breeders throughout Europe cheerfully ignore ‘the numbers’ with most mares going to stallions with relatively low breeding values, or in the case of the dressage breeding scene, stallions too young to have a breeding value…

I guess it’s hard for Australians to understand just how specialised the German Horse scene is. While in Australia lots of our top riders have bred their own horses, in Germany the breeders tend to be one group, the riders and trainers another, with not a lot of communication between the two. Wolfram Wittig is a spectacularly successful exception to this rule.

Wolfram Wittig has produced no less than eight home bred Grand Prix dressage horses, and ten more at Advanced level. With the assistance of his wife, Brigitte, he has produced thirty five horses of his own breeding at national and regional championships.

The story began in 1990, when Wittig bred his mare Maya, to the Hanoverian stallion, Bismark. Bismark was one of the first products of Bolero, and the only son out of a mare by Duellant. The result was Breitling W.

The same cross also produced Breitling’s sister, Biagiotti W, an advanced dressage horse with Makus Gribbe. Bred to Woodstock, Maja produced the mare, Watussi W, another international dressage horse. Maya’s full-sister, bred to Bismark, produced the Grand Prix competitor, Barnsby W, and the licensed stallion, Burlington W.
Wolfram is a very funny guy, always quick with a joke, and you get the feeling that perhaps he got serious about breeding because his friends told him it was impossible…
“I started because I had always been interested in young horses, and especially the gaits and the movement. Then everyone was saying to me, if you try to breed, you will not have success, because it is not possible to breed your own sporthorses. And I asked myself, why not? Why shouldn’t it be possible – and now we are doing it.”

And with success…
“Not too bad!

“We had some mares to start with, but they were not of the quality I’m looking for. Now we are so happy and very proud that our best products are from our own bred mares. Not only from our stallion, but from mares we bred.”

“What was very important to me was Bismark. Bismark was Bolero / Duellant, and the most important bloodline for me in dressage was Duellant. But it is very difficult to find stallions with Duellant. Bismark was a very old fashioned stallion, but the movement was unbelievable and he was totally balanced in all three gaits, so I used him for my breeding program.”

One of the most spectacularly successful of the Wittig’s mares has been Devisa – by the Thoroughbred, Diego out of a grand-daughter of the great Westfalien jumping sire, Polydor.

Wolfram is rightly proud of the foals Devisa has produced for him:
“Her first foal was born in 1999, by Breitling, and that is Baldessarini, who is owned now by Gina Capellmann, and she is now qualified for the Young Horse Grand Prix. She has also placed in international Grand Prix. She was 5th at the World Breeding Championships for Young Horses. The next one is eight years old, Biashotti W, she finished third in the six year old class at the Bundeschampionate. The next one is seven years old, Brioni, he’s a stallion and qualified for the Nurnberger Burg Pokal. Then there is Bertoli who is a breeding stallion and was reserve champion at the World Young Horse in Verden. Then Balmera, qualified for the Bundeschampionate. Then Belstaff, four year old stallion, followed by a three year old Baron de Lys…

Why did you choose a Thoroughbred as the sire for your mare?
“There’s no reason why not…”

You weren’t worried about getting enough movement for dressage?
“There’s no problem because the father is Bismark / Breitling, so there is no problem. You have some Thoroughbreds with movement; if you breed with Thoroughbreds sometimes it is a very high risk, but all the Stud Books they ask you to use Thoroughbred, but no-body asks about the product. You have to take the risk yourself, and it is a very difficult selection to breed with Thoroughbreds. I prefer if I can to use Thoroughbred stallions that I know, and I know how they move, this for me is very important. If they have good movement for a Thoroughbred – not like a Warmblood, that’s a big difference – then there is no reason not to use Thoroughbreds.”

What stallions will you use with your Breitling mares?
“We have now Charatan, he is Consul / Bismark – Consul is Trakehner and he is out of Bugatti W who is by Bismark. I used the Holsteiner, Carabas, and he sired Cayenne W – also out of Bugatti – who was the World Young Horse Champion in 2007. I use a lot of different stallions but to be honest, not with the same success I had with the Breitlings.”

Tell me about your riding career…
“I started at the age of 13. I trained with a very well known man from the Spanish Riding School, Walter Biedermann, he was in Germany and I worked with him for two years. Then I trained a lot with Mr Rehbein. I had clinics with Harry Boldt, Jo Hinnemann, Jean Bemelmanns, with Klaus Balkenhol as well, because he was the German coach. The main thing is to open your mind to everything…”

It is all based on the classical training scale?
“I don’t know what is classical. If it looks very old, it’s classical… but now the sport is going in a different way, it’s more athletic now. You have to face up to it, it is more athletic. In the past, the women who rode were not good enough, so the trainers worked the horses, and for the last five minutes, the ladies can do the competition. This time is definitely gone and we must be happy that this time is really gone. Now our most successful riders are women. Not only in dressage – also in showjumping, look at Meredith (Michaels-Beerbaum). For me the sport is going in the right direction, it is not for the strong riders, it is more for the riders that are more technical. That is the reason I hate the word ‘classical’. The training should be that we have a really good attitude to our horses, that’s real horsemanship, and that for me is more important. You can hit your horse in a classical way, but that is no nicer for the horse!”

The Australian event rider, Kevin McNab said to me that one of the things he loved about working at your stables, was that everyone was kind to the horses…
“If you breed horses you have a totally different attitude to the ‘sport user’, you have a different mind. All my horses have one scary moment in their life, the first human they detect – that’s me. From that moment it all goes up for them.”

When you train with a rider who has been as successful as Isabell Werth, is this very different from training a ‘normal’ student?
“Isabell is one of the best riders – it is the same when I train my wife. She is a very good rider, and we are together 24 hours. This educates you a lot, when you make a correction, sometimes maybe you are a little bit strong, you like to shout – then my first question to myself is ‘Wolfram would you like to clean up the bedroom? Would you like to cook?’ Then you start to be a gentleman…”

In case you haven’t got the message, Wolfram Wittig is always cracking jokes.
“With Isabell, it is a two way communication. As a rider you have a feeling but you know we get no marks for our feeling. Dressage is like a peep show, you only get points if it looks good. You get no marks for your feeling. If it looks good and you feel bad, you get high marks, and then you are successful. If your feeling is good and you get bad marks, then you are not successful, that’s it.”

But that is bad judging – because if it looks good and it feels bad, it’s not really good…
“No, it can be sometimes you come out of the competition, and you say ‘oh I had a super feeling’ and you get 65 – not happy!”

With Isabel are you talking about things like rider position, or is it more a psychological approach?
“With Isabell we discuss the whole training with all the horses. All the time we are preparing for shows, and you have to be like her mirror. It’s normal for everybody to make mistakes – then you have to tell the rider, it looks good, it looks bad, that helps the rider because later on, we have five judges, and they only give the marks on how it looks.”

And sometimes do you work with Hayley Beresford?
“Sometimes, Hayley is a really talented rider, a talented person as well, I like her a lot, she has a very good mind.”

How does it work with the German team coach, Holger Schmezer, that the riders, like Isabell, have individual coaches?
“There’s not a problem because the individual coach spends more time with the rider than the team coach. Mr Schmezer’s role is more about management.”

Which do you prefer – Grand Prix competition, or the young horse classes?
“Don’t forget the basic – and the basic is the young horses. If the quality of the young horses is at a high level, you have an easier life later on. If you work strongly at the basics, then it is definitely easier at the top.”

I think it is getting better at the Bundeschampionate – the judges are looking for a more natural way of going…
“Sometimes for me, the Bundeschampionate is too much business. They show us very high marks in the young horse classes, 92 / 93 / 95% and then you only get 68% for the Grand Prix. Look at other sports… long jump, the youngsters jump six metres, later they jump eight metres, in normal athletics the marks get higher as the level of the competition becomes higher – in dressage it is the opposite. They give the young horses 95%, then you have to explain to the client, how is it that we have trained the horse for three years, and now he gets 68% – we must be very very bad trainers. For me it is wrong system – this scoring is only for business.”

But at least now they show the young horses in a less ‘spectacular’ way?
“Sometimes but if a horse has a really good extended trot, the crowd claps their hands and you can do nothing, that’s normal, it’s a show. For me you have to ask one question – if you see the horse in a competition, ask yourself, can you ride the horse every day in this way. You know the answer yourself – in this way it is possible, in this way it is not… And if you get high marks for the other way, then that does not depend on the rider, it is the judges. Then you can do nothing.”

It was time to visit some of the horses, and each and every one of them showed the enormous benefit that good handling produces. Every single stallion, from the three year olds, to the old stagers, like Breitling, stood – rein tossed over their head – and did not move, not even when mares went past. Impressive, yes very, just like Wolfram, he’s a guy who has achieved so much yet he keeps his sense of fun and adventure. I guess if you were a horse, it would be a nice stable to find yourself in…

Jan Greve and his pride and joy, Tjungske. This young stallion is by the great Carthago Z, out of a mare by Dr Greve’s English thoroughbred stallion, Julio Mariner, who was in turn out of Kwiggy, who twice descends from Dr Greve’s foundation mare, Twiggy. Bred to Almé, Twiggy produced the stallion Dammen; bred to Voltaire, she produced Gwiggy – bred to each other, Dammen and Gwiggy produced Kwiggy, who bred to Julio, produced OK Wiggy, the dam of Tjungske.

There are few breeders more knowledgeable than Jan Greve, and there can be none better able to express their philosophy of breeding, or more generous with their time. It is hard to get the ultra-busy Dr Greve sitting in front of a tape-recorder, but once you do, and once he starts talking about breeding, then away you go!

