By Sally Reid
Photography: Cheleken Equestrian; personal collections
The 2025 New Zealand Warmblood (NZWA) classification tour saw a large entry of horses and foals from all parts of the country. They were inspected by two assessors from Germany, both of whom have been champion breeders themselves...
Vanessa Feuerstein, the 2015 WBFSH Young Breeder World Champion, and Lukas Weber, who finished third that same year and also won the German Young Breeders’ Championship in 2019.
Lukas, whose background is an academic one, having studied animal and agricultural sciences, serves as youth coordinator for the Trakehner Association and as a judge for the Young Breeder Championships.
Vanessa is a board member of the Hesse Hanoverian Breeding District. She manages a successful Hanoverian and German Riding Pony stud, and has more than 20 years of involvement in the Young Breeders programme. She is also a successful dressage rider.
The foals
This year, the tour’s overall champion colt and champion filly were both bred to jump, and both come from Register 2, which is explained below.
The overall champion colt – Global PH Colmani (Colman - Bia/aka Casallita x Casall) – is a very impressive boy with an equally impressive lineage. He was bred by Jenny McIntyre of Nelson, and scored a wonderful 83.5% (excellence).
His dam Bia (Casall - Vanessa XVIII x Contender) is an imported Staatsprämie mare from Holsteiner Stamm 18A1; she was bred in Germany by Günter Lüth. Through Colman, she has the blood of Carthago, Capital I, Lord, Marlon xx, and the fabulous Ladykiller xx. Her dam Vanessa XVIII (Contender x Calvin x Landgraf I) also has Staatsprämie status, and jumped at 1m35 in Europe. Bia herself, under the name Casallita, jumped at the same level in New Zealand, ridden by Briar Burnett-Grant, whose mother imported her.
According to Jenny; “I acquired Bia from Karen Burnett. She was a high-scoring state premium mare, purchased by Karen after winning at the Holsteiner Landeschampionate show. She was imported to New Zealand in foal to Colman. I had suggested this cross and the offspring, Chesall, is now jumping in Europe at 1m45. He and Kasalla (Kannan), another Bia foal, are both based in Germany with Briar Burnett-Grant.
“Bia has a two-year-old Colman filly, Camilla, bred and owned by Karen Burnett; she is also a NZWA tour winner, and I repeated the cross,” says Jenny.
Camilla was the NZWA’s Champion Jumping Bred Filly of 2023 with an ‘excellence’ score of 81.75%, under German assessor Gerd Küst. “Bia stamps her offspring with her own beautiful, modern, athletic looks; the Kannan mare, Kasalla, also looks very much like her,” Jenny continued, and points out that the Colman x Casall cross has also proved very successful with the NZ-bred LT Holst Freda I (New Zealand’s current showjumper of the year). When he comes of age, she adds, young Global PH Colmani will be aimed for a career in sport...
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