By Adriana van Tilburg
Photography: Janne Bugtrup

The national VTV/R+V foal championship showed some of the finest foals of 2020, when champions, reserve champions, and placed foals of several districts came together. There were 34 in total: 16 fillies and 18 colts. This championship was held in conjunction with the state championships for jumping, with breeding and sport goes going hand in hand.

Together with Helmar Bescht and Deike Ahsbahs. Philipp Baumgart was one of the judges during the foal championship, with the difficult task of awarding the foals notes for type, movement, and overall impressing.
According to Baumgart: “I was very surprised about the high quality of the foals, both in type and movement. There were several jumping-bred foals who moved just as good maybe even better than the dressage-bred foals. Also the foals were very modern in type, especially the colts. They were correct in type and also had great appearance. The walk also looked good as far as we could judge, but I do want to provide feedback as it’s something we have to look at more seriously as I find it important that a foal has a good walk. I thought that the conformation of the foals was good, with not many defects.”
Some of the foals showed naturally their canter, how do you judge that? “It is difficult because if you want the foals to canter they will often put their tail up and will not show their balance in canter. But there were a few foals that showed their canter and, yes, we took the canter also into our judgement. In the trot we could see that both the colts and fillies were very active in their hindquarters, already showing very good self-carriage.”
One motivation for the quality might have been that the prize was a Böckmann trailer and in the fillies category a Diarado daughter (out of Indira x Casall, Stamm 6786, bred by Manfred Nissen) became the champion. In Nord Friesland last year she was the champion, while her dam, Indira, was champion of the elite mare show. Indira is following her education as a sport horse so her filly was presented with an embryo transfer foal. Helmut Bescht said; “A foal that could not have been better in type and movement. She had a lot of power, with a lot of energy in her hind leg and was a very good representative of her sire Diarado.” Diarado was champion of the Holsteiner stallion approvals in 2007 and his first offspring are already jumping at 1m60. According to online data he currently has 1,980 offspring.

Reserve champion was a daughter of the young stallion Corfu de la Vie (Cumano - Hera XIX x Lord, Stamm 741, bred by Haras de la Vie in France), out of Freewell Clai, by Rigoletto (Ramirado), bred by Martin Prignitz. Interestingly, the dam competed in three-star eventing. .. To read the complete article you need to be a subscriber

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