Jan Greve is famous as a breeder of jumping horses – I guess everyone knows about his great stallion, Voltaire, but I was also interested to learn that he has also been a serious breeder of dressage horses… and that this interest goes back to one of the foundation mares of his famed Watermoelen Stud.

“It started 48 years before, with an old mare from the middle of the country, then we bred with her, a Lucky Boy and bred that filly to Amor and that started a dressage line. That was a very talented mare. I try not to mix the lines – dressage and jumping – I try to get to the strong point of a family and keep to it. If you have a good showjumper, don’t mix it with a dressage horse.”

But the feeling in Hanover now seems to be that you need a bit of jumping blood to stop the dressage horses getting too soft?
“I don’t think you need it, but I think you need to look at a good canter, especially how strong and correct they are behind in the canter, then it is no big deal to do the piaffe and the pirouette, they can take the weight on the hind leg – and that’s what the jumpers do. People have to be careful in the dressage world that they don’t just look at a nice head, and a nice trot, and lose the canter.”

But the horse you sent to the world young dressage horse championship was not the usual dressage bloodlines?
“That stallion, Scandic is something special, something new. Scandic comes from a very very good jumping family. There was a Lucky Boy mare who was very good, and she had a daughter by Acteur, but the lady who owned her made one mistake, she fell in love with the Takehner, Michelangelo and she bred her good showjumper to Michelangelo – and she bred a mare, Joline – a very modern high blooded type of mare, 170 big. I told her that I had been in Sweden, and that she should go to Amiral, he was a nice horse with a good character. She believed me, and we put in some frozen semen from Amiral and that produced the mother of my stallion.”

“I saw Solos Carex as a young horse in Denmark, he was an amazing young horse, and he is still competing internationally with Tina Wilhelmson.”

So you were trying to breed a dressage outcross?
“I didn’t breed him in name, but I am sort of the mental father. His first name was ‘shot in the dark’, because he was twice bred to stallions the mare owner had never seen, but we changed the name to Scandic because there is so much Scandinavian blood in him.”

But why did you go there for a dressage stallion, rather that the fashionable D, W, R, F lines in Germany?

“Because everyone does that. When I was a boy I hated going by the bus to school, everybody standing in the same line, I don’t like that, being too crowded. I wanted to breed something new.”

“For dressage horses, you need power behind, sometimes you need those strong mares behind, don’t look always to a nice front end and forget about the hind end, they did that for years.”

What has been the strength that Voltaire has given to jumping breeding?
“Good character, his progeny are very willing to do the job right. They are very sound horses. They are very strong in the back, and when you look at conformation, that strong back is very important for showjumpers, even though he is an old horse he hasn’t given up in the back. That’s what the Concordes have too, the strength in the back.”

What sort of mares does Voltaire work best with?
“Mares with a little bit of blood, and bold, very bold, strong characters – maybe too strong characters. Mares that might be too bold and not careful enough. Voltaire was very very careful, sometimes that is his weakest point. It’s very close the relationship between genius and the crazy one, and between ‘careful’ and ‘afraid’ there is just a little margin in there. Some Voltaires are too careful, too small hearted – that’s why a lot of them jump very tied up behind, when you freejump them. They are not bold enough to open up, they are very careful. You have to treat them right as a young horse, don’t take the heart out of them. That’s why Voltaire needs a mare that is very strong – Nimmerdor is a very good cross. A lot of Nimmerdors are very good as young horses, but when they get older, they are not careful enough, they are too full of themselves. Pilot works very well, Joost works well. Sometimes when you come back to the Le Mexico mares, but you have an in cross of the Furioso then.”

Has Concorde been the best son of Voltaire?
“Who can tell, he is the best we know of, there might have been better ones that we cut!”

Sadly for Jan, Voltaire’s death followed not long after the death of another fine jumping stallion, Julio Mariner. This horse, an English Thoroughbred, was a fine example of Bernard le Courtois’ observation, that sometimes a change of locale is vital in a stallion’s career. In his native Briton, Julio Mariner was a superstar on the track, winning the St Leger, but had limited success at stud before he was imported to Holland by Jan in 1988, when he soon set about carving himself a niche in jumping breeding history.

Looking at the career of Julio Mariner, what do you think he added to the breeding program?
“He produced extremely careful horses, and very quick from the ground, amazing quick reactions. And of course, when you breed to the Thoroughbreds, the main goal is to produce mares. You don’t use a Thoroughbred to produce good sport horses mainly it is to produce good half blood mares. The problem is that a lot of his mares are not too big, but the small ones are the better ones, 15.3 hh, 16 hh from Julio make excellent mares – but lots of people didn’t want to use them because they were too small. I have lots of Julio mares, and you can use them with a bigger stallion.”

Scandic was a finalist at the 2004 World Young Horse Championships. He is a great example of Dr Greve’s breeding philosophy, and willingness to go ‘outisde the square’. His sire. Solos Carex in an international dressage competitor, but he is by a horse of classic jumping breeding: Castro by Cor de la Bryère out of a Landgraf mare. On his dam’s side, Scandic is related to Luidam (by Guidam) who was a finalist at the World Young Jumping Horse championships at Lanaken.

Who is your next important stallion?
“I think Karandasj will do the job. He is competing internationally, and he comes from a very good family. He is by the Darco son, Fedor. The mother is a full sister to a good 1.40 horse we had, and the half sister to him is Kahlua who won a silver medal with Eric Lamaze at the Pan American Games. He makes very good quality horses, they are very willing to work for you – there was one sold to America for a lot of money, one won the four year old in Dublin last year, and the six year old class in Portugal. They are looked on as pleasure horses, very nice in the mind and they try to do the job right for you. Nice horses to work with.”

“In deals and deals, I lost Guidam, I sold him, something I should never have done, he was the best I had after Voltaire. I bought him as a two year old. I used a lot of French blood in the beginning, more than anyone else – but I don’t like the mouth, hard to ride, soundness problems. Stifles are very important and there you find a lot of problems with stifles, not all of them, but quite a few.”

And does the search go on for another good Thoroughbred stallion?
“Every day I am looking, every day. I have a horse called Painter’s Row by Royal Academy, he’ll breed some nice showjumpers. He was in Oldenburg for two years, then Holstein, then Italy and now we presented him again in Holland. We found nine of his progeny in Holland and free jumped them, amazing good jumpers – I think they misused him at first, thinking he should be a dressage stallion… nothing to do with dressage. I think from Holstein should come a few nice horses by him, they are three years old now. He breeds horses with very good reactions, very good technique. Then these idiots here rejected him because of their semen thing, say the semen is not good enough – in the lab. It’s so crazy so now he is in Denmark and they love him. We use him with frozen semen and the semen works very well. It’s just an idiot system they have here in Holland with the semen, they think they can predict in the lab, but there are so many factors in the fertility scene, that you cannot know, or we cannot find out, or it costs too much money to find it out. So we toss all these good horses away, a waste of good stallions.”

“You can only sell one thing – the showjumper who jumps the best, or the best dressage horse. That’s the only thing that sells – the main goal of breeding is the sporthorse. I have one mare, and everything she breeds has a chip either in the fetlock or in the stifle, or in the hock. Whatever. But they jump like hell, and make me so much money you can’t believe it! You have to take a chip out here and there, but they can jump. One is in Canada that had a chip in one hock, one in Ireland by Carthago had chips in both hocks but jumps unbelievable – so I don’t throw that mare away. It would be nice if the mare bred foals that did not have chips, but that is not the goal of the breeding – the goal is to breed good jumpers.”

OCD is heritable?
“Everything is heritable but it is a very difficult pattern of heritability, but for sure it is in the mare line. Some mares give it to all their foals. The problem with the stallion is that you cannot always see if the stallion will produce it. That’s why we are thinking of changing the system in Holland so it is not so strict on the stallions, but to look what he breeds – if there are 20 foals, do they have more OCD than the other ones? There are some ‘false negatives’ – stallions that don’t have it but spread it. There are others where it comes back, maybe in the third generation but not in the first.”

Would you knowingly breed with a stallion that was an OCD carrier?
“It depends. If I have a very strong mare and there are a lot of other reasons to use the stallion, then I use him. We have a few here in Holland that we know they give OCD, it’s not so nice, but some of them are good. There is one dressage stallion, 5 out of 10 have it, and the sons by him, also have it, but they are very nice horses. You don’t throw them away because they make OCD horses – it is a part of the breeding, you have to know it, but it’s not the main goal.”

Should the stallion owner be required to disclose to the mare owners if his stallion breeds OCD?
“In Holland we throw the stallions out, they are not allowed to breed. Every horse that is KWPN approved is OCD free, or it is not allowed to breed.”

So is OCD now less of a problem in Holland?
“We see it much less than in other countries. We have in Holland much sounder horses than everywhere else. I have 45 two year olds of my own, and I have been x-raying them to see where we should go, and what not to do, and with the German blood we always have something different. The ones that are not sound are nearly always the ones from a German mother – in Holland we have made very good progress on the soundness side, but we must be careful not to throw away too much of the rest.”

What is the goal in your jumping program?
“To breed international showjumping performers, to go to the top. It is very important to know your mare, that’s the most important thing. If I have a Julio mare, not so big but sound and very quick and reactive, then I am looking not for a Thoroughbred – I’m looking for a heavy horse, and maybe one that is not careful enough – that doesn’t matter because the Julio mother will give them carefulness for sure. But if I have a heavy mare that is very strong and very powerful, but a bit slow, then I am looking for a different stallion. Always try to improve what is lacking, don’t double up, don’t breed a big bully to a big bully. Try to find a good match up.”

