By Adriana van Tilburg
Photography: Jean Bougie/SF
To celebrate the special Germany-France relationship at this year’s CHIO Aachen, the Selle Français Studbook and Cheval Normandie offered a foal to the winner of the German U25 competition, which was won by Richard Vogel riding his Holsteiner-bred gelding Lesson Peak (Lord Z - Taj Mahal x Cash and Carry, Stamm 4779, bred by Matthias Ketelsen).
The foal is the very special Javeline d'Austral (Cicave de Talus - Vision d’Austral x Quite Easy, bred by Haras d’Austral) who descends from the direct motherline of a Selle Français stallion that raised German/European breeding, and especially Holsteiner breeding, to a higher level. Of course, his name appears in the pedigree of almost every jumping horse: Cor de la Bryère. Jumping breeding without ‘Corde’ has become almost unthinkable.
Haras d’Austral
It was Heather Killen who purchased the mare Idem II (Voltigeur du Bois - Jehole x Phaius), Javeline’s grandmother – the last grandaughter of Cor de la Bryère’s dam. Gratifyingly, Idem II still has three daughters following in her footsteps to become broodmares at Haras d’Austral.
Heather Killen was really proud to present her breeding at the heart of sport, and explained how the foal came to Aachen: “It was particularly the Cheval Normandie, the association for breeders in Normandy, who wanted to promote French horses, not just abroad but to also promote their young stallions. They are providing awards that we have also received for using young stallions, and to bring the progeny to national championship level. Everybody knows Diamant de Semilly, but it’s important to get the names of the young stallions out there so people know the names of those that are up and coming. So I think that was their idea, to offer a young product of a young stallion to the best young rider. They didn’t approach us but sent information out to the breeders that they were looking for a foal that met certain criteria. They said they would purchase the foal and that it would be the gift from the Selle Français Studbook and Cheval Normandie, and this filly best matched what they were looking for. We thought it was the kind of publicity that money can’t buy and we were really happy to participate. It’s very exciting.
“Modern European breeding is a sophisticated cocktail and there are different lines that come out in different parts of the population of elite sport horses. It is one of the most interesting things that we’ve found, like in our breeding program, that we kind of teased out this little piece of the motherline of Cor de la Bryère. Breeding moves so fast, people are driving over the tracks of these genetic places every day, and so it is almost like we stopped and dug up this little root, and I think we found something really interesting...
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