PHELPSSPORTS.COM: REPORTING THE NEWS AS IT UNFOLDS
Sao Paulo, Brazil – November 29, 2006 – It’s been a globetrotting year for PhelpsSports.com’s Executive Editor as Jean Llewellyn prepares to report from Brazil’s show jumping National Championship for Young Horses in Sao Paulo from November 29 to December 3. The results of this major event will determine the horses that will represent the Brazilian Sport Horse Studbook at next year’s World Breeding Championship for Young Horses in Lanaken, Belgium and offers an indispensable shop window for demonstrating the qualities and abilities of Brazilian-bred sport horses to the rest of the breeding world. It also provides a yardstick by which the Brazilian breeders’ accomplishments will be measured against other studbooks, in particular offering a valuable comparison with European-bred sport horses.
Representing three age group categories, four-, five- and six-year-old sport horses will be competing for top honors at the prestigious Sao Paulo Equestrian Center (Hipico Paulista), which counts Alvaro Miranda de Nieto and his wife Athena Onassis amongst it’s eminent members. Their club house – a tudor-style building constructed in the fifties, with vaulted ceilings, harlequin design stained-glass windows and exotic hardwood floors that reflect the light from imposing chandeliers – exudes a cathedral-like reverence that suggests anything more than conversing in whispers would be and offense to its architecture.
Primarily founded upon imported European stallions crossed with native thorougbreds, and today accessing the worldwide distribution of frozen semen from the world’s leading sires, Brazil’s sport horse breeding industry has already celebrated considerable success, although one of the country’s favorite show jumping sons, Rodrigo Pessoa, has so far, in the main, remained committed to European-bred horses.
Most recently, at the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Luciana Diniz (BRA), based in Germany for many years but continuing to ride for her homeland, produced some extremely good rounds riding the 17-year-old Brazilian-bred sport horse Dover (by the thoroughbred Floclorico xx out of Dallas Rs, by Remanso). This partnership result was a great source of pride for Brazilian owner Regina Medeiros who works at Alfonso Romo’s La Silla stud farm in Monterrey, Mexico.
However, the top-placed Brazilian rider was Bernardo Alves who finished 12th individually, but riding the Holsteiner-bred Canturo (by Cantus, out of a Calando mare). Fortunately, part owner of this stallion is Brazil’s Jorge Johannpeter, whose stud farm is located south of Sao Paulo, in Porto Allegre.
Interestingly, in an effort to accelerate the game of catch-up with Europe and studbooks with decades or even centuries of breeding history and traditions, embryo transfer is practised extensively in Brazil using their best quality broodmares, and there are reproductive clinics specializing in this protocol that are seeing over 1,000 mares a year.
Go to www.phelpssports.com to read daily reports from Jean Llewellyn at the Brazilian Young Horse Championships in Sao Paulo.