If you breed a well bred jumping mare to a good jumping stallion, how sure can you be that you will get a jumper?
“Seventy percent. If you are very careful then you can do 70%, then it depends on little things, like the rider. It depends also on the mare lines, some mare lines are so strong. I have one old mare, the three quarter Thoroughbred mare, Twiggy, and Ovidius, the good sire in Holland now, is her grandson. Madison was a good jumper out of this mare. From the same family comes Baltimoor, that jumped internationally with Geir Guliksen. Now we have a Carthago son out of the same family. Nearly all of them jump – how good they are in the end depends on who gets them.”

Voltaire: The Master takes his leisurely pick of grass just a few weeks before his death. Here ws a stallion who was both an exceptional competitor in his own right (a winner of the Berlin Grand Prix) and an enormously influential sire, with just of 30 of his progeny appering on the World Breeding rankings. Before he died, Voltaire sired 40 stallions sons and countless broodmares. The individual silver medallist at Athens, Royal Kaliber is by Ramiro but out of a mare by Voltaire.

At Aachen in the Grand Prix of 2004, three of the four horses in the jump off were from the Holstein C – C cross. How important are those two C lines?
“It is the same philosophy that we were talking about before of not doubling up. Cor de la Bryère – extremely careful, they lack a bit of scope sometimes because they are not so good in the back. The other is the Capitol line, dumb power. No brain, just power, a lot of power. If you mix that, get a little bit of quality from Cor de la Bryère (by the Thoroughbred, Rantzau) and add to that the power, then you have the right mixture. You hope for the right mixture.”
“Sometimes we use that Capitol line, because we have quite a lot of blood, and we need power. For the Julio mares you need scope and power, all the quality is there, you just add scope.”

Do you think that showjumping breeding has developed so far that now we have a hundred very good jumping stallions so we will not have the great ‘hero’ stallions like Ramiro, or Almé or Gotthard in the future?
“There are more good ones than there were in the past for sure, and it is not so easy to be a star like Voltaire or Ramiro, because a lot of people are sending their mares to many different stallions, not just using one stallion. Ramiro he made some nice horses, but he also made some normal horses, very normal. But now there are so many stallions everywhere, that no one stallion gets enough mares to be the superstar. But among those ‘equal’ ones, there will be one in the end who will be the better stallion for sure. It is always the same family they come from, the dam line is so important, always look to the dam it is much more important than the father.”

If you could have any stallion in the world now – free gift – who would you take, Quidam?
“I used Quidam years ago when no-one heard of him. I bought Guidam out of his first crop. I heard that Quidam de Revel was jumping good, and he has got the most fantastic pedigree in the world, it’s all international or Olympic horses. So I looked for, and found, Guidam, who also proved to be a very good sire, I’m always looking for something new. Quidam de Revel is no longer a goal for me, everyone is using him. It was nice to breed to with him at the time when no one used him, too crowded on the bus. And I believe his son Guidam is better, if he gets the same mares as his father, he is better, more rideable, more elasticity, more power to collect. That is very important for the showjumper, to be able to collect your body, to make a stride on a metre and jump up – that is one of the most important things.
There are some nice young horses, Carry – a Holstein horse in Germany – he’s a nice horse.”

What about Darco?
“Darco is fantastic. You need a special mare, you don’t want to go with a big bully to Darco, you need some blood, with a strong back. It’s not so much looking around for stallions, I like to know my mare all year round and then find a stallion that will fit that mare. Aldatus, he is in Ireland now, he makes good horses, I think he will be very popular in a few years time.”

You are not only a breeder – you have a training barn?
“I have a dressage rider, he has about 10/15 horses, my son is now home, he was with Henk Hoorn for two years, and he is riding jumping horse, then we have a young man who rides the young horses. We have quite a lot of horses coming out every day.”

“I like to give every horse a chance, to see where they go to. I sold Authentic to Beezie Madden as a three year old, now I have the opportunity to hold onto horses longer and see where they go.”

“The problem with the modern breeding world is that there is too much fashion, everybody runs everywhere, and that means nobody arrives somewhere. They run from here to there. Five years ago I was talking to a breeder at a stallion show, and he said ‘it’s funny near me there is a man who always has good horses. In the past he only went to his next door neighbour, who is a stallion owner, and this man always had the best horses. Now he is running all around the world, ordering semen everywhere, but it is still the same breeder who has the best horses, the others can’t compete with him because their mares are not good enough. You can in-breed to a donkey if you want – but you still have a donkey. You need the power of a good mare. That is the part that people forget, you need the power of a family. If you don’t have much money you are better to buy not such a good mare from a good family than buy a good mare from a shit family – she will never breed, she doesn’t have the genes to breed. This mother was a very small Lucky Boy mare, 158 cm, I think she was a twin, she was born in the field but this little thing has bred unbelievable horses in dressage and showjumping. That’s a very strong mare. It is not always the individual that you look at – that’s a fault of the fashion world, they look too much for the special horse, they want a star mare or a kur mare. You need a good family, that’s the only thing that comes back.”

“From this strong old family there were Dutch champions as early as the 1950s, one side went to the dressage, one more to the jumping, but still the same strong family, with sound legs and a good mind. This is one of my main lines, and the second one is Twiggy. I bought her by luck. Her mother was by Koridon, who jumped 1.90 metres. She’s a good jumper herself, she’s a full sister to Best of Luck, who went to California. She bred Dammen, he’s a son of Almé, and a stallion in Sweden because of the semen thing. She bred with Creol, she is the grand-mother of Ovidius, a very good six year old stallion, she had one by Ahorn that jumped internationally – everything out of that mare line can jump.”

“I’m not sure why this happens but it seems to me that you cannot use the animal’s body twice – to have it a showjumper until it is 14/15 and then into the breeding, it hardly ever works. Ratina didn’t work. It might just be that it is too much to expect from the body. It’s funny but everybody has a certain age when you produce the best, with a milking cow, it is the third to the fifth calf that gives more milk. I cannot explain why it happens with horses but it does seem that you can’t use the body double, to be a good sporthorse and then to be a good mother.”

Everyone seems to have gone off using embryo transplants – once they were the big thing in Europe, now no-one very much is doing it?
“Because it cost a lot of money, and not enough comes out of it. It is not like a cow, with the horse it is very important in the first four or five months, which mare is next to the foal. They tried to use the cold blood mares – nothing – the cold blood mare just stands under the tree, and the foal just stands around too, and he is a dummy, he is ruined for life before he is one year old. We should have known it, because an orphan is a terrible animal, people treat orphan foals like dogs – bring them into the kitchen, oh he is so sweet – and they kill everybody. I have seen 3 or 4 like that in my practice and they were all shot, by the time they are three or four years old, they are dangerous, no education. That’s the trick with the mother, it is very important, who educates the foal. What they use now are Warmblood mares, maybe that is better.”

“What I used to do with the 3 year olds, is breed one or two foals, then try the mare as a sport horse. I don’t do that any more. Now I will have 10/15 three year olds, and I pick 2 or 3 that I like, and the free jump well, they go straight into the broodmare band, they don’t do anything else. Don’t try to do everything with them.. it doesn’t work.”

“With the Thoroughbreds, they did tests on thousands of foals, and the foals from the mare aged 6 to 10/11 were the best.”

And so it was time to leave, with warm thanks for Dr Greve’s valuable time, and a promise to meet again for another interview in the not too distant future – with breeders like Jan Greve there is always so much to learn.

One of the problems in setting down your opinions in cold hard print is that they can embarrassingly come back to bite you. Scarce had the ink dried on a survey of the first ten years of the German Breeding Values in action, in which I gently condescended to Don Schufro and Sandro Hit for failing to produce competitors of note at an international level, than up pop not one but TWO Sandro Hits in the dressage team of my own nation, while there was another on the long list for the Swedes. And Don Schufro is the sire of the Norwegian individual dressage representative, Dorina, the Dutch nominated, Donna Silver, America’s Paragon, Britain’s Diamond Hit and the Swedish reserve horse, Bocelli.

STORY: Chris Hector         PHOTOS: Roz Neave and Archives

The breeding scene in France was for so long the most regimented and formalised in Europe.

A network of National Studs (Haras Nationaux) covered the land, headed by god-like Breeding Directors and supported by a vast bureaucracy to administer the bewildering profusion of regulations and rules. And the French horse was just that – French. A rigid breeding policy shunned outside influences, and French riders were forbidden to compete for their country on ‘foreign’ horses.

In an astonishingly short period of time all that has changed. Where once, stallion marketer Arnaud Evain had to sneak Voltaire semen across the border, arguing that it was to improve dressage quality – now the market is wide open… and those revered Haras Nationaux are in serious danger of disappearing altogether, while the silver-medal-winning French riders at the recent European Championships rode horses that dramatically underscored the changes. Of the four, only one, Lord de Theize is a ‘pure’ Selle Français. One team member, Silvana, is Dutch born and bred, while the other two, though born in France, are both by outsiders – Mylord Carthago, by the great Holsteiner, Carthago, who spent a season in France, and Kellemoi de Pepita, by Voltaire, that frozen semen may not have done much for the dressage scene, but Voltaire’s progeny can certainly jump.

