Story – Christopher Hector

At times Sporthorse breeding seems a bit like alphabet soup, as the cognoscenti air their knowledge, tossing around the various stallion lines identified by their letter. For some years, the emerging dressage horse breeding industry was dominated by the big three – D(onnerhall), R(ubinstein) and W(eltmeyer). Nowadays, the D line continues to dominate while R and W have faded, but D has been joined by the very successful F line (through Florestan) and now a line that had almost disappeared entirely, E, has taken its place in the limelight.

The new breeding star, Escolar

This was dramatically underlined at the September selection trials of candidates for the German squad to contest the World Young Dressage Horse Championships in Verden in December.

Of the two five-year-olds horses selected in the initial selection, one of them, the Rhinelander stallion, Escamillo, is by the brightest star of the new E line, Escolar, out of a mare by Rohdiamant.

Escamillo – Dirk Caremans image

Last year’s reserve champion, the Hanoverian, Escamillo is by Escolar, out of a mare by Rohdiamant, and he is lucky he has a real Rohdiamant face and eye.

He is also a real stallion, but is also a little ‘cheeky’ which is why he is being ridden not by Helen Langehanenberg, but by her rider, an incredibly talented Spaniard Manuel Dominquez Bernal. You can see why Escamillo is the stallion of the moment, his first crop of three-year-olds has been super impressive, and mega expensive, right now he has been taken out of breeding to concentrate on sport. The pelting rain stops for a while to let the stallion shine in the sun, he is really through, so supple and rhythmic, wonderful trot and canter and a great walk, the contact is soft and correct, he could (should?) go to the lead, but no, the judges as not as enthusiastic as I, 9.5 / 9 / 9/ 9.5 for an 82.965.

Escamillo is one of the most exciting young stallions in Germany today. This is what we had to say about him when he competed last month at the World Breeding Championships in Ermelo.

Last year’s reserve champion, the Hanoverian, Escamillo is by Escolar, out of a mare by Rohdiamant, and he is lucky he has a real Rohdiamant face and eye.

In the six-year-old group, half the six successful candidates were by Escolar: Elitist (De Niro), Espe (Dimaggio) and Eternity (Sir Donnerhall).

My friend and colleague, Thomas Hartwig tells the story of the rescue of the E line by a master breeder, Norbert Borgmann:

“In the last two or three years, we have seen a very interesting comeback of the famous E line. The founder of the E line in Westfalia was Ehrenschild (Eindruck II / Adlerschild), a stallion from the Hanoverian State Stud in Celle. He came to the town of Melle in 1960, which is right on the border of Westfalia and Hanover, and so the Westfalian breeders used him. He was a big, heavy horse, but typical of his time, remember he was born in 1956, and came to Melle in 1960 – for this time, his type was typical.”

Ehrentusch

“He sired the Westfalian stallion, Ehrensold (Fronvogt), whose son was the very famous Ehrentusch (Rheingold). We saw a lot of very good progeny of Ehrentusch, and a lot of them have the same characteristics, they all want to work, they had all very good hind legs. They were not beauty queens – or kings – but perfectly usable, and not only dressage horses but also showjumpers.

El Paso as a Five Year Old competing at the Bundeschampionat – pic Werner Ernst

You might remember El Paso from Paul Schockemöhle and later Eddie Macken. In the 80s and early 90s, Ehrentusch was very favoured, but then a lot of people said, oh Ehrentusch’s progeny, they are not beautiful enough, and his popularity slipped down.”

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Stephan Borgmann and the mare who saved the E line – Florence

“Then one of the most famous breeders, Norbert Borgmann, the father of Stephan who runs the family stud today, used Ehrentusch with his very perfect mare, Florence (Ferragamo / Florestan). They produced Estobar, later Estobar NRW. He sold at the auction is 2006 for the unbelievable price of over half a million euros.”

