Tribute To A Champion - CP Qualified

This article is from the October 2019 Horse Deals magazine.

CP Qualified was bred to be a showjumper. A Holsteiner, foaled in 2003, he was by Quite Capitol out of a Corofino mare. He is a real Warmblood with Quidam de Revel, Capitol and Corrado in his pedigree. There are a number of successful Warmblood eventers, but most have a reasonable dose of Thoroughbred to get them around the course. Darcy, as Qualified was known at home only has a little, quite way back thanks to Cor de la Bryere. His success as an eventer is due principally to his training, not the least of which came via Shane Rose who won everything there was to win at three and four star level (now four and five star) in Australia and was a member of the Bronze Medal Team at the Rio Olympics. Olympic participation is the ultimate achievement for any athlete and CP Qualified achieved that and this is his tribute.

Qualified was imported into Australia by George Sanna and Charles Blinkworth and George takes up the story. “Charles and I bought him in Europe as a three-year-old stallion. He was a beautiful type and an impressive mover. He was due to go to the Fences auction in France when we saw him. He had been broken in and walked, trotted and cantered, but had never been ridden over a jump. We saw a couple of videos of him free jumping and he looked very nice and he was a beautiful horse to ride. Charles too was keen to do a bit of breeding and he was very well-bred as a jumper, so we bought him.

“When he arrived in Australia he was still very young, just rising four years old and still too immature to jump, so my then-wife, Rachael did some dressage with him. As I said, he was a very nice mover and super trainable, so she rode him and won the Four Year Old Young Horse Championship at the Sydney CDI in 2007. In retrospect, I wonder if we should have pursued a dressage career with him, but he was bought as a jumper. We started jumping him and he was OK, but a little disappointing and unambitious as a jumper. Over the next year or two we got him to futurity level, but he just wasn’t quite good enough to pursue his career as a showjumper. He was a brave jumper and a good mover, so we thought he might suit eventing, as he was still quite leggy and looked as if he could gallop, so we gelded him and gave him to Christine Bates to campaign. Christine took him to a bunch of stuff and they just won everything they went in. His dressage was already so good and he was jumping futurities, so he was well and truly capable of jumping anything he would find in baby eventing. The idea at that stage was to put him on the market. We had quite a few enquiries and the first was from Shane Rose who wanted to buy him for his mother in law.”

“We originally bought him for my wife, Niki’s mother as a dressage horse,” explains Shane. “She had him for a couple of months, but he kept shying at the kangaroos near her dressage arena. We then took him back to Bimbadeen and sold him to Elizabeth (Lil) and Felicity Wischer, for Lil to event. I had only ridden him a couple of times before he went to Niki’s mum and again before he went down to the Wischer’s in Victoria. But it did not work out. He is a big horse 17hh and he proved just a little too much for her at the time. He was not gelded until he was six or seven and he would occasionally test the boundaries. We offered to take him back from the Wischers and sell him for them. I rode him for a week and liked him and offered to buy him from them. I thought I could do a bit with him and sell him as a CIC horse or something like that. When I offered to buy him, the Wischers kept a half share.

“Then we started to campaign him and he did what he did.” Darcy went on to dominate the top level of eventing in Australia. The major wins include:
• Sydney CCI 3 Star 2013 and 2014
• Taupo NZ CCI3 Star 2015
• Adelaide CCI 4 Star 2015
• Melbourne CCI 3 Star 2016

He was second at the Aachen (Germany) CICO Three Star in 2016 and third in 2017 behind Ingrid Klimke and Michael Jung and was a member of the Bronze Medal Australian Team at Rio in 2016.

“He was meant to be a showjumper, but he became an eventer. The more he evented, the better he got in every phase. He certainly became a lot more careful in the showjumping. I think he quite enjoyed it and also he got to run and jump some solid logs which perhaps made him a little more respectful of the showjumps. When I first took him on, I had no ambitions of him representing Australia at the Olympic Games. I thought he may do OK in some short format events, as his dressage was so good. He really exceeded all my expectations and was selected for the WEG in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. A foot issue kept him from competing at WEG. After Rio, he competed at Luhmühlen CCI4* (now 5*) in 2018 and qualified for the WEG in 2018. His last event with me was the Blair Castle Event Rider Masters in Scotland in August 2018 where we finished fifth.

“The Wischers flew him back to Australia in 2019 to retire him with them. He had a bit of a bony change in his foot and went sore. He wasn’t sore when I finished riding him, but we felt that he had done enough at that level and with the subsequent unsoundness, he was retired. Lil is hoping that with rest and treatment that she can get him sound enough to do a little bit.

“He had nothing to prove and I thought it best to retire him after the Games. He is enjoying a happy retirement with the Wischers, he deserves that.”

Written by Anna Sharpley

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