By Cappy Tosetti
Photography: Tish Quirk

Just The Best was the combination of exceptional jumping bloodlines and continued the legendary legacy of Lucky Boy xx and his premier breeding son, Best of Luck (Dutch name Octrooi).

A spotlight shone on Lucky Boy’s breeding career when Melanie Smith’s Calypso finished second in the 1980 World Cup final, which was followed up two years later with victory, again in Göteborg. According to Jacob Melissen in his 1992/93 edition of The Leading Sires of the Netherlands: “Calypso has been of fundamental importance to the development of showjumpig in the ‘new style’, being one of those elastic, plucky horses that perform intelligently and are keen to tackly anything without being too hot. Bold horses, with a light-footed canter. The kind of horses in which the athletic action of the Thoroughbred is united with the balanced character of the part-bred. That’s what Calypso was, and that’s precisely what Lucky Boy contributed to Dutch sport horse breeding.”

Lucky Boy xx

Continuing with Christopher Hector’s profile of Lucky Boy xx published in The Horse magazine; “In fact, Lucky Boy contributed to a string of top jumpers on the international scene. Willi Melliger’s Van Gogo, and The Freak with Hugo Simon and later Dirk Hafemeister, and Anne Kursinki’s Medrano – and all three of them were in Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympic Games.
“In fact, the Lucky Boys seemed to come in threes, because three years later the winning American team in the Nations Cup at Spruce Meadows found room for three Lucky Boy offspring: VIP and Debbie Dolan; Victor and Joan Scharffenberger, and Anne Kursinski with Medrano.
“Other international performers include Urchin (René Tebbel), Logo (Dianne Shaw), Dutch Regard (Mike McCormick), Revlon Rascal (Lisa Tarnopol), Servus (Martha Burstein), Windsor (Guido Dominici), Zazou (Philip Heffer), US Neapolitan (Annemarie Kynsilehto), and Bokilly (Eugenie Legrand, now Eugene Angot).
“Lucky Boy’s sire, Compromise, is rich in the blood that says ‘jump’ on any Thoroughbred pedigree.”
“Lucky Boy is also proving a valuable broodmare sire. Beezie Madden’s star, Authentic, is by Guidam, but out of a Lucky Boy granddaughter. Rolf-Goran Bengtsson’s Mac Kinley is out of a great-granddaughter of Lucky Boy. Katharina Offel’s Nike is by Indoctro, out of a daughter of Octrooi/aka Best of Luck.”
Octrooi daughter, Twiggy, produced the 1m40 KWPN-licensed jumper Creool, bred by Jan Greve, whose son rode the stallion in the 1999 European junior championship; and Dammen (Almé) who jumped 1m20 and is licensed as a sire with Rheinland, Westfalian and Swedish Warmblood.
Baltimoor, the son of Octrooi daughter Vineta, jumped 1m60 in the United States... To read the complete article you need to be a subscriber

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