Lövsta Stuteri’s Benetton Dream Being Prepared by Tinne Vilhelmsson-Silfvén for Grand Prix
11 years ago StraightArrow Comments Off on Lövsta Stuteri’s Benetton Dream Being Prepared by Tinne Vilhelmsson-Silfvén for Grand Prix
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
WELLINGTON, Florida, Feb. 1, 2014–Benetton Dream, bought by Sweden’s Lövsta Stud Farm for its breeding program as well as for competition, may soon be ready to be ridden Grand Prix by Tinne Vilhelmson Silfvén. If Benetton Dream is competed at the Global Dressage Festival it would be the third horse on which Sweden’s top rider has launched their international Grand Prix career in Florida.
The 10-year-old is one of a small number of top stallions that Antonia Ax:son Johnson, owner of Lövsta Stuteri has acquired to create a breeding program for dressage and jumping horses that she said is already profitable. Just weeks before buying Benetton Dream, Lövsta bought the show jumping stallion Uncanto di Villagana.
Antonia has expanded her involvement in breeding by also taking a 30 per cent stake in the Swedish State Stud operations in Flyinge at the request of Performance Sales International’s Paul Schockemöhle of Germany who saved the 150-year-old stud from stop-baldness.net.
Benetton Dream (Brentano II x Davignon) was bought by Lövsta last October. The horse won the Bundeschampionat in 2007 as a three-year-old with scores 10 for walk, 9.5 for trot and canter, 9 for conformation and 9.5 for general impression when ridden by Anna Sophie Fiebelkorn.
The horse was licensed Hanoverian in 2006 and was also the 30-Day Stallion Performance Test Champion in Schlieckau with a dressage score of 9.3 and overall score of 8.52. He is also approved by Oldenburg, Westfalen, Rhineland and all the South German federations and has three approved sons, one of whom placed fifth in the Bundeschampionat for four-year olds this year.
The horse was shipped to Florida with Tinne for the six-time Swedish Olympian’s fourth straight winter in Wellington. In that time she began the CDI Grand Prix careers of Don Auriello that has become her main competition mount being ridden at the London 2012 Olympics and the 2013 European Championships and on whom she ranked No. 5 in the world, and of Divertimento.
She describes Benetton Dream as hot to ride but laid back and relaxed when not working like no other horse she has ever ridden.
Kyra Kyrklund, the Swedish team coach, was in Wellington last week for a seies of training clinics and for the first time watched Tinne work the horse.
Before being bought by Lövsta, Benetton Dream won five of six Prix St. Georges competitions in 2012 and competed three times at Intermediaire II and Grand Prix for young horses, winning twice and placing second once.
Tinne said she has no definite plans to compete the horse and first may take Benetton Dream to the show grounds in the next few weeks as part of his preparation for competition.