The breeding scene in France is also marked by a curious set of contradictions – on one hand super slick and professional, on the other appealingly amateur. The highlight of the year are the Great Weeks – and the largest and most prestigious is the one at Fontainebleau, where jumping horses and riders from all over the country come together to compete in a bewildering series of classes. This was our first step in our journey to try and get a grip on where French breeding is headed…

One of the regulars at Fontainebleau is Arnaud Evain whose breeders’ group, GFE, has an appropriately grand marquee, overlooking the main arena. Faced with the bewildering profusion of rings and horses (and dogs running free) we sought his help to put things into perspective:

“This week in Fontainebleau we will have almost 1800 horses, over 100 trade exhibitors. I think it is one of the most beautiful horse stadiums because it is in the middle of a 15,000 acre forest, and they have tried to respect as much as possible the environment and insert the stadium in the nature and the trees. You will see green everywhere you look…”

“Here you will see only showjumpers: the four, five, six and seven-year-old jumping championships. We have the same concept of a big week in dressage in Saumur, for three-day eventing in Lion d’Angers, for Endurance and for Driving. So we have five weeks, but this is the largest one.”

It is Arnaud who points to one of the contradictions in the French breeding scene:

“Over 80% of the French breeding purpose is showjumping. The French showjumping industry and the French horse quality, are two different concepts. The French Studbook, the Selle Français has been in the top three in the world for years, and is consistently one of the best in the world. When you go deeper and look at the rankings of the top 2000 horses with the WBFSH, you will see that 27% are Dutch, 23% German, 18% Belgium, and France supplies only 13% of the 2000 top horses of the world. That doesn’t give an idea of the quality, the quality is higher than that, so there is a lot of market share that we can gain, we should be almost level with Belgium and Holland.”

What has caused this – bad marketing?

“It is because of the better marketing of our competitors. We weren’t bad, we just weren’t doing anything. We have to market our horse industry much better than we do.”

Since we were drinking his coffee and enjoying his view of the arena, I thought it best to let our host talk a little about GFE – again this group signifies one of the huge changes in French breeding, from a virtual monopoly of the State Stud Stallions, to a majority of breedings going to privately owned stallions, either stallions owned by individuals, or a breeders’ group, like GFE:

“GFE is a successful group for two reasons. Firstly, I was very proud the other day to be assessing the proportion of the horses at this Week by our GFE stallions, and it goes up to 26% in the five-year-old division, and 25% in the six-year-old division. One of the reasons there are so many of our horses here is the quality of our stallions. We are a private company, we are a profitable organisation, but managed by breeders. We have 360 breeders who are the shareholders of our company and it gives us a lot of energy. It’s 360 brains providing ideas and concepts in marketing, it is a small army of breeders, and that is very helpful.”

Which are your star stallions?

“When we started in 2003 it was Mr Blue, then we have had Corofino, Calvaro – the most represented stallion here this week. It is possible that 10% of the five-year-old finalists will be sons of Calvaro, we’ve never seen that before. But now it is Kannan – every day there is a new Kannan showing up in the international results. When we bought Kannan a year ago, he had 120 international jumpers, and this morning it was 217. It is like a mushroom growing.”

Why is he such a successful sire?

“If you look at Kannan, he is not very represented in the four-year-old championship, but he is the largest represented in the seven-year-old, because the Kannans are scopey, careful and with a very good brain. There are a lot of riders participating in this week, and many of them are not great experts and the horses have to participate, and Kannans, like the Mr Blues, they have the brain of going through and doing their best and being clear. That’s why you see so many of them when it starts to get serious.”

Purchased in Belgium, Kannan, is by Voltaire out of a Nimmerdor / Le Mexico mare…

As it turned out, the Seven-year-old Criterium was a triumph for Kannan since he put two horses into the final, a feat equaled only by the recently deceased, Quick Star, who was the sire of the Champion, Quatrin de la Roque, out of a Belgian-bred mare by Kannan. The gelding is a wonderful pan-european cocktail: Almé, Nithard, Voltaire, Nimmerdor, Grand Veneur.

Reserve to the mare, Queldam who is by the the Dollar du Murier son, J’ai L’Espoir d’Elle, out of a Uriel mare – which makes the youngster double bred to Uriel, since Dollar du Murier is also out of a Uriel mare. Third to another mare, Quorida de Treho, another Kannan, this time out of a mare by Tolbiac des Forets*HN (the number of descendants of stallions that bear the National Stud affix *HN was pitifully small, perhaps an indicator of the parlous state of the old Haras Nationaux, for so long the back bone of French breeding.)

The highest placed stallion was the fourth placegetter, Quebec Tame, by the Hanoverian star of the German jumping team, For Pleasure (although let it be noted, a Hanoverian with a French sire, Furioso II, or to be absolutely correct, Vertuoso) out of a mare by the Quidam de Revel son, French Cancan.

The line-up to the Seven-Year-Old final showed how thoroughly ‘Europeanised’ the French breeding scene has become with eight of the 12 finalists by ‘non-French’ sires. Two by Kannan, one by another KWPN representative, Casco (Cascavelle / Landlord) and another by Mr Blue, two Holstein stallions are represented, Casall and Chin Chin, along with For Pleasure, and the Oldenburger, L’Arc de Triomphe (Landor S / Pilot). Flying the flag for France, we have Quick Star, with two, Le Tot de Sémilly and J’Ai l’Espoir d’Elle.

The six-year-old class was a rather more ‘French affair’: twelve of the nineteen finalists were by Selle Français stallions – eight were not only by SF stallions but also out of SF mares. But be careful how you count… the champion, Ruby de la Fosse is by the ‘SF’ stallion, Cabdula du Tillard but Cabdula is by the Trakehner, Abdullah, though out of a solidly French mare, Jalisco’s full-sister, no less.

The reserve championship went to a stallion, Rasper du Gery, by that Selle Français hero of the 2002 WEG, Dollar du Murier out of a mare by the Dutch stallion, Jasper and in turn out of a daughter of Nimmerdor. The French / Dutch alliance is repeated with the third placed horse, a mare this time, Ratina Kervec, she is by Diamant de Sémilly out of a Kannan mare. The highest placed horse by a ‘foreigner’ was another mare, the fourth placegetter, Rafale des Forets, by L’Arc de Triomphe out of a mare by Echo des Forets II*HN.

Dollar du Murier was represented by two finalists as was Diamant de Sémilly and Quick Star. Quaprice du Bois Margot had two finalists. The stallion is described as Holsteiner, but is by the SF sire, Quidam de Revel, albeit out of a mare by Holsteiner stalwart, Lord. For Pleasure also produced two finalists. Kannan was the sire of one finalist and dam sire of another.

The Five-Year-Old Championship was dominated by mares, taking out the first 21 places! Three geldings filled 22nd – 24th with the highest placed stallion Skenzo de Loujou (Diamant de Sémilly / Laudanum xx) in 25th.

The Champion, Angie du Pachis is another hybrid, by Dollar de la Pierre out of a mare by Ogano Sitte, a very hot stallion on the Belgian scene. Ogano Sitte is by Darco and from the famed Gute Sitte mare line.

Of the top 15, eight were by SF stallions – three by Diamant de Sémilly and two by Dollar de la Pierre. The Oldenburg branded, Hanoverian bred, Air Jordan (Argentinus / Matador), put two into the top 15, including the reserve champion, Australia (out of a Caletto mare) while Lux Z also produced two of the 15, although the Zangersheide-bred, Hanoverian-branded, stallion carries his share of French blood, with two crosses of Cor de la Bryère and one of Almé.

The Four-Year-Old Championships are divided into male and female classes, with the two sexes only coming together in the consolation class. The winner of the Female Four-Year-Old Championship was Telula Hoy, is  SF branded, but her Selle Français sire,  Nartago is by the great Holsteiner, Carthago out of a mare by Hurlevent. The sires of ten of the top 15 are branded SF, with one Anglo-Arab, Laurier de Here*HN, the sire of the reserve champion, Tifanie de la Haye. The only horse with more than one finalist was the late, great, Argentinus.

The Male Four-Year-Old Championship was another triumph for J’ai l’Espoir d’Elle who sired the champion, Torilis d’Ariel, the young stallion is out of a mare by the great Thoroughbred showjumper and sire, Laudanum. This class was more evenly divided with seven of the top 15 by SF sires, four by Holsteiners, two by Oldenburger stallions, and two by BWP stallions. Diamant de Sémilly was the only stallion with more than one in the top 15 – his two finished 12th and 13th.

There is no doubt that Diamant is a great stallion, but the odds are also loaded in his favour, over the past five years, he has covered 2,000 mares in France alone, covering 374 mares in the 2010 season. For all the open borders policy has introduced new blood to the French scene, traditionalists can take heart, Diamant de Sémilly continues to proudly fly the tricolour.

The top ten stallions for the 2010 season reflects the new balance. In second place behind Diamant, we find Mylord Carthago with 309 mares (50:50 – Carthago / Jalisco), the Dutch import, Kannan – 296 (Voltaire / Nimmerdor), Epsom Gesmeray – 208 (‘pure’ Selle Français, Jalisco B / Starter). 5th – Tinka’s Boy – 198 (KWPN, Zuidpool / Zeus), 6th – L’Arc de Triomphe – 182 (OLD, Landor S / Pilot), 7th Lando – 176 (Danish, Lancier / Raimondo), 8th Levistan – 150 (HAN, Levisto / Argentan), 9th Orlando – 148 (BWP, Heartbreaker / Darco), 10th Rockn Roll de Semilly – 132 (Selle Français, Diamant de Semilly / Apache d’Adriers).

