Larissa Kneip

France's racing and breeding community is in mourning following the passing of Larissa Kneip, breeder, trainer, sales consignor, and the owner of Haras de Saint Arnoult, who died suddenly at home on Tuesday. She was 51. Originally from Luxembourg, Kneip gave up a career in broadcast journalism to pursue a life with horses, settling near the town of Exmes, where she ran her picturesque Normandy farm in tirelessly successful fashion while wearing a number of different hats.  Active in all divisions of the sales market, from foals to breezers, she...

The first mare covered by Elarqam (GB) at Haras de Saint-Arnoult has been tested in foal. Calima Mon Amour (Fr) (Shirocco {Ger}), already the dam of the Group 3-placed and listed winner Mascha (Fr) (Le Havre {Ire}), has been scanned in foal on a single cover after delivering a foal by another young Saint-Arnoult stallion, Seabhac. She also has a yearling colt by Almanzor (Fr). Elarqam, a Group 2-winning son of two Guineas winners in Frankel (GB) and Attraction (GB) (Efisio {GB}), joined Haras de Saint-Arnoult in Normandy at the...

The Route des Etalons was established in 2010 in an attempt to stimulate a flagging French stallion scene. A little over a decade on, it could be said that it's 'job done'. That doesn't mean that the annual open weekend of Normandy studs has been shelved. Its popularity has grown year on year for breeders and bloodstock pilgrims alike, and it is only a global pandemic that has stopped it run in 2021. It will, however, be staged online across this weekend, with videos of the 108 stallions involved shown...

A delayed and disrupted breeze-up season finally got underway in France on Wednesday with Osarus staging the first thoroughbred auction to be conducted entirely online in Europe. From an original catalogue of 79 juveniles, 21 had been withdrawn prior to the sale, but Osarus received 10 supplementary lots which had been rerouted from the cancelled BBAG sale in Germany. The turnover of €509,500 was almost exactly half of previous year's tally but that was derived from 15 fewer horses being sold—32 in total from 63 offered. The average price dropped...

As the covering season gets underway, if ever there was a feel-good story to counteract some of the more commercial starkness of the modern-day breeding industry it is the tale of Tiberian (Fr). The horse conceived to give his sire Tiberius Caesar (Fr) some respite from the frustrations of his day job as the teaser at Haras du Logis went from being something of a peculiarity to a group-winning globetrotter who has now earned the chance to make his mark on the breed. The first foal and now one of...