Major Achievements
Profile
| The 16.2 bay KWPN 14 year old stallion Peppermill was bred by W. Verstappen in the Netherlands and has been campaigned for the past 6 years by John Whitaker with outstanding success. |
| During this time, amongst many other major competitions, Peppermill has won the Grand Prix in San Patrignano and Rome and was the winner of the £90,000 Grand Prix at the 2009 Global Champions Tour in Valencia. He has been the anchorman in 22 Nations Cup teams in the last three years and was part of the British Team at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. |
| In May 2008, Great Britain won the second leg of the 2008 Samsung Super League FEI Series in Rome. John Whitaker and Peppermill was the Team Manager's choice to jump off against USA and the combination pulled everything out of the bag to jump a third foot perfect round to take the victory for Great Britain. Repeating his treble clear round performance in the previous day’s Samsung Super League competition, Peppermill claimed victory in the Grand Prix by jumping a further double clear round. In 2011 he was once again part of the Bronze Medal winning GB European Team in Madrid. |
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| Peppermill was purchased as a promising 4year old in the Netherlands by his current owner and was campaigned for three years carefully on the British National circuit by Stuart Harvey, during which time he accumulated 84 double clear rounds. |
| His sire, Burggraaf, has had a huge influence on the breeding of showjumpers – at the 2006 Super League Nations Cup in Germany all the UK riders were competing on KWPN horses, with Burggraaf having sired Peppermill, Tim Gredley’s mount Omelli, the French team’s Obelix, and being the grandsire of Michael Whitaker’s mare Insultech Portofino. |
| Burggraaf combined two of the most successful Hostein jumping lines – Landgraf and Cor de la Bryere – in his pedigree. On his dam side he went back to the famous Holstein lineage 7126, a family which has produced the approved stallions Accord I and II, Acrobat I, and Chicago, amongst others. Burggraaf has produced not only an impressive number of approved stallions but also many top class broodmares, and is known for passing on his size, power, and jumping ability, all of which Peppermill has inherited. |
| Peppermill’s dams sire Voltaire, is one of those maverick examples of a horse that nobody wanted initially, which then grows into one of the great showjumping stallions! He was a bit small, had a problem with one hoof, and was rejected by the Oldenburg licensing commission. Jan Greve and Henk Nijhof heard that the young stallion was for sale, liked his technique, and took him home to The Netherlands. |
| He just scraped a grading by the KWPN and went on to stand at the famous Watermolen stud. He seemed to have combined the best of the Selle Francais and German lines to produce an outstanding performance, and one that he passed on to his offspring, along with his easy temperament. Peppermill seems to have inherited many of the good traits from both sides of his pedigree. |