Oh Mon Dieu, what a change. From being the most closed of breeding areas, France is now perhaps the most open. 70% of the top ten sires are by stallions born outside of France…

 

WORDS: Chris Hector

PHOTOS: Roz Neave

Joop showed us around his farm, he’s one of those guys   who moves fast, and talks faster, and it is quite a tale. The entire operation is just 21 years old:

“We started in 1993, and in the first year, we bred with our KWPN-licensed Trakehner stallion, Balzflug. My father-in-law bought him, he covered 200 mares in that first season, and that was our start.”

Balzflug was to be quite an important stallion in the development of Dutch dressage breeding, and this year, he was the dam sire of the Dressage Champion at the KWPN licensing, Etoine, who is by another Van Uytert stallion, Vivaldi.

Joop wasn’t only quick to see opportunities for a specialist dressage sire, he also realised that to really get the mares, his stallions had to be out in the competition arena, and again, he chose his riders well:

“I had a good contact with Anky van Grunsven and we started with the stallion, Partout, and they were very successful. We bought Gribaldi as a young stallion. That was the first stallion I bought, I was 26 or 27 then, I saw him as a young horse, two-and-a-half, and it was incredible what a horse he was – his movements were good but his type was magnificent. He brought very good breeding to Holland.”

Business was growing… fast.

“We started the first year with 200 mares, then we had 400 mares, then 800-1000, now always between 1000 and 1500, and in the last four or five years, we have added a lot of young stallions. We have United, we have Vivaldi, Sandreo was licensed, Tango was licensed, we have Zhivago, we have Zizi Top, we have some German stallions. We also bought with Paul Schockemöhle, the stallion, Diarado.”

“For the last two years we have had around 2000 mares. It’s a lot of work, but that is our living, we were the ones who started with dressage. There are a lot of stallion stations in Holland; Nijhof, van der Lageweg, Zangersheide, all jumping. We are just dressage, and we knew Anky very well, and we know Edward Gal because when he started riding, he started with me.”

Joop not only has a keen eye for a horse, it would seem he is something of a matchmaker…

“Seven years ago, there was a stallion show in Germany, and Edward was there with Vivaldi, and Hans-Peter Minderhoud was there with Painted Black. They said in the evening to me, ‘where do we sleep?’ and I said, ‘you can sleep in that room’ – and they have been together ever since.  We do a lot with Edward and Hans-Peter. We have a lot of our stallions out with riders. Gribaldi was with Edward, United is with Edward, Vivaldi is with Hans-Peter, Tango is with Hans-Peter. In the morning we go to Holstud to collect semen, then the girl is coming back with the semen for our place, or to go all over Europe.”

But Van Uytert also has a stallion with his first star rider, Anky:

“We started with Anky and Partout. She also had Cocktail, and now we have the new stallion, Upido, from Spain, with her.”

“We have every year a big show here of our dressage stallions with 2000 people. It is so busy – we have two days dressage and one day jumping.

And he has a new stallion – Metall. ‘I bought him the day after Uthopia went so well at the European Championships!”

You must be pretty good at predicting the future… When everyone in Holland was breeding jumping horses, you decided to specialise in dressage…

“We had a little bit of luck of course. Anna, my wife, was riding dressage, and we knew Anky well, and dressage has been coming up and up. We have had some very good dressage stallions, Gribaldi, Cocktail, Partout – then we bought foals of those stallions, and one of our best young breeding stallions is United, and United is by Krack C out of a mare by Partout. We have a lot of combinations with that blood.”

Interesting that you went to Trakehner stallions because in Germany at the time, many of the breeders had given up on Trakehners, they were pretty, but couldn’t do anything…

“In the beginning of dressage in Holland, we had the Trakehner, Doruto, and he produced a lot of dressage horses. Gribaldi produces a lot, also Michelangelo. I think the Trakehner did a really good job in Holland.”

But the good ones seem to be by Trakehner stallions out of a mare with jumping blood…

“It is always a combination. What the Trakehners have, they are hard horses. Good in their legs. Look at Gribaldi, he was never lame, he was 13 years old when it was the first time he had the vet. Partout was also a hard horse – and that is important.”

But the good ones seem to be out of mares with jumping blood, Nimmerdor, Goodtimes…

“That is interesting, the jumping horses are always good for the canter. We started with the Gelders horses, the work horses, we have now four or five generations of dressage blood. It is important to keep mixing it in the future, ten generations of dressage blood is maybe too much, you need a little jumping blood.”

“Look at Ferro, he started in jumping, and look at the top horses at the European Championships, Uthopia is by Metall, and Valegro by Negro, both by Ferro.”

What do you think Metall will bring to the breeder? 

“He makes the power, the power comes from Ferro. He has a very good dam line, Ramiro, then Marinier…”

Jumping blood again…

“Real jumping blood but with the Ramiro blood you see a lot of his blood in the dressage horses. Ramiro was a little bit both, Ramiro was one of the best stallions in the world.”

Is it tough, having to come up with a new stallion every season?

“We have a lot of competitors, so yes, it is very tough.”

It is important for your stallions to compete?

“Very. We started with Partout, he was Grand Prix, it is important for the stallion to show he can compete at the highest level. Gribaldi was at the highest level, Cocktail was at the highest level, Painted Black, Tango is now, and United is coming, Vivaldi is coming. A lot of our good breeding stallions do compete at the highest level, it is very important. You see it also in jumping. A few years ago, you had Baloubet du Rouet who was very good in himself, but not a stallion – now you see it, Baloubet has a lot of progeny going international. When they are good  competitors themselves, then they can produce good competitors, when they are not, it is more difficult – then it is more the mother lines.”

Do you use much German blood?

“We try to mix it always. Gribaldi was a German horse.”

When you are looking for a young stallion, do you look at the pedigree first or the horse first?

“The horse always first. The type must be okay and for me, the backline must be very good – when that is okay, then you have normally enough power from behind.”

Can you tell the minute you see one?

“Yeah. You can see a stallion is a stallion. The others, when you go, is he? Maybe? The breeders say the same later.”

“This year, we had 1700 mares. We had 400 we inseminated ourselves, the rest we sent away to the north of Holland, to Germany, to France, a lot to Denmark.”

Do you think the Young Horse stars are also the Grand Prix stars?

“Sometimes… the Young Horse winner is not necessarily the Grand Prix horse. You don’t know until they are seven or eight, if they piaffe and passage, then you know how good they are.”

Is this a problem, people breed for the young horse stars, and not the big sport?

“It could be a problem. When you have young horse, you want a big mover, but that is not always the same for the Grand Prix class. It is always a risk. Gribaldi was a normal mover but he won the Licensing.”

Krack C, what are his qualities?

“He is one of the best producers in Holland. I think he is a good producer in the dam line. He has a lot of licensed stallions now, and the first are starting Grand Prix, and I think he will make some very good Grand Prix horses. His son, United is coming now, he is a real combination, by Krack out of Partout. He has a lot of power from behind, that’s important. The movement in front is from Krack, the power from Partout. United is really one of the future stallions.”

And you get the feeling that whoever the future Dutch dressage stallion stars are going to be, there is a fair chance they are going to end up in the stallion barn of Joop Van Uytert.

Story: Chris Hector

Photos: Roz Neave & Arnd Bronkhorst

You really don’t have to be a genius to know when you have walked into ‘the real thing’, a training barn run by a horseman who knows what he is doing. Everything about the set up is professional, and that doesn’t mean flash, no chandeliers, no marble porticos, just everything in place – you immediately get the feeling that this is a well-oiled, well-used training space. And yes, the glass of schnapps on a freezing cold day is a nice welcoming touch…

So it was when we walked into the barn of Dutch trainer, Johan Hamminga, and when the first rider and first horse started to work, then you knew that you were right. This man is an exceptional horseman.

The horse was pretty flash too, a six-year-old Scandic/Glendale stallion, ridden by Johan’s bereiter, Jennifer Sekreve, and Jennifer is something special too. Her hands just do not move, she really is riding the youngster with her legs and seat, and Johan has begun his impromptu lecture to about 100 of us who have travelled to visit him as part of the KWPN foreign visitors tour.

Johan, who trains the Dutch young horse entrants selected to go to the World Young Horse Champs, is interesting because he is not just a superb technician when it comes to the rider/horse interaction, but he is also an astute observer of the breeding scene, and intent on applying his breeding knowledge to his equitation skills, and vice versa.

He talks revealingly about ‘balance’:

“The balance of the horse is really the most important thing. The horse must be in a good shape. What we need to be aiming for in our breeding program is a horse with a good hind end, a horse that is strong and capable of bending behind. It all comes from the power and activity behind, the front doesn’t matter, steady on the bit, doesn’t matter – when the horse is in balance, the front and the contact, will come.”

The horse is flowing around the arena in the most beautiful shape:

“Never make a horse short in the neck, you must always be lengthening in front. When you make a horse short in front, then it goes down in the back, the neck is too high. When you open the horse, it lowers the croup and carries the rider’s weight.”

“I like to bend the horse’s inside hind leg, never bend the front and don’t use the inside rein. When you pull on the inside rein, you block the inside hind leg.”

And back to the connection between breeding and riding:

“I prefer some bloodlines. With Scandic, you get a very good hind leg but you need a mare with a long front – Scandic has lots of power behind but he needs a front. I like Ferro, and I love De Niro. In dressage, you need a good hind leg.”

At this point, a six-year-old mare was brought in for our inspection. By the German sire, Samba Hit, she was out of a Vincent/Roemer mare, she was to be the subject of an illuminating conformation examination:

“The negative of this mare is her front. The best part of her is behind. When we ride or judge, we make choices and with this mare, we can make her stronger behind and loosen her in front to compensate for the shortness. She has a long sloping shoulder, which is very important – and the saddle is in the middle of the horse, that is important for balance. The loins are very important – the loins, the spines and the muscles of the loins are the only connection from the power behind to the front of the horse.”

