British Breeder

Feature - ARTICLE
BREEDER
PROFILE
Jennifer
Gilchrist
L’Espoir. (Image courtesy of
Romanno Stud)
For our breeder feature this time we
move north of the border to Jennifer
Gilchrist’s Romanno Stud. Slightly
uniquely Jennifer manages to straddle
the show ring and dressage arena to
equal affect with horses bred at her
Lanarkshire stud, and also stands a
number of successful stallions.
I asked Jennifer why she thinks she
manages to breed animals to be so
successful in two equestrian spheres
that can sometimes feel poles apart.
Jennifer said it ultimately comes back
to the type of animal she likes. She
doesn’t favour the modern dressage
trend for a straight tense back with
long cannon bones. She feels in the
long term there will be too many
ligament and joint problems from this
modern type. She prefers what would
be considered an older style with
excellent limbs, short cannon bones
and a good length of rein and often
these well made, correct horses can
go on into either sphere. Certainly
in the dressage world Jennifer had
bred numerous National and Regional
Champions and licensed stallions.
As far as the horses are concerned it
was Romanno Bedriska who helped
break the perception that warmbloods
are not the type that can do well in the
show ring. With her strongly dressage
influenced pedigree (Quando Quando x
De Niro) Bedriska made the headlines
when winning the Cuddy supreme in
hand championship in 2012. Jennifer
had shown producers Mark Armstrong
and Alan Charlesworth a number of
fillies in the field and the one they
selected on type was the dressage bred
Bedriska.
Her late super stallion Rubin Star N also
started to get noticed by the showing
world as people started to come and
look at Rubin Star’s stock with their
good limbs and the super bone that
was getting harder to find. He was a
major factor in the Romanno stock
moving effortlessly into either showing
or dressage.
Jennifer feels show ponies have gone
down the same route as the horses,
of losing bone and strength and now it
is very hard to breed that bone back
in again. What Jennifer has found very
successful is to use some of her British
Riding Pony stallions onto her older
warmblood mares and this combination
has given her super foals that are
popular with buyers. There seems
to be a good market for these foals/
youngsters as riding horses, hacks,
small hunters all in the height range of
14.2 to 16.0hh.
Stallions
Jennifer applies this philosophy when
purchasing the stallions, they have to
Romanno Rafiel, WBS-UK Licensed Stallion, 2014
National Novice Champion, now winning Inter 1.
be able to do a dual role. They have
to move well enough to produce the
dressage stock but also consistently
cross with her own mares to be good
enough for the show ring. All the
stallions have been bought for her
own use and not for commercial
gain, despite the fact they are all of
excellent quality. Jennifer applies this
to her ponies as well.
Jennifer currently stands 2 sport horses
stallions, the Hanoverian Hochadel
(Hohenstein x Donnerhall) and the
former Danish licensing champion
L’Espoir (Lord Loxley x Warkant). They
both meet Jennifer’s criteria of having
won their performance test with high
temperament and trainability scores,
followed by their type.
Both Hochadel and L’Espoir are what
Jennifer considers the older style of
warmblood. Jennifer says L’Espoir is
a type you could imagine directly in
the show ring even though he was so
successful in his dressage career. After
her long association with the Rubinstein
son Rubin Star N, she was looking for
completely different
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