Tribute to a Champion - KS Genoa

This article is from January 2019 Horse Deals magazine.

This month the tribute is for a mare that created her own successful history about a decade ago. Retired since 2009, KS (Kolora Stud) Genoa was euthanized in September 2018 and this feature pays tribute to her, one of Australia’s greatest showjumpers.

I would not be the first and certainly will not be the last to comment on the contribution mares make to the performance horse world. Where once their role was primarily mother of champions, now they are champions themselves. Think of Winx, Black Caviar and Makybe Diva in the recent past; horses that have had people flocking to the racecourses just to see them. But in the sporthorse world the mares have also been showing the opposition a clean pair of heels. At the recent WEG in the USA, three of the four US Gold Medal Jumping Team were mares, including Australian produced Cristalline and the Individual Jumping Gold Medal combination, Germany’s Simone Blum and DSP Alice were a triumph for equal opportunity. And currently jumping for Australia we have Edwina Tops-Alexander with California, winners of the recent Paris Longines Masters Grand Prix and Rowan Willis winning in international company with his, Blue Movie, 12th in the world at WEG and member of the sixth placed Australian team that qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Genoa was bred by Kinnordy Stud in Queensland and was by the imported Hanoverian stallion, Graf Landau out of a Head Over Heels Thoroughbred mare. She was sold to South Australian, Annett Tonkin and after having a foal was sold to Jo and Peter Anderson for their daughter Bryia. “Genoa was sensitive and could be difficult” says Jo, but Bryia got on with her very well and they had quite a lot of success as a young rider combination.” Due to ill health, Bryia stopped riding the mare and at Brisbane Royal 2004, Peter McMahon was persuaded by his wife Michelle, after a bit of reluctance to ride Genoa. They won the Grand Prix and when he came out of the ring, Peter remarked, “this horse is going to be fantastic.”

The McMahon’s purchased Genoa and Peter had a successful 2005 winning World Cup classes and being declared Champion Part II horse at Sydney Royal. The following year, success continued and the mare was declared Champion Part 1 Horse at Sydney Royal. The mare’s ebullient jumping style certainly pleased the crowds, but Michelle and Peter were concerned that there may be some physical issue that caused the high spirited behaviour. “She was such a lovely horse to deal with on the ground” says Peter, “so we got her completely checked out and they found nothing. We devised a management plan and rode her less and less and she was lunged to keep her fit and we were very selective about the shows she attended.”

The system worked well and in 2006 Peter and Genoa qualified in Europe for the Australian Team at the WEG in Aachen. Fellow team member at the time, Rod Brown, who knew the mare well commented; “Peter and Michelle managed Genoa well; they didn’t confront the issue, they got her fit and had her well prepared for the competitions. In the last six years of her competition career, I don’t think anyone could have ridden her better than Peter. He rode her amazingly well. She was a big occasion horse and even though she would leap and bound, she would have her eyes on the fence and Peter could actually ride her at the fence. She had great ability and was very careful.” “She was not as difficult to ride as she looked” adds Peter. “Once you got in to the ring, she was easy to ride and gave a great feeling over a fence.”
In 2008 Peter and Genoa were selected to go to the Beijing Olympics as part of the Australian Team. The following year they won the Olympic Cup at the New Zealand Horse of the Year Show and with it a first prize purse of $NZ150,000, the most lucrative Grand Prix win in the world that year. It was a hard act to follow and the fact that the unorthodox preparation necessary made the team selection process problematic and says Peter, “she was 15 and importantly, I think she had had enough.” Genoa was retired from competition in 2009, but she had a new career in front of her at Kolora Stud.

Genoa has had an interesting career as a mother and we spoke to Michelle about her breeding programme. “Back in 2006 when embryo transfers were not as common as they are today, we flushed her and inseminated two surrogate mares and Genoa actually had two foals whilst she was at WEG. They were by our stallion at the time Falkrich, the sire of Wirragulla Nicholas. The two fillies were called Gina and G Star. They were broken in in 2009/2010 and were starting to show a bit, but at the time, we were so busy with the racehorses, we did not do much with them. We sent them to David Goodwin and he campaigned them a bit, but eventually we sold Gina to Jamie Priestley and kept G Star. Genoa then had another embryo foal to Charlemagne Ego Z that we sold to Peter’s brother Ashley and is now being ridden by Deon Williams.

“After that we put her in foal to Yalambi’s Carpino Z and she carried that full term. Again we were very involved with the business at home and he was sold to Gemma Kennedy and would be a six year old by now. After that we put both Genoa and her daughter G Star in foal to Emerald. The mares foaled down on the same day, just hours apart. They are four years old now and they are really quality horses. After that she had a foal by our stallion here, Elias-C van de Heffinck and he is a yearling now.

“The vets advised not to let her foal down again and we were happy with that, as we thought we could flush her one final time and get an embryo and use Emerald again, as we were so impressed with the two we have. Like a lot of grey horses she had lumps under her tail and she developed a melanoma abscess whilst we were waiting for the semen to arrive. The vets came and treated her and I asked if they could completely check her out. They did and the news was devastating, as they said she was riddled with cancer and realistically only had a month to live. She was 24, but we were not ready for that, she still had such a bright eye. We said our goodbyes and she was put to sleep on the 18th September. She is buried in front of my stable block and I have placed a black marble headstone to mark her resting place.”

“Genoa has been the best horse I’ve had, I don’t think I will have another horse as good as her” said Peter. Certainly talented horses like Genoa don’t come along often, but there is hope still that her fame will live on through her son, Emerald II, “a clone of his father” says Michelle, her granddaughter, Rubellite and her son Elliott. Whatever these horses achieve in their careers, Genoa will always receive most of the credit and it will be a long time before that black type fades in their pedigree.

Photo: Julie Wilson. Story: Anna Sharpley.

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