Look Who's Back: Charmeur

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F.O.C.U.S.

In 2020 the internationally competed Grand Prix stallion Charmeur was retired from competition sport due to an injury and sold to Canada where he was to stand at stud. Three years later, the chestnut KWPN preferent stallion resurfaced in Florida back under saddle as a sport horse and hopefully taking Canadian Jayne Essig into the competition ring.

Charmeur is a 16-year old KWPN stallion by Florencio out of Trendy (by Jazz). He is bred by the late Huub van Helvoirt.

Career in The Netherlands

Barend Tamerus and Eugene Reesink bought Charmeur as a foal at the SELL Foal Auction for 50,000 euro. When the chestnut was 2.5 years old Reesink sold his share to Nico Witte.

Charmeur was licensed at the 2010 KWPN stallion Licensing and became the 2010 KWPN spring Stallion Performance Test winner with 86 points .

Under Emmelie Scholtens, the chestnut won the 2011 and 2012 Pavo Cup Finals and finished 5th at the 2012 World Young Horse Championships. At the 2013 World Championships he had to be retired in the preliminary round.

Madeleine Witte-Vrees took over the ride and made her international show debut at small tour level at the 2015 CDI Mallorca. Charmeur disappeared from the international show scene for three years. Witte-Vrees worked long and hard to bring the stallion to Grand Prix level. Their national Grand Prix debut was in May 2018, their international Grand Prix debut at the 2018 CDIO Rotterdam, followed by the 2018 CDIO Aachen, where they scored 67.196%. Charmeur was involved in an FEI stewarding incident which led to a Yellow card. Witte-Vrees rode him in two more CDI's that year, Oldenburg and Stuttgart.

In 2018 Witte obtained full ownership of the stallion, but an injury ended his competition sport career.

Sold to Canada

Two years later horse dealer Nico Witte sold the then 13-year old stallion as a breeding stallion to Marie-Jose Proulx of Canadream Farms in Canada.

The stallion, however, turned out to have very poor fertility and Proulx suffered a severe blow, having bought a stallion that couldn't breed as Charmeur had been chemically castrated.

Witte-Vrees and Charmeur at the 2018 CDIO Aachen

At the height of his breeding career as a young horse, Charmeur sired over 1300 offspring registered with KWPN. He has sired 4 licensed sons (Gyon, High Five US, Invershin, Jupiler S) and 2 licensed grand sons.

Resurfaced in Florida

After a long time trying, Proulx gave up and resorted to the frozen semen she has in storage of this preferent sire.

She re-homed Charmeur and he moved to Bianca Berktold in Wellington, Florid, but the transaction was kept quiet.

Charmeur first resurfaced in November 2022, when a video was posted on social media in which Kati Daggi was riding the stallion. She had leased the stallion but the deal fell through.

Leased to Canadian

This week, Canadian Jayne Essig announced her new partnership with Charmeur.

"I have been leasing Charmeur since mid February," Jayne told Eurodressage. "I tried him rather serendipitously, not knowing at first that it was him! I am here in Florida for the season with my small tour horse, Denver S (by Jazz x Welt Hit II) and wanted to make the most of my time here. When I heard of a GP horse for lease I reached out to Bianca Berktold and really clicked with him! He is a fantastic horse."

Based on Vancouver Island, BC, Essig owns a small breeding and training business, Equinox Acres Dressage, at her home farm in Nanoose Bay, BC. She has been training with Claire Darnell and plans to enjoy her time with Charmeur learning from him as a schoolmaster.

"With big shoes to fill, for now my main focus is on building a relationship with him," she said. "However I do plan to compete him at the medium tour in the future! Currently I am loving the time I spend with him and am learning a lot."