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Interestingly enough, the foals are born black or bay and get their beautiful, white and silky coat after the age of 6 years.
In La Roque d'Anthéron, twenty or so are born each year. The son, Guillaume Philip, has taken up the torch for everything that concerns the education of the horses. He breaks them in and instills in them the basics of their training. They are not sold before the age of 4 years in order to best carry out this classic schooling. A question of principle, which allows for guaranteeing a quality "after sales service" for the purchasers.
Several of their horses are already living their beautiful destinies, like those who perform for the Chateau de Chambord and others are promised a great future, like those foals recently purchased by Odile Van Doorn, several times champion of France in dressage events. Or else, they cross the borders into Belgium and Switzerland or even go as far as Australia where they are highly prized.
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Favory, the most handsome stallion at the Conservatory (he inherited the name of his father's lineage, one of the six stallions at the origins of the race), is a powerful horse who has kept the traits of his Spanish ancestors and possesses the typical characteristics of the Lipizzaner that we can also see in old engravings: a quite large, sturdily built head with a curved nose, a round and generous neck, a stocky body with flat withers and a quite low croup, powerful hindquarters, well-proportioned legs with a short cannon bone and rounded, hard-horned hoofs, the hock mostly straight and the forearm long and strong. Once destined solely for the riders of the Grand School, the Lipizzaner has modernized. Today it is a good all-rounder, intelligent, with a set character, generous and close to people. These qualities make them remarkable recreational horses, but also remarkable harness horses.
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The Hungarians have won fame in international four horse competitions and the French drivers P. Greffier et J.C. Grognet have known success at the national and international level thanks to their Lipizzaners.
Since a few years, the amelioration of the race may ensure it a great future in dressage events : light augmentation in size (1.60 m to the withers) to regain the standards in force at the end of the 19th century and considerable amelioration in bearing : it is now ample, supple and rounded and that permits the horses to aspire to compete in dressage events.
In the Conservatory's magnificent, 30x15m indoor riding ring in stone and wood next to the stalls, the son Guillaume works the horses in anticipation of the next dressage events. In 2005, he was selected with several of his horses at the Grande Semaine in Saumur, essential top level dressage rendezvous. He was also classed 5th as a regional rider. |
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