*1995
Dark bay Oldenburg gelding
Sire: Sion
Sire dam: Manstein
Breeder: Wilhelm Middelbeck
Movie STERNTALER-UNICEF "Private"
“He is sensitive, but at the same time he has nerves of steel. Riding him is always an experience, because he can actually make you feel intoxicated with movement. That is something he lives for. And it sometimes results in spontaneous actions for which you are not always prepared.”
The son of Sion shows unbelievable willingness. In addition he has three paces that are close to perfection in terms of their basic quality. The dark bay completes his piaffe and passage movements with consummate ease, as though these exercises required neither strength nor effort. With his charm that the international judges also found seemingly irresistible, Sterntaler-UNICEF, just ten years old in 2005, became one of the top performers when Germany won team gold at the European Championships. Initially Ann Kathrin Linsenhoff was not at all convinced that Sterntaler-UNICEF would emerge as her great talent of the future. Her husband had discovered the Oldenburg gelding with such great presence at a training course held at Schafhof, when he was still being ridden by Volker Brodhecker. While Klaus-Martin Rath believed that Sterntaler, an approved stallion who had sired a few descendants, showed great promise, his wife was not so sure that this was the horse for her dressage career. At that time Sterntaler appeared very “masculine” and was very interested in his “surroundings”. Consequently the stallion became a gelding and after a brief period of mourning the shortest dancer in the Linsenhoff stable at 16.5 hands seamlessly continued the winning streak he had enjoyed as a youngster. First places in the St. George and Intermediate I tests and second at the Nuremberg Burg Cup rounded off his 2003 season. Sterntaler-UNICEF then had a year out of competition while undergoing thorough training for his first appearance at Grand Prix level. With success: at the indoor competition in Münster early in 2005 he came second in the Grand Prix Short and first in the Freestyle.
When Ann Kathrin Linsenhoff retired from top-level competition, the career of Sterntaler-UNICEF also appeared to be over. But in 2008 he celebrated a magnificent comeback when, ridden by Mathias Alexander Rath, the two immediately became German Champion.
www.matthias-alexander-rath.de
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