BENICIO

In 2007, Callaho purchased this spectacular Hanoverian Stallion in Germany. After being re-located back to Germany in 2011, Benicio went on to spectacularly win the 6-year-old German Dressage Bundeschampionate.

“A great moment” is how Christoph Hess, the commentator, described the presentation of Callaho’s Benicio in 2011 at the Bundeschampionat in the class for six-year old dressage horses, for which the judges actually awarded the dream score of 10.0 for his trot and walk, a 9.5 for overall impression and a 9.0 for his canter.

Six months later, he aced his Stallion Performance test in Schlieckau, Callaho’s Benicio even topped those results: There he received a 10.0 for his walk trot and canter. All in all, he received the highest possible score ten times. His weighted final score of 9.14 meant a clear victory. His final score with emphasis on dressage added up to 9.88, the highest score ever achieved in the history of the stallion performance test. With these results, Callaho’s Benicio even exceeded the record result of his sire, Belissimo M, when he took his test in Zweibrücken in 2002 with a final score of 9.63. 

Benicio, after only six years of formal breeding in Germany, has already produced twenty-eight licensed sons (seven of whom are Premium stallions) as well as dozens of State Premium mares. With several of his sons shattering auction records and no less than eight offspring who qualified for the 2021 Bundeschampionate, this dressage sire is now firmly established as an international icon of dressage breeding.