2004 Vechta Spring Elite Auction

Holly's High Priced Foal Espagnola

April 24, 2004

In order to create some variety in the collection, the Oldenburg Verband decided to add 22 foals to the collection of dressage and show jumping prospects. One of those 22 was Holly Simensen's Espagnola, an eyecatcher filly by Danish Licensing Champion Don Romantic out of Holly's prize mare Esperanza (Feiner Stern x Figaro). Because Holly keeps 20-something foals, yearlings and broodmares in Germany, once in a while one of them has to be sold. But that's not an easy job. Holly can be decribed as a horsaholic, she loves horses, breathes horses and can not live without them. Her passion for bloodlines and breeding does not remain theory in her head, she actually buys foals and mares of absolute top quality. Therefore, it broke her heart to sell on of her babies, but bills have to be paid and Espagnola was the perfect pawn in her strategy to accomplish that.

The foal collection at the auction was of a very good quality, but when the first ten were auctioned off, Holly started to chew her nails.. "The prices are so long, a couple of years ago people were still paying up to 30,000 euro," Holly muttered. Indeed, the first couple of foals did sell for an average of 5,000 euro but we kept on encouraging for Holly. "Your foal will do much better. She's the best of the collection." And that was the truth. Though Espagnola was a bit immature and looked somewhat thin, she was all legs and moved like no other.. Loose, engaged, elegant.. Espagnolia seemed to be a real Flamenco dancer diva.

Three foals sold for 10,000 euro. Cha Cha Cha (Chico's Boy x Stalon x Tannhauser) was sold for 11,500 euro to the U.S., Flaminio (Florencio x Freiherr x Tiro) sold to the Pidgley's in Great Britain for 10,000 euro and the black colt Kingdom (King Arthur/T x Justinian xx x Weltmeister) also went to the U.S for 10,000 euro.

We were all sitting on the edge of our seat, when Espagnola danced into the arena like a little princess. No nickering, she just trotted onwards and showed off her talents. In no time, the bidding went to 10,000 euro but then it seemed to stop. We wouldn't allow that. With every new bid our table and Marta Kauffmann's team started to whistle, cheer and clap and soon enough we brought the bidding up to 20,000 euro. Was 30,000 € reachable? We got louder and louder, started to whistle or gasp in excitement. It was a tough duel between a distinguished man sitting behind the P.S.I bench and another man in the stands behind us.

Before the auction, many people had already come up to Holly saying that she had the best foal and Uwe Heckmann agreed on that. The words Uwe used to describe this filly were simply poetic. He put in an extra effort to get the highest price for this foal and eventually he knocked down his hammer at 23,000 euro. Holly was in tears and we went totally crazy, because we couldn't have wished for a better price.

Espagnola has been sold to a breeder from a small town with the exotic name Bad Rappenau in Germany.

Images copyrighted: Astrid Appels/Eurodressage.com - no reproduction allowed.

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