Estobar NRW

“From Estobar we saw his really best son, Escolar, two times winner at the Bundeschampionate, as a three and four-year-old stallion, where he received several tens for canter and trot.”

Escolar as a Four Year Old…

And competing at Grand Prix Level…

“This story is a good example of two things. The first is, how great the danger is that a very valuable line can be forgotten – because if Norbert Borgmann hadn’t done his own thing with Florence, we would have had no Estobar, no Escolar, and no one would today speak about the E line. The second is that a lot of the strengths that were first seen with Ehrenschild, we can see three, four, five generations later. The very good hind legs, they all want to work, mostly not such beautiful horses but really horses you can use for working and working at a higher level, because they want to work.”

But the E line story goes way further back, and indeed, started out as the A line, as explained by another friend and colleague, Ludwig Christmann, in his celebrated paper, Bloodlines of the Hanoverian Horse:

Thoroughbred foundation sire, Adeptus

“The A-line was founded by Adeptus XX used for breeding from 1884-1904. Most important was his grandson Alderman and through the Alderman son Alkoven this line produced the famous stallion Agram (1942-62) an outstanding producer of jumping horses. In Agram’s color and type, one sees the influence of Arabian blood through his Amateur I mother.”

Einblick

“The A-line through Alderman lost significance after 1950, unfortunately. Today the A-line has changed to an E-line, with two main groups. One group goes back to the stallion Eindruck II, whose best known son is Einblick in his time a performance test winner and very good in dressage and jumping. Einblick was used at stud from 1973. This group is considered mainly to be dressage horses, although Einblick himself was also very good in jumping.”

Eisenherz

“The second E-line goes back to the stallion Eisenherz used in breeding from 1972. This group has a bigger influence on the breed than the Eindruck group.

Eiger 1, good in type

The best son of Eisenherz is Eiger I who was a very good type and very prepotent. His offspring have both dressage and jumping abilities, and his best son so far, I believe, is the young stallion Espri, used only since 1985. Espri’s first group of horses was very convincing.”

When I consult that splendid publication, The European Stallion Families by Oliver Desmeulles, we see that Alderman’s influence has extended throughout Europe, and has been particularly strong in Sweden. The line from Adlerman through Alter Kerl to Astlflug, produces one of the foundation sires of the Swedish horse, Utrillo, sire of Chagall, who in turn sired World Cup champion, Gauguin de Lully, along with influential stallions like Chagall’s great grandsons, Amiral and Bernstein. Another son of Utrillo, Maraton, is the grandsire of Briar.

Briar – the E line goes to Sweden…

Another line from Alter Kerl / Althof leads to Eisenherz, who Ludwig has already discussed, responsible for Espri, Escudo and the Embassys.

The line we are focussed on is the one through Althof / Alter Dessaauer to Astflug sire of Eindruck and the wonderful thread that leads to the current star, and saviour of the E line, Escolar, and it might be pointed out, that of the D, R, W and F lines, only Donnerhall, and to a lesser extent Rubinstein, competed successfully at Grand Prix, while the eleven-year-old Escolar has already won the 4 star Grand Prix and Special at Oldenburg on a pair of 75s, and was third and fourth in the Grand Prix and Special at Frankfurt last December with 74s… Will he too produce sons that prove to be sires?

Certainly his rider, Hubertus Schmidt thinks Escolar has got what it takes:

“He is the horse with the most quality gaits. Imperio was nice, but when you see Escolar in the walk and the trot and the canter, he is the completest horse, amazing. My medal winner, Wansuela Suerte was completely different, today she would still score 74, but with 74 in a CDIO today, you are no-where. It has changed a lot, the quality of the horses is so amazing.

The horses are so much more elastic and easier to train. Everything comes easier to them, the collection and the big forward trot – breeding has done a lot in just fifteen years.”

If you are serious about breeding dressage horses, check out the amazing lineup of stallions available by frozen semen available from International Horse Breeders

Including representatives of the ‘E’ line

Elastic