At this point, Johan uses his whip as a sort of spirit level to demonstrate that the top of the wither is the same height at the top of the croup and then uses the same whip to measure the distance between the hip joint and the turning point of the shoulder. Why?

“Because this distance equals the ground covering ability of the horse. I like this mare, I am hoping she can go to the selection trials for the World Young Horse Championships.”

The next candidate in our little conformation clinic was a three-year-old German-bred stallion – by San Amour out of a De Niro/Andiamo/Argentinus mare:

“I bought him in a foal auction in Germany. I liked the bloodlines but also the topline connection – the wither to the back to the loins to the croup. His negative point is his neck, it is long enough but it could be more up from the wither and cleaner on the bottom of the neck. The most important thing to look for is a body in good proportion, with an uphill tendency and connected from the front to the back.  One of his problems is that he is so big. He is 173 cm and he grew three or four centimetres last month. That takes a lot out of them, he is really muscled more like a two-year-old than a three-year-old.”

The next stallion into the school was by the German sire, Fürst Romancier, he had just come home from the KWPN stallion show in Den Bosch. Johan likes to see the stallions he uses under saddle, and paid close attention to Fürst Romancier when he was presented by Ulf Möller:

“When I saw him with Ulf, I thought he had very good conformation, but was he active enough behind? But with this horse we have Fürst Romancier combined with a Flemmingh mare, and it is a very good combination. I tried him once under saddle, I wanted to know how he feels, is his mind tense or not? He gives a good feeling, very electric. I felt that he had good collection on a little half halt.”

The stallion impressed the licensing commission, and was not only approved to go on to the performance test, but also included in the lineup for the championship ring.

The lovely young horses kept coming, this time is was a Vivaldi, out of a Havidoff/Roemer mare. “This stallion comes from a very good mare line that has produced a lot of dressage horses, including Nadine. The most important thing with this horse is that he is calm. When there is a noise, he stays calm, he can regulate his temperament. I love his eye…”

“I like his neck position, he has good distance behind his cheek, he can bend there. The legs are good, and in proportion to his body – the only thing is that he could have a little more condition.”

Johan was generally impressed with the youngsters he had seen at the Stallion Show: “This was a very good year for the KWPN dressage stallions. There were more different bloodlines, and that is important for breeding. We have lots of offspring from Jazz, and we have to work to find other lines.”

Johan brought another stallion into the arena, this time the seven-year-old, Zambuke – by Scandic. The young horse was training towards a Prix St Georges start later in the season.

“He is out of the dam line of Biotop (Dr Klimke’s Trakehner stallion). In the past three seasons he has covered 200 mares, and we are happy with the result. He is very good in his mind. He himself is not very big, and like Scandic, he needs mares with a big front. His neck and his topline are a little horizontal.”

I am struck once again as Johan is giving his little lecture how different it is here in Europe where there really is a community of breeders, of people who know what they are talking about. One of our great weaknesses in Australia, is that so few people really know anything about breeding that self-proclaimed experts can spout total nonsense without being laughed out of town…

Jennifer showed us a more advanced horse, this time a gelding by Contango out of a Jazz mare. He was training at Prix St Georges level:

“With him, we start in canter. It is simply, what is most comfortable for the horse. Some like to start in walk, some feel good in canter, then start in canter, some prefer an easy, soft trot, then trot, not collected, just forward.”

“When a horse has a bad trot, lots of riders train trot, trot, trot. No! Take the walk and the canter and make them better in those paces, then work the trot last, and it will be better. It is the same with the walk. When the trot is better, when the canter is better, when you can open and collect them in trot and canter, then you can make the walk better.”

“You can’t train every horse in the same frame, some must be longer, some must be shorter. You can’t say, ten minutes trot, ten minutes canter, ten minutes walk, you can’t do that. You have to look to the horse and take what the horse gives.”

Johan was not one to let his horses stand around in their stalls all day:

“I like to keep them moving. Every day, they go on the walking machine, then riding, then back to the walking machine. The horse is a moving animal, it is important to give them lots of time moving. I like to have them half an hour to three quarters of an hour on the walking machine, then ride them for 45 to 70 minutes. Then another half an hour on the walking machine… from about eight in the morning until about midday, I like to keep them busy.”

Once again Jennifer is in the arena, this time riding a six-year-old mare, by Damon Hill out of a Flemmingh/Amulet mare.

“I like this mare – look at the topline. Look into her eye and head. She is good in the mind but she is looking everywhere. She is sensitive. She has very big muscle in her hind end but she could be stronger in the loins, behind and under the saddle – so we have to train her a little more horizontal and with real contact, with contact it is possible to develop her top line. She has very nice movement in front, but we have to develop the saddle position so we work her in a little longer frame and in a lower tempo so she learns to carry and distribute the weight. Not too much forward, forward is very important, like petrol in the car, but it has to be regulated. See she can work deeper and deeper without pulling on the rein, it is very important to look to the balance, when the balance is good, then we see suspension in the trot. We must feel the contact because it can activate the hind legs and develop collection and reaction, so the frame can shorten and lengthen.”

“Look to the diagonals in trot. I prefer the hind legs to come to the ground, one second before the front leg. If the front leg touches first, then the horse is out of balance.”

One horse that Johan started was Jazz himself:

“I rode Jazz in the performance test for the first three weeks. He was afraid, tense, not relaxed. For the first two weeks I rode him in a very small arena, starting just five metres by ten metres, and each day, we made the arena a little bigger. Then he started to trust the rider. That is very important with a horse, when a horse trusts you, he relaxes, and then you can get something from him. With Jazz at first, he didn’t trust anyone, and we had to make a good relationship. After 14 days he felt better, and I gave him to one of my riders.”

“Jazz was lucky to get through the performance test, every day there was discussion about him – yes / no / yes. But after the first three weeks he showed what a big mover he was, he was a good horse, and now he is the stallion of the century with eighty horses in Grand Prix.”

Recognise them? It’s Adelinde Cornelissen and Parzival training with Johan – the pair first appeared on the international stage back in 2008 and amazed the world. There are some observers, I’m one, who thought the horse and rider were nicer BEFORE they met up with Dutch team coach, Sjef Jenssen.

Johan was also instrumental in the career of another famous Dutch dressage horse, Parzival.

“I met him in 2004, and I trained him here for four and a half years. The first time he came he would only come a few metres into the hall, he was so scared. Sometimes I trained him for Adelinde, she was teaching school and if she took her pupils to Austria on a trip, she would say – ‘you have to train him. You know him and he is special’, and often I had him for a week or so with me. After four and half years, he went to Grand Prix and she was invited into the Dutch team and then she was trained by Sjef.”

When you started with him, did you imagine he was going to become one of the best horses in the world?

“Two or three months after we started, I had that feeling. He was difficult but he had so much power from behind, so much movement. After a few months I talked to her father and Adelinde, and I said, you have to spend some money because you have to keep this horse, or he will fly away.”

Adelinde told me that she had never ridden piaffe until one day when you said ‘shorten a little, shorten a little’ and she did and you said, ‘that’s piaffe…’

“That was really how it happened – out there, in our outdoor arena. She is a very good student, with a very good brain, and feeling for her riding. For four and half years we had a very good contact but then there was a very good reason for her to go to the National Trainer, he is a special trainer, and he can build on the work we were doing to a higher level.”

Do you think you will ever find another Parzival?

“I hope so…”

The Young Guns – Sir Donnerhall

By Christopher Hector

If we are looking at hot young dressage stallions, there is no going past the current star of the Schockemöhle stallion selection, Sir Donnerhall.

No other stallion polarizes the breeding community like his sire, Sandro Hit.

You either love him, or you hate him… indeed there are some who rudely add the letter ‘S’ to his suffix, but there is no denying his influence. He has indeed sired more dressage sires than any other stallion of modern times. In 2007, he was the most prolific dressage sire of licensed sons, with 67 – which put him into 4^th  place on the Sires of Sires rankings. In 2008, he had moved into 2^nd with 88, but still the largest group of dressage specialists, and he held that position in 2009 (with 88), 2010 (90) but dropped to 3^rd (still the highest dressage stallion) in 2011 adding three more licensed sons for a total of 93.

His fans point to the charisma and presence of his offspring, their fashionable dark colouring and an impressive canter, all exhibited by his many Young Horse class winners – his detractors point to an out–behind trot, a wicked walk and a dubious temperament and the failure of any of his offspring to really establish themselves as top Grand Prix competitors, despite the enormous number of foals and the fact that most of the world’s top trainers has at one time or another tried a Sandro Hit.

Sandro Hit

In the 2011 Breeding News Stallion Directory standings, Sandro Hit provided the second highest tally of young dressage stallions, but this year he was replaced by his son, Sir Donnerhall – another stallion who like his sire, never progressed past the young horse classes. Sir Donnerhall’s competition career comprised four wins, one second, and one fourth at preliminary level for total earnings of €1,960. His 369 competition progeny, according to that splendid publication, the Hanoverian Stallion Year Book 2012, have won €72,621 between them, with just one making it to Advanced level, with the overwhelming majority of their placings at Novice level.

On the 2011 German FN dressage stallion breeding values, Sir Donnerhall is the equal 5th (with Dancing Dynamite and Damon Hill) on the on a score of 164, behind Real Diamond (166), Breitling (167), Don Diamond (168) and Don Schufro (171). With an accuracy estimation of 97%, Sir Donnerhall is equal second in the group with the highest accuracy estimation (90 – 99) behind Don Schufro.

