For Hanne Lund, the 2015 Young Horse Champs were a spectacular triumph – she bred both the gold and the silver medalists in the Five-Year-old class and now one of the young mares, Fiontini, has commenced her Grand Prix career with Severo Jurado Lopez – they’ll be lining up in the first round of the World Cup at Herning…
Fiontina, and Andreas Helgstrand, second to her sister
Fiontini and Severo Jurado Lopez
Both mares were both by a stallion she and Henrik Hansen owned, and out of a mare whose dam was by another of their stallions, Solos Carex. Interestingly, Solos Carex was the sire of Patrik Kittel’s Grand Prix performer, Scandic. The Lunds breed ten to twelve foals a year and there are about sixty horses on their farm.
And the stallion Fassbinder?
“We bought him in the Danish Foal Auction, his breeding is Fürst Heinrich/Caprimond. We educated him until he was five-and-a-half, and he was sold to England as a gelding.”
(Of course Caprimond is the sire of another Danish star, Cathrine Dufour’s Cassidy…)
Caprimond at a presentation at the WEG in 2006
He wasn’t getting enough mares?
“No, he was not that famous, and he was in competition with stallions from Hanover and Oldenburg. We have some rich people in Denmark, and they buy the semen of the famous stallions. He was very unlucky when he went to the Grading as a four-year-old. On the first day he fell down in the box, so we couldn’t ride him, he was only shown by hand. Of course, he developed later on, but that influenced how many mares he got.”
Did he compete himself?
“He won the four-year-old championship, and qualified for the five-year-old championship, but then he was sold.”
Solos Carex, a stallion competing at the 2006 WEG.
Can you tell me a little about the mare line that the two sisters are from?
“The mother, Rapitala, was graded. In Denmark, they are ridden in the mare test at three years and she had the highest points of any mare in Denmark. We bred that mare, she is Romanov and Solos Carex, and a long time ago, we also owned Solos Carex, we didn’t breed him ourselves, we bought him as a three-year-old.”
Watermill Scandic, bred by Jan Greve, by Solos Carex competing at the WYH Championships in 2004
Scandic went on to compete at Grand Prix level with Patrik Kittel, for Sweden
Are you breeding for the Young Horse classes?
“Yes, we do. Our setup has always been for the young horses, and then if they are really good, we make an agreement with a very good rider, and like here, we can follow the horses.”
It seems we are getting specialist young horse breeders – if you look at the entries here, they are by stallions who were stars as young horses…
“You can say there are two streams, but we believe in the development from the young horses. When you look at the very young stallions, they are much better than the ones from ten years ago, that’s our philosophy. I know there has been a trend that the winners of the young horse championships don’t enter in the Grand Prix, but there are a lot of things that go into making a Grand Prix horse. First you must have a very good rider, and then you must be lucky, no injuries or anything like that. When you have a very nice young horse, then the rider is the next most important thing, and there are people with a lot of money who are maybe not the best riders. That is a huge market if you have horses with a lot of quality, then there are not enough horses for the buyers.”
Fiontini winning the Seven-Year-Old Championship
“With the opportunity with embryo transplant, we really wanted to give the new young stallions a chance, but we also wanted to use one of the older ones, we’ve done some with Romanov – because he is actually the base of our breeding, so we wanted to make some more. We will also get two or three foals next year from Damon Hill.”
Is breeding horses a hobby or a business?
“It’s both. We have our farm and of course, we have to earn the money with the horses, but you know it is a long way. I also work in a medical company.”
Fiontini’s win in 2015 was a start of a winning run for Hanne and Henrik. She went on to take the Gold Medal again in 2017 as Six-Year-Old, and then again Gold in 2018 as an Eight-Year-Old. Fiontini is now competing Grand Prix with Team Helgstrand rider, Severo Jurado Lopez, for Spain. She will have her first World Cup start in Herning in Denmark soon.
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Fürst Nymphenberg