SARAH and Peter Howard of SBM Arabians Stud, near Crediton, were delighted to learn that their colt, Carlangelo SBM had been awarded a highly coveted "Gold" Award in the British Breeding/Baileys Horse Feeds Futurity Evaluations.

Their colt achieved a score of 8.7 for its evaluation for endurance from the panel of international judges, who commented that he was a super example of an endurance foal with harmonious lines and effortless movement, showing a lot of promise for the future.

Sarah tells us: "At the stud we have pure bred Arabian horses from around the world including Russia, Poland and Egypt, and we focus on breeding our own horses using champion stallions.  Aside from our originally bought-in mares, horses that we have bred are now, themselves breeding young stock.

"When the horses are still young we show them in-hand so they can get experience of outside activities; we have had a great deal of success with in-hand showing but of course not all horses will be the right type for showing and these will be lightly backed between four and six years-old and then offered for sale as performance or endurance career horses - we have even sold one of our home-bred colts to the state stud of Pakistan.”

The Futurity evaluations aim to identify British bred, young potential sport horses and ponies that are destined for careers in dressage, eventing, show jumping or endurance and may even find the Olympic Champions of the future.  Entries are categorised by discipline with age groups for foals, yearlings, two and three year-olds. 

For the first time The British Breeding/Baileys Horse Feeds Futurity Evaluations saw breeders submitting their entries in a digital format in sets of detailed videos taken on hard and soft ground that were examined by a team of international experts, including a senior veterinarian, Baileys Horse Feeds nutritionist, linear scorer and highly experienced International evaluators from the UK, Holland and Germany. 

Carlangelo SBM is out of Angelita, a Russian/Polish bred mare who SBM Arabians purchased in 2006 as a yearling.

The stud already knew Vodofon Kossack, her sire, because he was on lease to the UK and they purchased him in 2008 from his breeder, the Kossack stud in the Netherlands.

Vodofon Kossack’s own sire is Balaton, bred by the Tersk Stud, and was known as the sire of the century!

Carlangelo SBM is by Shirley Watts’s stallion, Lothar El Nyhl (Nyhl El Jamaal x AF Lissa, by Delmar), bred by Antonio Carlos Francisco.

Sarah said: "The reason we decided to put Angelita to Lothar El Nyhl is that not only is he a Brazilian National Champion, but we had already used Lothar El Nyhl on another one of our mares in 2013 and that resulted in a filly who has now bred her own filly, Princess Castra SBM, who has had a very good showing record. In-fact in 2019 she won at the ECAHO A show with 91 points.

"We then used Lothar El Nyhl again in 2017. This produced Carlangelo SBM’s full sister, Lolita SBM, who was the 2018 British National Silver Foal Champion at the AHS National Show.

"We knew this would be another great combination and given Carlangeo SBM’s Gold award it looks like we are on the right track.”

Gold awards qualify horses for pre-selection into the first ever Futurity Elite Online Auction, which will be held this month, this year in co-operation with ClipMyHorse.TV.