Sir Donnerhall is interestingly bred on his dam line. His dam sire, Donnerhall, needs absolutely no introduction, and he has been without doubt the most successful ‘stallion maker’ of the founding big three of dressage: Donnerhall, Weltmeyer and Rubinstein, although Florestan is currently quietly upstaging the trio.

Farnese

Sir Donnerhall’s dam, Contenance D is out of the Holsteiner mare, Contenance II, whose sire, Feldherr combines two of the famous old style Holsteiners, Farnese and Moltke I, her dam, Contenance is by the Thoroughbred, Grundyman and her dam, Vorr is by another Holsteiner, Ratibor (conventional enough: Raimond, Consul, Ladykiller, Fahnrich) it is the next line that starts to get exotic, with lots of å’s and ø’s, indicating that we have moved even further north to Denmark, and one of the original Danish breeds, the Fredriksborg, a breed of chestnut carriage horses.

Frederiksborg

Contenance D received her States Premium award at Oldenburg’s most prestigious mare show, Rastede, before she arrived at PSI by a somewhat circular route. According to Ulf Möller, the manager of the PSI dressage barn and the rider who partnered Sir Donnerhall throughout his career, it was a deal within a deal.  A partnership between a businessman and Paul Schockemöhle’s Jumping Barn manager, was coming to the end: “They did some horse dealing together and then they couldn’t agree about how to finish the deal and then in the end they agreed that Mr Schockemöhle would get an unborn foal out of one of his mares. So they finished the deal and this was Sir Donnerhall.”

“So he grew up in Lewitz (Schockemöhle’s horse raising farm in the Eastern part of Germany) like normal, everyone expected that he would be the winner of the licensing. At that time an Englishman, Mr Pidgley wanted to buy a stallion from Mr Schockemöhle, but because they expected Sir Donnerhall would be the winner of the licensing, they didn’t sell Sir Donnerhall so they sold Don Kennedy to the Pidgley family. Then what happened is that Don Kennedy won the licensing and Sir Donnerhall was third.”

“I started riding him as a four-year-old, he won the Oldenburg Championships and qualified for the Bundeschampionate, the German Young Horse Championships in Warendorf, but for him to be accepted by the Hanoverians, without doing 70-day test, he had to be placed 1, 2 or 3. Mr Schockemöhle asked me, can you guarantee that he will be 1, 2 or 3? And I said, hey, I cannot guarantee with a stallion, as a four-year-old, in this ring, I cannot give you the guarantee. So we didn’t go to the Young Horse Championship and he did his 70-day test and he was at this time the highest score ever, so he was accepted by the Hanoverian breeding society.”

“Then I got him back for the five-year-old Young Horse World Championships. He won his qualifier and then he went to Verden and unfortunately we all know what happened in Verden… so I was second.”

(What happened was that after winning the first round, Sir Donnerhall was very disobedient in the canter work in the second round, but still managed to finish in second place thanks in large part to a 9.5 for general impression, a mark that provoked a noisy and antagonistic reaction from the spectators – like his father, this is a horse that attracts strong polarizing opinions.)

Ulf is not one to give up:

“To repair this I really trained for the German Championships and he won the five year old dressage title, so in the end it was a good success.”

From then on, the stallion has only been ridden in stallion shows, although Ulf says he is handling the Prix St Georges work: “Now he’s doing a good Prix St Georges, but we only get him to ride three/four weeks of the year to prepare him for the stallion shows…”

Competing at the Bundeschampionate, Sergio Rossi by Sir Donnerhall out of a Rosenkavalier mare.

What do you see as Sir Donnerhall’s qualities?

“As you know, I rode a lot of Sandro Hit offspring and there are some really good ones. You see now some of his offspring winning the Grand Prix but there was always a little bit the concern that some offspring from Sandro Hit do not have enough energy. I think Sir Donnerhall is really the one with the perfect mix of being nice, of being rideable, of having a good brain, but also of being fresh enough, forward enough and smart enough and trainable enough. I think that’s the things that get more and more important, not only the gaits, but also the willingness, the trainability, the right brain. I think he’s the perfect example of this.”

Are there any particular mares that you think he’s been working better with?

“What is well known is that Weltmeyer mares fit very good.”

Because they’re good behind?

“Yes, they have good hind legs. Weltmeyer himself has a, let’s say a ‘forward-pushing hind leg’ and not such a ‘carrying’ hind leg but Weltmeyer on the mother line is a very positive thing. I think also Londonderry is a very good mix; we just had a very beautiful mare from Sir Donnerhall/Londonderry.”

“I think it is a good thing if the stallion survives the first years, if they get old enough then you really find out the right fit. I think this is the advantage with older stallions like Sir Donnerhall, like Sandro Hit, like Don Frederico. All these stallions, which are still en vogue in an older age, you, the breeder, can know what is the perfect mix.”

Sir Hawk by Sir Donnerhall, out of a Hill Hawk xx mare at the Bundeschampionate.

“I cannot say in particular which mares fit. Most breeders look at the stallion and think they will get a copy of the stallion – they have to look at the mares, and they have to look at the weak point of their mares and where the weak point is in the stallion, because every stallion has a weak point – so that maybe you don’t mix two weak points together. If you have a horse with little bit of a slow hind leg you need a stallion with a very active hind leg. So this is what people need to think about.”

Sir Donnerhall is a little bit slow behind?

“Okay he is a little bit, he’s built a little bit like this. His croup is a little bit flat, we all know this, but because he’s so rideable you can activate the hind leg, he takes it, and that’s the good thing, and it gets even better with the age, with the right muscles… Okay, from his construction it’s a little bit flat, but let’s say one of 100 foals have it, most of them have a very nice hind leg, and a very nice construction from the croup. This is what I mean, if you have a mare with a flat croup, you would not use this stallion because then you mix two negative things together, then you cannot hope that it gets better. That’s how it should work.”

But he’s not going to compete in Prix St Georges? He’s just going to do the stallion shows?

“Yes, but I think you could bring him tomorrow to Prix St Georges and he could win it. The nice thing with Sir Donnerhall, is that he has this special presence. He’s never standing there with the neck down, always with the neck up and proud. You cannot pass him without noticing him, he has unbelievable presence, and this is also what he has under saddle, he’s always ‘there’ and that’s what makes him a really good horse in my opinion.”

And I guess all those breeders with Sir Donnerhall foals on the ground, or on the way, hope that Ulf has got it right, not to mention studbook administrators all around the world who will have a major problem if the Sandro Hit boom proves a genetic disaster…

Diamond Hit – looks like a real Grand Prix stallion

Story – Christopher Hector

Photos – Roz Neave and archives

The German FN breeding values have been in operation in their current form for just on a decade – although they are now divided into three groups based on the estimate of reliability in the most recent, 2011, edition. Perhaps now we can look back at the sires’ rankings and see just how useful they have been in pointing us in the direction of stallions likely to produce superior progeny. Having said that, there is a rather large problem to be overcome first and that is what are our criteria for ‘superior’? Are we looking for horses likely to produce competitors at an international level, or is our real aim to produce the superstars of the young horse classes? We should not scorn the latter aim, since for the breeder it may be a more lucrative market and one that produces results more quickly than the tortuous process of producing an international star.

Don Schufro

A good example is Don Schufro, the stallion that has dominated the dressage standings in the period. From 2002 to 2008, Don Schufro topped the breeding values, dropping to 2^nd in 2009 and 2010, before re-emerging with the highest breeding value in 2011, and top place in the group with the highest percentage of reliability (In 2011, the standings appeared in three groups: horses with a reliability estimation of between 70 and 79%; horses with a reliability of 80-89%, and stallions with a reliability of 90-99%)

Don Schufro was a very good Grand Prix competitor himself, although he never really seemed to reach his potential and become a truly great competitor. His best year was 2008 when he won the Danish Championships and was a member of the bronze-medal-winning Danish team at the Beijing Games, where he finished 11^th individually. The horse is the classic Donnerhall / Pik Bube cross, with that pedigree and competition record he should be a standout star as a breeding stallion and justify his lofty record on the FN standings… well, not quite.

Despite his popularity with the breeders, not only in Denmark but also in Germany, the result is not what you would call overwhelming. According to the Hanoverian Stallion Book for 2012, Don Schufro has produced 129 competitors (15 at S level) with winnings of €103,611 – the only individual with winnings of more that €10,000 being Donna Asana, who competed Grand Prix with Lone Jörgensen and Evelyn Haim-Swarovski. Former World Young Horse Champion, Donna Unique is now in Patrik Kittel’s barn with Rio de Janeiro hopes but first has to appear in a Grand Prix test…

Diamond Hit

Of Don Schufro’s stallion sons, Diamond Hit went reserve champion young dressage horse and is now competing Grand Prix with Emma Hindle. He was recently 3rd in the Grand Prix Special at Wiesbaden CDI*** and was truly impressive, much more masculine than his sire, and with more scope. He is the sire of Don Diamond, ranked 1^st on the FN Dressage Sires list for stallions with an accuracy estimate of between 70 and 79%. Don Schufro’s other much hyped son, Don Romantic had his dressage career cut short by a mystery unsoundness, and while he was proclaimed 2010 Stallion of the Year in Denmark, to date he has produced some nice young horse competitors but nothing of note in the ‘big sport’.

Stakkato

By way of contrast, the Jumping standings have also been dominated by one stallion, the Hanoverian Stakkato (like Don Schufro, born in 1993), who topped the list in 2002 and held that place up to 2011, where he has the highest individual value and also tops the group of stallions with a 90-99% reliability with a breeding value of 169 and a reliability of 98% – only one stallion, Contender has a higher estimated reliability, 99%.

