BELGIUM (by Jo de Roo) From July 13-15, almost 500 foals participated in the Z-Festival foal championship in the home town of Studbook and Studfarm Zangersheide. This year, for the first time, the studbook will organize three other Z- Festivals: Marl, Germany, which took place on July 9, plus Westdorp, the Netherlands (July 29) and Petit-Mars, France on August 6.
In Lanaken, the foals were divided in six groups and evaluated by an interna- tional jur y, namely Heinz Meyer (Germany), Luc Tilleman (Belgium) and Xavier Leredde (France). Afterwards, we interviewed Luc Tilleman.
When we analyzed the top 20 of each group, we see that several stallions were represented by five or more descendants: Cornet Obolensky and Comilfo Plus Z each had 13 descendants; Aganix du Seigneur Z eight; Cicero Z seven; Chacoon Blue and Levisto Z each six; Comme Il Faut and Dominator 2000 Z each five. So, this means that Cor- net Obolensky has had a major influence, not only via his own 13 descendents, but also through his grand- son Comilfo Plus Z (Comme Il Faut).
Tilleman commented by saying, “In breadth we have seen a lot of quality. Time flies. I don’t remember if it’s the third or fourth time that I have been judging the Z- Foal championship. The first time I did this job, we didn’t need to think about ranking the 30 foals with the weakest scores. Nowadays, we are only talking about five foals, presented by amateurs that wanted to enjoy a day off. All other foals are bred with a certain aim. In terms of quality, there is no big difference between number 15 and number 60 in the ranking. At that moment, we are talking about a difference of maybe one point in a maximum of 50 points. Participants with a foal that ranked 60th don’t need to be disappointed. And, of course, the performance is a snapshot. If the foal doesn’t show all his qualities or he creeps a little bit under his mother, so be it. We can only evaluate the things we see.”...
