Last weekend, the EDS 2021 collection was sold online. One of the striking horses of the collection was the NRPS approved stallion Escobar (s. El Capone). The 7-year-old dark stallion, who has a lot of power and impresses with his stallion appearance, was sold to Grand Prix rider Kim Thijssen.
Always a striking stallion
Escobar was bred by Stal Krol from Handel. In 2017, this dark pearl was one of the most striking stallions at the KWPN saddle presentation. Still, the KWPN inspection committee let him down because of his pedigree. After that, Van Uytert and Ad Valk bought the stallion and presented him at the NRPS stallion selection. Escobar became a NRPS approved stallion.
Last year the stallion stood out again, this time during the pre-selection for the Pavo Cup. Under Emmelie Scholtens, the son of El Capone achieved the highest score (84 points) among the six-year-olds in Houten.
From bad luck to a new beginning
Kim Thijssen is well-known in the Dutch Small Tour competitions. She has already produced several horses at this level. Unfortunately, a lot of bad luck and grief came her way in recent years. The NRPS approved stallion Gameboy (v. Gribaldi), with which Kim competed at Grand Prix level, suddenly died in 2019. Shortly afterwards her Small Tour horse Obama also died in an accident.
Eventually she bought the young Kadym to go back to training. Kim: “Kadym is a Ferdinand x Sorento. I think he is a really good horse. He was selected for the World Championship for young dressage horses by his results in the Pavo Cup. Unfortunately, this did not happen because of corona. I hope to ride Small Tour with Kadym in the future, but of course he is only 6 years old now.”
In addition to Kadym, Thijssen now has another talented horse to reach her goals: the stallion Escobar.
I couldn’t get him out of my head
Last year, Kim was already introduced to Escobar. “I tried him last year and thought he was a nice horse. It did not come to a deal at the time, but despite that he still stuck in my head ”. During the Excellent Dressage Sales 2021, Thijssen seized her chance. After an exciting bidding battle, she managed to make the highest bid for the NRPS stallion. Afterwards she said: “Escobar has very good gaits and is a beautiful horse to look at. In addition, he has a top character. All those things together make him very interesting to me. The goal for the coming period is to get to know each other a little bit more. We are going to train at home and I am going to take him to my lessons with Patrick van der Meer to see how he approaches the work. The goal is to compete with him in at least at Small Tour level, but we will see how far we can get. ”
