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A Gift to Her Highness
A German-bred Trakehner mare with ties to the U.S. is presented to Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth II By Pat Payne
L
ast December, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II received a special gift from a distant relative to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of her coronation. German
Prince Donatus von Hesse presented the Queen with a young Trakehner mare named Dolce Luciana. With her outstanding bloodlines and impressive record in the show ring, this daughter of American Trakehner stallion Lord Luciano was sent to England to celebrate her breed and its accomplishments to a monarch—and a country—known to cherish all things equestrian. “It took me a year and a half to find this extraordinary
mare,” the Prince reported to the German publication Der Trakehner. “In Dolce Luciana, I knew I had found the perfect horse to fully enthuse the Queen for the Trakehners.” Prince Donatus shares both family ties (he is the great-great-great grandson of Britain’s Queen Victoria, the current Queen’s great-great grandmother) and a love for horses with Queen Elizabeth. Whenever Prince Donatus visited the Queen at Windsor Castle, the magazine reports, the Trakehner breed was always a topic of conversation. As the head of the Hessische Hausstiftung, which also includes the well-known Trakehner Gestüt Panker (or Panker Stud), Prince Donatus has close ties to the Trakehner Verband. That’s why the organization gladly agreed to his request to give the mare, already in foal, to the Queen in honor of the Diamond Jubilee, the sixtieth anniversary of her coronation. Petra Wilm, president of the Trakehner Verband and the Verband Board of Directors, agreed it would be both an honor and a wonderful opportunity to make the Trakehner horse better known internationally, particularly in Great Britain, Der Trakehner reports. For American breeder Debra Tyler, of Benson, Vermont’s
Tylord Farm, the gift was also an approving nod to both her breeding program and her difficult decision to send her stallion to Europe. Dolce Luciana’s sire Lord Luciano is the first American stallion to be fully licensed by the Trakehner Verband as a young stallion in the full inspection process—stallion grading, the 30-day test and the 70-day
90 March/April 2013
Dolce Luciana at three years of age when she was awarded the title of “Supreme Champion of the Rhineland.” She had the third highest score given out at her mare inspection in all of Germany.
test, she reports proudly. (Other American stallions have been admitted to the German stud book based on their competition records.) “I believe he is the poster boy for what American breeders can do,” she adds. Lord Luciano is currently training and competing with
Finnish Olympic rider Terhi Stegars at Luxembourg-based A-Bis International. He began competing internationally last fall, tackling both 3- and 4-star competitions. Debra looks forward to his continued success with Terhi in the year to come. He first went overseas after Tylord Farm suffered a devastating fire in 2005 that destroyed the facility and claimed the lives of six horses, including his sire. Despite the financial struggles to keep him there, Debra says Lord Luciano will remain in Europe where there are more competitive and breeding opportunities. The rest of Dolce Luciana’s pedigree is equally
impressive. Her dam, Dolce Vita III, was recently awarded the Elite Mare title. Still alive, her offspring also include German champions Donauruf, named champion of the 2012 Trakehner Stallion Licensing in Neumunster in October, and Dürrenmatt, who was named second reserve stallion at the same event in 2011. Dolce Vita III is part of a Trakehner line that includes Exorbitant xx, Habicht and his Anglo-Arabian sire Burnus, Pregel, Poet xx, Cancara and Nana Sahib x, Jasir ox and the very old Weil-Marbach family of the legendary Arabian horse Murana I. Dolce Luciana’s paternal grandsire, Enrico Caruso *Ps*E* is known for producing outstanding performance horses. In addition to Lord Luciano, his offspring include Kostolany which makes him grandsire to Gribaldi and great-grandsire to Totilas. As noted, Enrico Caruso was one of the horses lost in the 2005 Tylord Farm fire.
Courtesy Debra Tyler
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