Hopes top event mares ‘sprinkle a little bit of stardust’ in British stud’s breeding programme

Future Sport Horses has welcomed top event mares Classic Moet and Faerie Dianimo to its breeding programme – with hopes they will “sprinkle a little bit of their stardust on the next generation”.

The stud’s Julia Hodgkins told H&H she was “absolutely thrilled” to have bought the superstar pair from Trisha Rickards a few months ago.

Both mares were campaigned by New Zealand’s Jonelle Price and enjoyed distinguished careers. Classic Moet (Molly) completed all 10 of her five-star starts, including seven top-10 finishes and victory at Badminton in 2018. Faerie Dianimo (Maggie) had five top-10 places at five-star, including winning Luhmühlen in 2018. The pair also represented New Zealand at championships; Molly at the 2014 and 2018 World Equestrian Games, and Faerie Dianimo at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Molly, 22, and Maggie, 20, retired from the sport “at the top of their game” in November 2022 with the view of breeding. Molly already has successful offspring, including Faerie Usain and Faerie Good Golly, born in 2018 via embryo transfer.

Julia said it was a “dream come true to have two five-star winners in your breeding herd”.

“You have to pinch yourself when you go and say hello to them. I’m very, very lucky,” she said.

“I’m over the moon Trisha let me buy them to keep her breeding legacy going, she’s bred so many top horses. It feels a real responsibility as well when you have this sort of quality of horses to make good choices for them.”

Maggie is carrying a foal by event stallion Future Guilty Pleasure, who is competed by Alex Bragg. The stallion’s offspring include Laura Nelson’s FLS Winchester, who was the 2024 champion foal at the Sport Horse Breeding of Great Britain’s annual grading, born by embryo transfer out of Laura Collett’s five-star ride Hester. Julia is still considering stallion choices for Molly, who will undergo ICSI this winter.

“A lot of thinking will be going into it and I’ll be visiting a lot of stallions,” she said.

“With Guilty Pleasure, I’ve known him all his life – I bred him, his mother and grandmother, and I owned his great-grandmother so I know the family inside out and I’m very confident in what he breeds. The biggest thing for both is not to detract from their star ability.”

Julia said both mares have settled in well and are “being spoiled in the way they deserve”.

“Maggie and Molly are very much a pair, they’ve known each other all their lives and love each other’s company. They’ve got their own field together and are stabled next door to each other,” she said.

“They’re very unassuming mares, they’re very easy – although Maggie is a little more opinionated. They’re just lovely horses and fitted straight in.

“It really is an honour and I don’t think 10-year-old Julia would have believed that one day this would happen. The key thing Trisha wanted was that they were looked after to the standard that they deserved, and that they had the opportunity to continue to leave a legacy on the sport through a breeding programme – and hopefully that’s what we’re going to deliver. We’ll give them the best life possible, and sprinkle a little bit of their stardust on the next generation, with a bit of luck.”

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