2005 169 cm Brown

Breeder: Klaus Tingholm-Kristensen, Ulstrup

At the 2007 Holstein stallion licensing, the champion, Diarado was described by the Holstein breeding director, Thomas Nissen as a ‘winning stallion with vast charisma… This stallion emanates a kind of magic power!’ (quote from ‘A revelation on four legs’ by Jörg Savelsberg, Z Magazine, December 2007-January 2008). And in an ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ sign of the times, Holstein director, Norbert Boley put together a consortium with Paul Schockemöhle and Dutchman Joop Van Uytert, to jointly stand the young stallion.

Breeding director Dr Nissen summed up the colt’s qualities: “The champion stallion has incredible charisma, epitomizing the modern sport horse type to perfection. With his unique brown coat which is rare for a Holsteiner, this excellently structured aristocrat always made an impressive appearance. His magnificent type goes along with a good topline, a powerful back and four perfectly correct legs. His basic paces increased from a fairly good walk to good trot, crowned by a perfect canter. But his presentation reached fever pitch in the free jumping phase where he demonstrated perfect foresight from the very first approach, and jumped with a flexible body, excellent leg technique and unbelievable scope, which earned him a 10.0.”

He carries world champion blood on the top of his pedigree, with his sire, Diamant de Sémilly a member of the gold winning French team under Eric Levallois at the Jerez world championships in 2002.

His dam is by Holsteiner jumper sire Corrado I and is a full sister to the licensed stallion Crawford. Through the famous stallions Lord and Ramiro, the dam line goes back to the highly successful line 318D2 bred by the Bernhard family. This mare family has produced the breeding stallions Corofino I + II, Coriano, Chello I + II as well as the champion stallion Camiros.

Diarado passed his stallion performance in Schlieckau with flying colours. With his total index at 150.57 (1st place), his jumping index 144.01 (1st) and his dressage index at 138.42 (2nd) he proved the test group’s stand-out stallion.

In 2009, Diarado won a young jumper class at A level under Bastian Freese scoring 9.0. In 2010, Diarado scored well in young jumper classes and at the Bundeschampionat he won the first two qualifiers, scoring 9.0 and 9.3, respectively. His score in the final was 9.0, which earned him 3rd place.

In 2011, he won young jumper classes at M* level in Vechta and in Cloppenburg and qualified for the Bundeschampionat.

In 2012, he won jumper classes at M** level.

In  2014 he jumped in 1.50 three star ‘S’ classes with Jonas Vervoort but it was all more or less downhill after that.

In 2015, seemingly he appeared at only one show, Steinhagen CSI*, on the first day he was 23rd in a Table A, and on the second, 24th in a Table C. In 2016 he competed four times, twice each at Paderborn and Verden in three 1.50 classes, and one 1.45, finishing 21st, 23rd, 44th and 49th. And seemingly that is where Diarado’s career came to an end. His lifetime winnings were €7,175.

Still with the combination of his success at the licensing and the formidable powers of promotion offered by the combination of Schockemöhle, Van Uytert and the Holsteiner Verband, he covered huge books of mares right from the start, licensed as he was in sixteen studbooks: BWP, FWB, Hann, Holst, Meckl, Old, OS, PZHK, Rhein, S-ZV, sBs, SF, SI, SWB, West and ZVCH.

According to the Holstein Verband’s website: ‘Diarado’s foal crops are characterized by particularly typey offspring. His breeding value for foal type and conformation is 126.’

From his first crop, four sons have been licensed in Germany in 2011. At the Elmshorn foal auction in September 2011, he had the top-selling foal which was knocked down to Russia at 30.000 euros. In 2012, two Diarado sons were licensed, premium stallion Dinken is now in the Holsteiner Verband band, Diamaro out of a Candillo dam was sold through the Neumünster auction.

When I interviewed Holstein breeding director, Dr Thomas Nissen at Neumünster in February 2014, he was optimistic about Diarado’s future as a sire:

“Diarado was a champion when he came to the approval. The whole jumping world applauded Diarado, he was one of the best stallions we have had at the approvals in Holstein, he was such a perfect type, and he was a very good jumper, the spectators gave him a standing ovation. He had an enormous background when he started his breeding career, and that was not so easy for the owner, for the rider, and a lot of breeders wanted to use his semen, he had hundreds of mares and it was hard to manage the covering and the sport career. They tried, and I think he was quite good as a young horse. We had him in Holstein a few weeks ago in a stallion presentation, and he did it very well, he is a good jumping horse. If he has that last capacity for jump a Grand Prix, we have to wait and see. I don’t know if the training of the rider goes in this direction, in the last few years, the breeding has been the main point not the sport career – maybe they change it now and work with frozen semen. He makes a very good job as a breeding stallion, we have a lot of good offspring, we approved some sons – we have a very interesting four year old son, Dinken out of a Caretino / Cassini mare, he is a perfect jumper with a lot of capacity, and we have a lot of good daughters in the performance test of the young mares.”

“I can understand why Diarado has such a high breeding value, based on the mare tests, and the 70 day test of the stallion, and there are a few offspring in competition. I think in the years to come we will see his offspring competing at the higher levels.”

“I would say with Diarado, he was the perfect type – he was a type that we aim to find. What is interesting is that he is also out of a very good mother line, one of the best. His mother is by Corrado, who was a perfect international jumper, and then the combination with Diamant de Sémilly. Diamant de Sémilly is not known as an easy stallion because he is a very heavy type and produces offspring with a heavy type, but with Diarado, it was perfect. That is a fantastic product, and with him we have reached our aim, but we try it not only with one horse, we try it every year with a lot of horses.”

He might be a perfect type, but as a sire of jumpers he leaves a lot to be desired. The 2021 Hanoverian Stallion book, records 885 competitors, with winnings of €1,588,981.

Diarado is the sire of five horses who have won more than €15,000 – the most successful by far being Don Diarado (Lord Lancier) winning €595,668 with Maurice Tebbel. Next best is Margie Goldstein-Eagle’s Dicas (Cassini I) with €79,070. He is listed on the hippomundo database (April 2021) with three 1.65 competitors and 26 who have jumped 1.60.

In 2015 Diarado had an FN breeding value of 161 for jumping, but the number has steadily gone down and on the 2020 values, he had a young jumping horses value of 139, and a highest level achieved value of 134.

In the 2021 Hanoverian Stallion book,  Diarado scores 76 for dressage, 136 for jumping, 101 for type and 107 for conformation. On the 2020 WBFSH rankings, he is in 10th place.

View Diarado on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f6ObXleHDk