Souvenir by Stakkato – does this remind you of the famous pic of Stakkato at the Bundeschampionate?

According to the Hanoverian Stallion Book 2012, Stakkato has produced 436 competitors (62 at S level) with winnings of €1,210,891, the most successful of which has been Souvenir with €237,235. Another son with winnings of over €100,000, Satisfaction, recently won the World Cup class at Göteborg with Marco Kutscher and is a serious candidate for a place in the German team.

If we look at the top 20 jumping stallions on the 2002 German FN list, it would pretty well do as a breeder’s wish list today: Stakkato, Carthago, Perpignon, Contender, Acorado I, Chambertin, Cassini I, Caretino, C-Indoctro, Coriano, For Pleasure, Escudo I, Capitol I, Concerto II, Levantos II, Lux, Corrado I, Darco, Cambridge, Cornetto.

Really only Perpignon (Pilot / Watzmann) seems out of place, but he did have the second lowest estimate of reliability – 80% – of the 20. Ten years later, Perpignon has produced 76 competitors with winnings of €72,512 (although it should be pointed out, that’s not bad considering he had only 193 registered progeny), and does not make it into the current ‘topliste’ of 45 on the Hanoverian Jumping standings.

It is sometimes argued that the purpose of the breeding values is to draw the breeder’s attention to stallions that might otherwise be neglected, though it seems to me more often that the ‘surprise’ stallions that burst onto the list, disappear after their 15 minutes of fame.

Waterford?

I can remember back when the 2004 FN breeding values were announced being surprised that Waterford (Wolkenstein II / Matcho aa) appeared in 3^rd place. The stallion hadn’t done anything (except win his licensing and performance test), hadn’t produced anything except three licensed sons, sons who were never named so presumably did not go on to do a performance test, but they did help boost Waterford’s breeding value, above such important sires as Londonderry, Wolkentanz, Welt Hit I, Rubin-Royal, Donnerhall and Fidermark. The following year, Waterford had slipped to 7^th on the standings, next year down to 9^th and that year he was exported to the USA. In the 2012 Hanoverian Stallion Book, Waterford is listed with 153 competitors, with winnings of €45,574 – none at S level, but he now has two named sons, Wilkens and Workington. His FN dressage breeding value had decreased from 163 in 2005 to 140 in 2012, while his Hanoverian dressage index had also dropped from 148 to 131 in the same time. His licensed full-brother, now gelded, is struggling on the international scene as a member of the Finnish dressage team and finished second last in the Grand Prix at the Europeans in Rotterdam.

Waterford – how soon the bubble burst!

It is interesting to see just which stallions from the 2002 list have stayed the journey. Looking at the 2011 rankings and the 90-99% senior list: Don Schufro is of course still there, as is Wolkentanz (down =2nd to 19^th), Fidermark (=2^nd to =29^th), Welt Hit I0 (5^th to =17^th), Don Primero  (6^th to =11^th), Donnerhall (=6^th to =20^th), Weltmeyer (=10^th to =27^th), Wie Weltmeyer (14^th to =32^nd), Hohenstein (=16^th to =38^th), Florestan (=21^st to =29^th).

There are a few anomalies – like De Niro, 10^th on the 2002 list, nowhere in 2011, although three of his sons feature: Dancier (3^rd), Danone I (=28) and Desperados ( =29^th). Three of his sons make the 80-89% list: Donautanz (=11^th), Danzas (=31^st) and Denkeas (=38^th). Another son, Danone II is =11^th on the 70 to 79% list, and there are a number of De Niro grand-sons who make the lists. Odd…

Predictions…

Of the top ten, I’ll make the prediction (let’s check it ten years hence), that the Sandro Hit son, Sancisco will disappear without trace, and I have serious doubts about the long term viability of a couple of the other stallions in the ten: Dancing Dynamite (4^th), Dancier (5^th), Lord Loxley (7^th) and Dr Jackson D (8^th) and I guess the debate over Sir Donnerhall (2^nd) will continue to rage, as it did about his sire Sandro Hit, who has never made into the top ranks of the breeding values – despite the fact that numerous sons, and grand-sons appear. On the three 2011 lists we find four Sandro Hit sons on the 70-79% standings, five in the group with a reliability of 80 to 89%, and four more in the 90-99% standings. Odd again…

Looking at the senior (90-99%) Jumping Standings, it is remarkable how unaffected by the fluctuations of fashion the jumping scene is. Not only is Stakkato still number 1 (joined by his son, Stolzenburg in =5^th), Carthago has moved just one place from 2^nd to 3^rd, while Contender has dropped from =3^rd to =13^th but his son, Contendro I has taken 4^th slot and another son, Concerto II is =5th. Chambertin has dropped from =3^rd to =34^th but his son, one of the current rising stars, Chacco-Blue is up there at number 12. Cassini I was ranked =3^rd in 2002, in 2011, he is =8^th. Caretino moves from =3^rd to 11^th.

New faces at the top include the second ranked Cornet Obolensky (his sire the Dutch based Clinton – by Corrado I – is not to be confused with the German-based Clinton – Carolus / Calypso II – who shot up to 2^nd on the 2006 list, but by 2011, was down in =17^th on the stallions with a reliability of 80-89%, although he is in good company, the other stallions ranked 17^th on that list include Darco, and the ‘other’ Clinton).

Catoki, by Cambridge, is another newcomer, he first appeared in 2007 when he rocketed into second place after not appearing in the top 20 of 2006. At the time I commented “how on earth is it that the eight-year-old Catoki whose claim to performance fame consists of some good Bundeschampionate performances and a win at the Rastede Grand Prix, and whose output to date consists of some promising foals and two licensed stallions, rate above Carthago, Clinton, Indoctro and Cassini??”

His Highness – was he too highly rated?

I had also questioned the ranking of another young sire, with no progeny to speak of, His Highness, in 4^th place on the dressage rankings. My good friend Ludwig Christmann of the Hanoverian Verband gently took me to task for my breeding values ‘polemic’. He pointed out that “while His Highness has a few more points in the evaluation than Donnerhall, you cannot say that automatically one is a better sire than the other one. Both stallions have breeding values in the FN rating of more than 150 points. This means, that they are more than two and a half standard deviations above average, which groups them probably in the top 2/3% of our stallions. And there is an evaluation of the characteristics that make up this evaluation – in both our Hanoverian breeding evaluation, and in the FN’s Jahrbuch Zucht, you can find detailed evaluations of head, neck, frame and so, as well as individual scores for walk, trot and canter. So the breeder can find objective information which would help him to find the stallion that best matches his mare. Especially in times when many breeders rely on glossy coloured photos and videos composed by the stallion owner, the breeding evaluations are an important tool for the mare owner. That does not mean that the system is perfect, but we are able to improve this system by publishing the breeding values. This is the best way to find the weak spots.”

“You also mentioned Catoki and this is another good example. He is well bred, he has been very successful with his own performances and his first offspring were outstanding… So he deserves a high breeding value. Because the evaluation is based on a limited number of offspring, the breeder can see that the reliability of this value is not high, which indicates that this may change in the future, but it is a hint to the breeder: Here is a young stallion which deserves further attention.”

Five years later I remain unconvinced.

His Highness (who died in 2007 but whose frozen semen kept him in the stallion market for some years after that, and who in his first couple of seasons bred more mares than most stallions cover in a lifetime) has slipped to 25^th on the Hanoverian rankings, having produced 242 competition horses out of the 665 registered in the Hanoverian book, for winnings of €69,524, including two S level dressage horses, and four licensed stallions, none of whom have set the world on fire. His FN dressage breeding value has gone from 166 in 2007 to 147 in 2012, while his Hanoverian dressage score has similarly taken a battering: 151 to 134.

And Catoki? Catoki has been a good competitor with Philip Weishaupt, winning Grand Prix in Vigo and Bordeaux in 2011, and he is still up there on the FN rankings in equal 5^th. However, while he has produced finalists at the Bundeschampionate, 19 (!) licensed stallion sons and some very expensive auction foals, his jumpers have had at the best moderate success in the ‘big sport’.

The other ‘odd man out’ in the 2011 90-99% top ten is Cellestial, a son of Cantus. Cellestial himself had a successful competition career, mainly in partnership with Rolf-Göran Bengtsson, placing second in the CSW-W in Amsterdam in 2005. He retired after the 2006 season and since then, has produced some very normal performers, the best of who seems to be Heiko Schmidt’s Cassiopeia, third in a 1.50m class at Redefin CSI**. Now it may be that ‘the numbers’ have unearthed an otherwise neglected star, but I’ll let the expert who produced this result send his good jumping mare to Cellestial – I’ll take any of the following: Caretino, Chacco-Blue, Cento, Capitol, Calido and For Pleasure – the horses listed immediately below Cellestial on the rankings.

Celesta by Cellestial.

I feel looking at the standings over ten years, that they bear out the observation of that great Dutch breeder, Jan Greve: “the numbers tell us what we already know”, except in the case when they tell us something surprising, and then they are usually wrong. It is perhaps lucky that the mare owners in Germany, like their neighbours in Holland, have cheerfully ignored ‘the numbers’, consistently sending their mares to stallions with low breeding values, or in the case of the fashionable young stallions, no breeding values at all, while the highly ranked stallions receive very few visitors.

The breeding values will continue to provide employment to hard working statisticians, and fodder for journalists to write about, but are they really the aid to the breeder they were meant to be?