Breeders line up for champion show-jumper Hickstead's seed

Since Olympic champion show-jumper Hickstead died on Sunday afternoon in Italy, Francis Berger's inbox has been flooded with requests – for the horse's semen.

While jumping at the best venues in the world was Hickstead's full-time job, he also had a part-time job, as a father.

For the past three years, since he won the Olympics with Canadian Eric Lamaze aboard, Hickstead's semen has been available to North American breeders on a limited basis, or about 20 to 40 doses a season.

But since Sunday, Berger, who is in charge of Hickstead's reproductive life from his base in Montreal, has received at least 500 e-mails, requesting Hickstead's semen.

Although Hickstead's stud fee has been $5,500 for each dose, some hopeful breeders in the past few days have been sending credit card numbers, wanting the semen at any cost. While there has always been more demand for Hickstead's semen than there is supply, Berger says, "It's a bit crazy, since he died."

But there is no Hickstead semen left to sell in all of North America, Berger said. Hickstead was about a month away from ending his European tour and his season. He would have been shipped to Florida to spend the winter, where Berger would have had more semen collected.

Berger said the 15-year-old stallion probably would have retired in another year or so, after the 2012 Olympics in London, and then would have become a full-time stallion, breeding about 500 mares a year.

In the past three years, he has sired less than 100 horses worldwide. The oldest in the Lamaze-Berger program are now 2. "I'm hearing from breeders who have some that they are very pretty and funny enough, he seems to throw the foal a little bit bigger than he is himself," Berger said.

In the past, Berger said some breeders were reluctant to breed to Hickstead because, as show jumpers go, he's a bit of a runt at 16 hands high. When he was just 2 the Dutch warmblood breeders' association in the Netherlands refused to approve him for their stud book because its experts said he was too small and not powerful enough to go over the big jumps required of a Grand Prix horse.

A smaller breeders' association approved him and he bred about 10 mares in Europe as a young horse and then was put into training as a show jumper. Top British rider Nick Skelton and Mac Cone (a member of the Canadian show-jumping team that won an Olympic silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics) both tried him and gave him a pass. When Lamaze tried him out, he was almost impossible to ride. But the rider found that he sailed over any fence he asked him to, no matter the height. Lamaze said he couldn't leave him behind.

Years later, after Lamaze won the Olympics with Hickstead, part of Berger's job was to finally get Hickstead approved to make it into the Dutch warmblood stud book. The breeders' association accepted him immediately.

Hickstead's worth? Priceless. Canadian chef d'équipe Terrance Millar said the value of top show-jumping horses over the past 20 years has skyrocketed faster than inflation and fine art. A $300,000 horse three years ago could cost $3-million today.

Last year, the Saudi Arabian Equestrian Federation bought Presley Boy for a reported €7-million ($9.78-million Canadian) for Khaled Al-Eid to ride at the world championships and the London Olympics next year. Totilas, the record-setting dressage horse that won the world championships last year, was sold for a reported €10-million.

Canadian riders, such as Lamaze, have to find Hicksteads. And sometimes it's by sheer luck.

"You can't replace the world's best show jumper," Millar said. "It's a great loss for our team."

But there is one bright spot on the horizon. Lamaze and Berger co-own a mare called Hot Stuff, who will foal an offspring by Hickstead next May.