The Mare of the Year was the highlight of the show programme at the Hannoveraner licensing of show jumping stallions. St.Pr.St. Starlight, bred by Helmut Habermann from Hänigsen, is characterised by her exceptional hereditary ability. She also proved this at the licensing: shortly after the honour, her third licensed son by Quaid left the Niedersachsenhalle as a premium stallion for the State Stud Neustadt (Dosse).
The dam line of Norm goes back to the Habermann stud farm in Hänigsen in 1921. Among other achievements, this line produced five horses that competed in the Nations Cup for five different nations. In the past 100 years, this family has repeatedly produced mares with exceptional hereditary traits. This also applies to the Hannoveraner Mare of the Year, St.Pr.St. Starlight by Salito out of Calinca by Calypso II, who was born at Helmut Habermann’s farm in Hänigsen in 2006. At the age of three, the bay mare, who is endowed with great charisma, was awarded at the Herwart von der Decken Show and passed her mare performance test with the top score of 10 for jumping. Meanwhile, she is one of the three-star mares in the Hannoveraner Jumper Breeding Programme, because she has more than confirmed her own quality with her offspring.
Qualito I by Quaid, born in 2011, was St.Pr.St. Starlight’s second foal. The stallion won the Hannoveraner Free Jumping Competition at the age of three and was the talk of the town from then on. The Celle state stud stallion, who was full of dynamism and ambition, was placed in the Hannoveraner Show Jumping Championships when he was four and five years of age with Heiko Tietze and qualified for the Bundeschampionat when he was five and six years of age. At the age of seven, he left the breeding stage far too early. But he sired 320 offspring to Hannover’s show jumping horse breed, who initially catapulted him into the top group of breeding evaluations of the German Equestrian Federation for young horse tests due to their early successes and who have since given him a respectable breeding value for the highest achieved class of 131. His full sister IB Qualita is a year younger than Qualito. The now twelve-year-old bay mare was brought into the sport by Alexander Ueckermann, before Tim Rieskamp-Goedeking took over the reins in late summer 2018. The two are now successful in competitions up to a height of 1.55 metres.
In 2013, another successful full brother was born in Hänigsen: Qualibro, also a bay and also trained in the sport by Alexander Ueckermann. With Simone and Hans Günther Blum, he already competed in Germany and abroad and achieved placings up to 1.50 metres. The fourth top foal in a row was born in 2014. This time, the sire was Check In, a stallion who also comes from the dam line of Norm. Chackalito was sold at the 2019 Verden Elite Auction and went to France, where he was trained for eventing by Thibault Champel and is successful up to CCI3*. Qualito II, born in 2019, is the first chestnut out of St.Pr.St. Starlight to step into the limelight. After his first licensing in Münster, he also received a positive licensing decision from the Hannoveraner Verband after successfully completing his 50-day test. Qualito II, like Qualibro, was ridden by Alexander Ueckermann until the 2024 Bundeschampionat and, like IB Qualita, is now being ridden by Tim Rieskamp-Goedeking. A third licensed full brother of Qualito I and II has his future ahead of him after the 2024 Verden stallion sales.
At 18 years of age, St.Pr.St. Starlight is one of the younger mares to be honoured as Hannoveraner Mare of the Year. However, her performance in breeding is no less impressive in comparison to older mares and her influence on Hanoverian show jumper breeding through her licensed sons is significant.
