About You sold for €1,650,000
Story – Christopher Hector, with a lot of help from Thomas Hartwig
There are people who breed horses, and then there are real breeders – the ones who don’t follow fashion, who make their own way, and breed in generations, not years… people like Stephan Borgmann and his father Norbert. It’s nice when the real breeders reap the rewards and that happened on August 15, when the highlight of the Borgmann Auction, the four year old stallion, About You sold for €1,650,000 to the Dutch dressage stable RS2 Dressage.
Top price – top mover – About You – want to see him really move?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=eAgAU9RPaIs&feature=emb_logo
About You is all Borgmann bred. He is by the stallion they bred AC-DC (Apache / Florestan). AC-DC is out of Floriana II (Florestan / Weinberg) who is also the dam of Grand Prix competitor, Ein Traum (by another stallion the Borgmann’s bred, Estobar NRW), and she is the full sister to two Grand Prix competitors, Floriano Deux with Nicole Glaeser-Kaepeller and Stefan Peters’ Olympic bronze medallist, Floriano.
Ein Traum (born 2009) by Estobar NRW and Florina II a daughter of Florestan I was successful with Borja Carrascosa in international Grand Prix and a member of the Spanish dressage team.
Stefan Peters and Floriano
Interesting that About You was sold to The Netherlands, since he is by the Dutch stallion, Apache (by the Jazz grandson, UB40 out of a Krack C mare). A somewhat temperamental individual, Apache nonetheless competed in the Dutch team at the 2018 WEG with Emmelie Scholtens, and placed 8th at the 2019 World Cup final. He was put down last year after suffering severe laminitis, his later career being somewhat clouded when he proved WFFS positive.
Apache and Emmelie Scholtens (Kenneth Braddick – dressagenews)
The dam of About You is Evita, who was bred by the Borgmanns in 2008, and she is by Estobar, out of Priscilla, who is – and here again, I am once more in debt to my friend and colleague, Thomas Harwig – ‘a daughter of the Pilot son, Popcorn. A stallion of the State stud at Warendorf, Popcorn was born in 1988. He is a very interesting stallion. Outside of Westphalia nobody will know him and he has very few children (a little bit more than 200). But Popcorn made very useful horses for show jumping and dressage up to class S. Especially he gave his very good character to his children. Today no breeder would use him, but a lot of experienced riders would take horses from Popcorn.”
Estobar
Perhaps more importantly for our story, the old Westfalien E line, that lead to Estobar would have disappeared but for Norbert Borgmann.
The E line was founded in Westfalia by Ehrenschild (Eindruck II / Adlerschild), a stallion from the Hanoverian Stud at Celle who was stationed in 1960 on the border between Hanover and Westfalia, and was used by the Westfalien breeders. His sired Ehrensold (Fronvogt) who in turn sired Ehrentusch (Rheingold). Let Thomas tell the story:
Ehrentusch
“We saw a lot of very good children of Ehrentusch, and a lot of them have the same characteristics, they all want to work, they all had very good hind legs. They were not beauty queens, or kings, but perfectly usable, and not only dressage horses but also showjumpers. 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 children, are not beautiful enough’, and his popularity slipped down.”
“Then one of the most famous breeders, Norbert Borgmann, the father of Stephan who runs the stud today, used Ehrentusch with his very perfect mare, Florance (Ferragamo x Florestan), and produced Estobar, later Estobar NRW. He sold at the auction in 2006 for the unbelievable price of over half a million euros.”
“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.”
It is no surprise to find Stefan Borgmann using a Dutch stallion – when I pointed out to him in 2015 that he was using a lot of outside blood his reply was direct:
“For me it is not interesting whether the horses are Westfalien, or Holsteiner or Hanoverian, we look for stallions all over the world. I am not a breeder thinking within the breeding association, classic Westfalien, or classic Hanoverian, I breed my own horses, my own ‘race’. I have my own ideas on what is important in a horse and so I try to take from all breeds what is good to make my own horses. For us it is interesting to sell horses, and we want to sell horses in ten years, and in twenty years, and for this we must breed horses for the market, for happy riders and happy owners, so they come back to buy more horses from me.”
And Stefan was quite clear that one line he did not need was the then very fashionable line of Sandro Hit: “We have 100 horses and not one with the blood of Sandro Hit… no Sandro Hit, no Sir Donnerhall, no San Amour, no Show Star… and in the future I can advertise – no Sandro Hit here!”
A group of Borgmann youngsters
The family’s 25-strong broodmare band is the secret ingredient of their success. Some of the maternal lines have been with the family for ten generations. Stephan Borgmann explains, “After such a long time you know exactly what you’ve got and what characteristics and qualities are passed on. I am not thinking like a lot of breeders today, only to the modern stallion star of this year, and next year we have the next star stallion… I know my mares for ten generations and I know what stallions I need for those mares.”
Stefan with one of those all important mares, the 26 year old Florence
Fascinating article and wonderful reporting yet again. So interesting and validating to hear his opinion on Sandro/SirD.