by Kim F. Miller SUNSPRITE SPIRIT
Sporthorse breeding program thrives with great horses, great people and great support of the sport.
Top eventer Debbie Rosen is a little miffed at
Pam Duffy and Donald Trotter, owners of Sunsprite Warmbloods in Temecula. “I’d always wanted to ride a Sunsprite horse, but they had never asked me,” she says. “I was getting a little grumpy and pouty.” She’s kidding, of course, about being mad at these pillars of the California eventing community, but she’s very serious about the honor of riding one of their horses. Debbie is aware that Pam has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of sporthorse bloodlines, but what really stands out to the rider is a less tangible quality. “She has that very unique ability, a gift, to look at a mare and a stallion and know they would produce a fabulous baby. It’s like, she dreams it and it is so.” Debbie’s Sunsprite wish came true nearly two years ago, in the form of Sunsprite’s Cali, and today she’s very happily competing the 6-year-old mare, Sunsprite Belissima, who Pam and Don imported from Germany. Sunsprite’s Cali is now competing for his new
owner, a junior, but Debbie will never forget him. The son of the late Thoroughbred Coconut Grove and out of a Sunsprite foundation mare, the Hanoverian Econda (by the noted jumping sire Espiri), Sunsprite’s Cali came to Debbie as a “freak of nature,” she explains. Then just 15 hands, “he jumped the moon” and was “totally fancy. There wasn’t a dressage judge that didn’t fall in love with him.” Debbie and Sunsprite’s Cali won just about everything they entered in their year and a half together and Sunsprite’s Cali is poised to help his new rider do the same at Novice level.
Deborah Rosen riding Sunsprite’s Cali. Photo ©McCool
The fact that, at just 5 years of age, Sunsprite’s Cali was already a suitable mount for a junior, albeit a talented one in 15-year-old Angela Cricelli, speaks volumes about the breeding program’s top priority: temperament. “Their horses are really bred and trained to do their job,” says Debbie. Pam and Don are famously not horn tooters. “I like to let our horses speak for us,” Pam laughs. But she can be coaxed to brag a bit when it comes to her horses’ approach to life. “Every breeder says their horses have great temperaments, but it is really true for us,” Pam allows. Some of it is luck, she acknowledges, but the majority comes from the parents. “The sire and dam have to have a good work ethic and that ‘thing’ where they want to please you.” It’s tricky. That desire to please needs to be balanced by “a tiny bit of independence,” Pam explains. “Horses have to be able to think for themselves, especially future eventers.” Yet even after a relatively short eight years officially in the breeding business, the performance results are racking up. Most recently, Tamra Smith, who currently campaigns two Sunsprite steeds, rode Sunsprite Syrius to Training Level National Championship in Texas at the USEA finals last fall.
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