Ekurante

Ekurante is one of the foundation mares behind our breeding programme and a mare whose influence is becoming increasingly important as the generations progress. By Warkant van ’t Gestelhof, by Ferro, and out of a Jazz mare, she brings together two highly influential Dutch dressage lines and has given us a maternal family that we are now developing through successive generations of our own horses.

Ekurante’s sire, Warkant van ’t Gestelhof, is a son of Ferro, giving her direct access to one of the most important foundations of modern Dutch dressage breeding. Ferro enjoyed an exceptional international Grand Prix career with Coby van Baalen, representing the Netherlands at major championships and helping the Dutch team to an Olympic silver medal at Sydney 2000.

Ferro subsequently became enormously influential as a breeding stallion. His blood can be found throughout modern international dressage breeding, both directly and through successful sons, daughters and subsequent generations. For us, having this influence relatively close within Ekurante’s pedigree provides a strong performance foundation to the family we have subsequently developed from her.

The maternal side of Ekurante’s pedigree adds another hugely influential Dutch line through Jazz. Jazz competed internationally at Grand Prix before becoming one of the defining stallions of Dutch dressage breeding. His offspring went on to achieve considerable success through to international Grand Prix and championship level, while his influence remains prominent within modern dressage pedigrees.

The combination of Ferro and Jazz therefore gives Ekurante a pedigree based around two stallions that proved themselves not only in sport, but through their ability to influence generations of dressage horses. Increasingly, however, it is what Ekurante herself is producing that makes her particularly important to us as a broodmare.

One of the most exciting examples is her homebred daughter CE D’Acampo’s Courage, known at home as Coco, by our own CE Jetialo IS. Jetialo is by international Grand Prix stallion Apache out of an Edison mare, meaning Coco combines Apache and UB40 through her sire with the Ferro and Jazz blood behind Ekurante.

Coco has already begun to demonstrate the quality of this combination in her own right. At the BEF Futurity she achieved an Elite grading and finished as the second-highest-scoring two-year-old overall, an incredibly exciting result for a horse we have bred and retained ourselves.

That result is particularly significant to us because Coco has been retained as a future performance horse. Rather than assessing Ekurante solely through pedigree or the appearance of her offspring as foals, we now have a daughter whose quality has been independently recognised as a two-year-old and who we can continue to produce through her ridden career.

As Coco develops, she will give us the opportunity to learn much more about the movement, temperament, trainability and eventual performance ability being passed through this maternal family. Her Elite Futurity grading provides an extremely encouraging starting point.

Ultimately, this is what makes Ekurante so valuable to us. She isn't simply a mare carrying Ferro and Jazz in her pedigree; she has provided us with a maternal family whose quality is beginning to demonstrate itself through the horses we have bred from her.

Coco’s Elite grading and position as the second-highest-scoring two-year-old overall at the BEF Futurity is an especially exciting example of that legacy. With Coco retained for a future performance career, we have the opportunity to continue evaluating this family as she progresses through ridden work and, ultimately, competition.

Our long-term aim is to build maternal families whose qualities we understand increasingly well with every generation, rather than simply breeding individual horses from impressive pedigrees. Ekurante represents exactly that: a foundation mare whose influence we can now see developing in horses we have bred, retained and are beginning to prove in their own right.