Holsteiner Grand Prix Stallion Carabas Passed Away

Dressage

Germany

The internationally competed Holsteiner Grand Prix stallion Carabas has died unexpectedly on 22 March 2020.

St. Georg reported that the stallion collapsed and died in his paddock during daily turn-out. He was 22 years old.

Carabas was a 1998 born Holsteiner stallion by Carnaby out of Abony Star (by Roberto x Mahmud x Manometer xx). He was bred by Ernst Daufeldt.

Licensing Champion

The colt became the champion of the 2000 Holsteiner Stallion Licensing in Neumunster and went on to be a high scorer at the 30-day Stallion Performance Test in Warendorf in 2001 (9.05 for dressage, 9.12 for show jumping). At the 70-day testing in Adelheidsdorf, he scored 133 for dressage and only 90 for show jumping, ranking him 7th with 118 points out of 38 participating stallions.

As a youngster he was shown by Oliver and Katrin Luze, who developed the horse for owner Gestut Tannenhof. Katrin rode him to a 7th place in the consolation finals at the 2003 Bundeschampionate and Oliver steered him to an 11th place in the 2004 World Championships for Young Dressage Horses in Verden after winning the consolation finals.

At age 7 the stallion was competed at international small tour level and in 2006 he placed fifth at the Nurnberger Burgpokal Finals.

Sale to Helgstrand

In 2008 Carabas won the brand new German Developing Grand Prix horse show circuit (Medien Cup), which attracted the interest of Danish Grand Prix rider Andreas Helgstrand, who had just decided to leave Blue Hors stud and go independent.

Carabas was bought by Helgstrand's new sponsors, Lotte and Ole Vagner, for a rumoured 1.2 million euro as a horse to keep the rider's Grand Prix career going, post Blue Hors. The Vagners had also bought Bundeschampion stallion Laetare for 520,000 euro at the 2008 PSI Auction for Andreas ride

Andreas and Carabas competed at the CDI's in Wiesbaden, Rotterdam and Aachen and got selected to represent Denmark at the 2009 European Championships in Windsor, but they stranded on a 29th place in the Grand Prix Special.

Sale to Schwiebert

In 2010 Jessica Schwiebert purchased Carabas for her husband Rainer to ride and the stallion moved to his forever home, Helenenhof in Germany.

Oliver Luze initially took on the ride again and they, for instance, showed at the CDI Hagen, the Hamburg Dressage Derby, the CDI Strassen and Verden in 2010.

In the autumn of 2010 Rainer Schwiebert took over the training and competing of Carabas. Their busiest year at international shows was in 2013 with starts in Bremen, Hamburg, Fritzens, Perl, and Kapellen. In 2014 there was only one international (Odense) and in 2015 he did two more (Neumunster, Hamburg).

He was retired from sport in 2015.

Breeding Stallion

Although Carabas did not breed that much, he has produced several successful offspring, 206 of them are registered for sport with the German Equestrian Federation; 22 of them reached S-level.

His most successful offspring include the 2007 World Young Horse Champion mare Cayenne W (under Susan Draper-Pape), the European Junior and Young Riders champion Carlos (Hannah Erbe), and Grand Prix horse Cabanas (Marcus Hermes)

He sired 7 licensed sons.