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FALKRICH (You are Here)

Falkrich

Fanhnrich

Farnese Annellies

Falkland Lopshorn

Mallorka Altena

Falkrich

Moltke

Monopol Bambina

Monogal Stormy Water

Looking Stormy (Trotter) Looking Good

Born - 1985, breeder Gerhard Quast

Falkrich – Jumping Stallion of the Year 2007
The Australian bred Holsteiner, Falkrich is this year’s Jumping Stallion of the Year. Standing at Michelle and Peter McMahon-Lang’s Killora Stud, Falkrich is currently represented by progeny in all the Olympic disciplines.
“Gerhard Quast who bred Falkrich, phoned me one day and said he had a couple of yearlings for sale. One was by Lander, one was by Falkrich. I like the Falkrich one when it free-jumped. We brought it home, I broke it in, and it looked like a seriously fancy horse.”
“I had it on the walker machine, he jumped out of the walker, and broke his back. I rang Gerhard – at that stage I was a big believer in the influence of the mare – and I said, can I have another one out of that mare. He said the only one I have from that mare is by Lander, come and have a look. I didn’t like it. He said, I’ll show you Falkrich free jump – and he free jumped just like the colt I’d lost, a dead ringer. I said, the next time you have a really nice young one by Falkrich, let me know. A couple of months later he rang and said, I want to sell Falkrich.”
“So we ended up paying $15,000 for a stallion. When I got him I never promoted him because I wasn’t into the breeding side of things. I was always away competing and we just used him on our own mares, five to ten mares a year.”
“Before I went away to the WEG in 2002, a lot of things had gone wrong, we were losing foals, we’d had a really bad year and I said to Dad – ‘that’s it, I’m not doing it any more, I’m not going to breed any more horses.’ Then two years later, Wirragulla Nicklaus started going well, a dressage horse, Frolich, ridden by Matthew Dowsley, then Judy Dierks produced Finagin as a Grand Prix dressage horse and now she has Frontier on the way to Grand Prix as well, Zac Wilson’s eventer, Frankie Jay and Simone Kann’s Balmoral KS Rolex. The Falkrichs were booming and everyone was ringing wanting to use him.”
“Now he is covering 15 to 20 mares a year. He normally gets them in foal first go, he’s got a very very high fertility rate.”
What does he put on his foals?
“He’s very powerful over the rump. He’s got an extraordinary funny looking rump – it’s humungous, with a big dip in the middle. He’s very powerful behind and very short coupled. He’s not a leggy elegant horse, he’s old fashioned. In the movie with Heath Ledger – A Knight’s Tale – you know the old warhorses with the armour? That’s what he reminds me of. Really short legged, a big barrelled horse – but every single foal he sires is elegant. I don’t know if it is a throwback, but he stamps every single one. And they all have the best attitude, he throws foals with a beautiful temperament.”
What sort of mares does he work with?
“Nina, Nicklaus’ mum is a lunatic just like Genoa, and that is a perfect mix. He’s cool enough to make them work. Simone’s one was light enough to event, Frankie Jay was light enough to event and gallop and not break down – and they just nail the dressage. They are cool, you can push them around and they are not going to blow – you don’t have to work them down for three hours and break them down.”
Falkrich was very much Gerhard Quast’s ‘special recipe’ – Holsteiner over Standardbred. Gerhard imported a number of Holstein stallions to Australia, including Falkrich’s sire, Falkland, and his dam sire, Monopol. But according to Gerhard, “they were both very heavy horses, and I wanted to get them lighter so I went to the trotter. In Germany we had done that with a trotter stallion, Dachs, he was a Derby winner, and we bred him over a Holsteiner mare and that made a jumper who went to the Olympics. I wanted to do that again in Australia, but I wanted trotter not pacer. Looking Stormy, Falkrich’s grand-dam was an unraced three year old when I bought her.”
Bred to Monopol, Looking Stormy produced Monogal, the dam of Falkrich – ‘I sold her to Ulrich Klatte and she produced some good horses for him,” Gerhard recalls.
Although Falkrich was broken in and ridden, he was never competed. “He was a serving stallion,” says Gerhard.
Gerhard’s family in Germany bred horses – Holstein horses – but when he came to Australia in 1956, he soon became involved with strawberries, ending up with a plantation of 220 acres.
“I saw the need for Warmblood breeding in Australia, so I imported Monopol in 1975 and that’s when I began breeding here.”
And that’s where he started with his three trotter bred mares – ‘everyone says don’t tell anyone you used the trotters, but it is my business. I studied the trotter bloodlines, and the cross was very good.’
Following Monopol, Gerhard imported Falkland, in 1979, Lander in 1983 and Cassanova in 1998. More recently he has acquired the imported Hanoverian stallion, Wyndemere and he is using him over his Holstein bred mares. At the age of 75, Gerhard is still breeding half a dozen foals a year…

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