By Adriana van Tilburg
Photography: © FEI/Benjamin Clark
Winning Olympic gold medal is more than a victory; it bestows immortality upon the champion, so the names of Christian Kukuk and Checker will forever be etched in history as the winners of the individual showjumping final at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris-Versailles.
Every horse has a story. Who bred the horse? Where was it raised? Who nurtured its talents, believed in its potential? And then, there’s the lineage – how was this horse bred? What tales lie behind its dam? What legacies linger in the older generations?
Checker’s story is a treasure trove... A journey that winds through the discovery of a ‘yellow card’ with notes at Gestüt Lewitz, marking the birthplace of his granddam. This tale begins with a breeder who stopped breeding 22 years ago, but who bred both the fourth and fifth dams of Checker, and many generations before them. When this breeder realized that they and their family members had laid the foundation for an Olympic champion, tears filled their eyes. The legacy they created, long dormant, had risen to its pinnacle.
Checker[ed] history
To understand Checker’s story, we must go back to his foundation – a story long forgotten. As I delved into his bloodlines, I discovered that the fourth mare in Checker’s pedigree is a Hanoverian mare named Doreen, sired by Dakar and out of Löwin by Lukas, bred by Friedhilde Lahrs-Krüger. Her late husband, Ernst Lahrs-Krüger, was the breeder of Löwin.
When I first attempted to contact Friedhilde, she hung up on me – twice, likely because of her age, and didn’t understand why someone with a Dutch number was calling her. I left a voicemail, and a few hours later, she returned my call, apologizing but still unsure of the reason for my inquiry.
The mare Doreen was born in 1984, and Löwin in 1975. Here begins the story of Friedhilde Lahrs-Krüger: “Doreen and Löwin were both bred by us. The ancestors of Löwin also come from our breeding program. My husband and I bred with this line for a long time. It was our own line here on the farm, originally for agricultural purposes. This line was brought on the Elbe by my uncle from Belum.
“He discovered Früh-lingszeit (Feiner Kerl - Allerkind x Alkhoven I), born in 1931, while he was working on the farm. That’s where the line originated. It was a Kehdinger line. Frühlingszeit, which he brought with him as a young horse – he didn’t live to see her grow up, as he fell during the war. During the war, we sometimes had only one or two horses left on the farm.
“In the early 1950s, my father was asked by the association to present the mare at the Verbandsschau [studbook show]. I was about five years old at the time. He brought the mare to the Verbandsschau in Bremerhaven, organized by the Hannoveraner Verband, where she became the show winner. That was a great achievement, as there were many horses at the time... To read the complete article you need to be a subscriber
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