Remy Bastings and KWPN Stallion Hennessy No Longer a Combination

Dressage

The Netherlands

Dutch dressage rider Remy Bastings and the KWPN licensed stallion Hennessy are no longer a combination.

Hennessy is a 9-year old by De Niro out of Silhouette x Jazz x Ulft). He is bred by Ploegmakers-van Bavel and owned by Verhagen Horse Service in partnership with VDL stud. His original name was Handsome Boy.

Young Horse Success

Hennessy was licensed at the 2015 KWPN Stallion Licensing and became the winner of the 2015 KWPN spring stallion performance testing.

He was first trained by Vai Bruntink, but was withdrawn early from the 2016-2017 KWPN Stallion Competition circuit due to an injury.

Hennessy was pulled from Bruntink's stable and moved to Kim Koolen, where he only stayed briefly. By the end of 2017 Hennessy was put in training with Remy Bastings, who competed him on the 2017-2018 KWPN Stallion Competition Circuit and finished fifth in the finals.

As of 2019 Remy has been competing Hennessy at national ZZ-Zwaar and small tour level.

TV Personality

Hennessy's co-owner Steffi Verhagen became a Dutch tv-celebrity when she entered the tv-dating show "Farmer Seeks Wife" iN 2018. She met her partner Roel through the show, they moved in together in November 2019 and welcomed their first child, daughter Sterre on 22 January 2021.

In March a tv show in which Verhagen visits Helgstrand Dressage in Denmark was aired in which the small-scale horse farmer is presented with an example of a big, successful horse business. In the show she reveals that she and her father are thinking of selling Hennessy. The show was taped long before it was aired on 18 March 2021.

Bastings and Hennessy Split

One week after the airing of the tv show, Remy Bastings announced that he is no longer riding the stallion.

On his Facebook page Bastings posted a photo of him winning the Inter I Kur to Music at the CDI Brno in August 2020, the horse's first international show. "This was the first and final time our national anthem was played for us together," said Bastings. "Farewell my black friend. It was a bumpy road but I enjoyed it!"

To Eurodressage he stated that, "I agreed with the owners not to say anything more about it. the tv-show didnt give me new information that I didnt already know."