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P.O. Box  3, Upperco, Maryland 21155      Phone: 410-239-7254

SIRE :

Special Memories’  SIRE  is the famous Trakehner stallion Abdullah (Donauwind -Abiza E*).  Abdullah, ridden by Conrad Homfeld, dazzled the world when they won Team Gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Homfeld and Abdullah  then took to the Olympic podium again when they won the individual show jumping  Olympic Silver at the 1984 games.

Along with multiple grand prix wins, Abdullah competed on numerous successful international Nation cup teams.  Abdullah the following year in 1985 won the annual international jumping jewel the World Cup.  In 1986, Abdullah assured his place as one of the great show jumpers of all time by winning the Team Gold at the World Championship  at Aachen where he was the leading horse of the competition and finished as the silver medalist individually. As could be expected, Abdullah was honored as one of the top fifty horses of the 20^th century by the Chronicle of the Horse

Abdullah  is by Donauwind who is said to be one of the most influential heredity transmitters of riding horses in Trakehner breeding.

Abdullah is out of the elite mare Abiza, dam of many successful sport  horses and sires including Ameigo (eventing bronze medalist Pan Am Games and sire of Rafki and dam’s sire of Storyteller).  Abdullah himself has sired many successful IHF, IJF and AHSA Horses of the Year, along with such grand prix jumpers as Special Memories, Airborne Monticello (Olympic and World Games silver medalist),  Abracadabra (multiple grand prix wins), and Cabdulla du Tillard (top French young jumper and sire).  Abdullah is also frequently found in many good jumpers’ line (Advocate, Agincourt).  Notably, Abdullah is frequently listed as one of the top sires of jumpers in the world on the World Breeding Sport horse Federation Index of Sires.

Dam :

Special Memories’ DAM  is Kluwall (Cornwall-Klutassen).   Kluwall was a thoroughbred mare that boasted a mare line that included Fifinella the only mare to win the Oaks and Epsom Derby.  Fifinella was also the dam of Felina- a stakes winner and the granddam of Hilena another stakes winner.  

Her sire Cornwall (stakeswinner) was the sire of several noted USA hurdle horses. (Home to Papa-Fairhill Steeplechase Stake)  Kluwall  was trained as a racehorse, but she could jump.  With little to no schooling, she was taken for schooling romps through the Greenspring  Hunt country as part of her conditioning program by her owner Jennfer Small..  (She was rumored to have jumped the seven foot chain link fence at Pimlico racetrack after losing her rider.)  Later, when she became a broodmare, she routinely visited the neighbors’ horses by jumping, on her own, a line of post and rail fences that made up the stiff hunt country of the Greenspring Hunt.  Even the addition of  more and higher rails  did not discourage her cat-like grace.  She was even known, during a visit to a breeding farm to have jumped a seven panel gate in the moonlight to visit with mares and their newborn foals.   While her owner thought she was the breeder of racehorses, Kluwall’s dominant predisposition for jumping would change all that.

It should have come as no surprise that Kluwall’s first born should become known as a jumper and not a racehorse. This first foal “free” jumped early on at her mother’s heels.   Kluwall’s first foal, by Yankee Lad, after a brief time as a racehorse, eventually showed under the name Touch of Class.  After careful nurturing by a host of horseman,  the bay, elegant and petite 16 hand Touch of Class ridden by Joe Fargis, was to make show jumping history in 1984 by winning both Team Gold and Individual Gold.  

Touch of Class was the first horse to ever jump a double clear round in the Olympics when she won the Gold medal in 1984 Los Angeles.  She jumped a total of 90 out of 91 jumps clear for the entire Olympic games.  So big and wide were the oxers (from 4ft 9 inches to  5 ft 6 inches high and  6 ft 6 inches to 7 ft 2 inches wide), that it   was rumored that the oxers were larger then her  stall! 

The United States Olympic Committee, recognizing this mare’s tremendous effort at the Olympic games, awarded Touch of Class the USOC Athlete of the Year, the first nonhuman so named.  Touch of Class was also named as one of the 50 most Influential Horses of the 20^th Century by the Chronicle of the Horses and was named to the Show Jumping Hall of Fame.  Following her win at the Olympics,  Touch of Class and Joe Fargis went on to win the Washington Presidents Cup, the New York Grand Prix (National Horse Show) and the Pennsylvania National Grand Prix (Harrisburg) (the triple crown of indoors).  In addition to her Olympic win, she won over six grand prixes, was second and third in another  14 grand prixes and competed in six winning international nation cup teams. 

After being thrilled to see the homebred Touch of Class win double gold at the  1984 Olympics and also having been dazzled by the great gray trakehner Abdullah,  her co-breeder Dorothy Rowland decided that Kluwall,  should be bred to Abdullah.  The extraordinarily dominant jumping gene was finally recognized and won out over the racing gene.  In 1986,  a gray colt  was born by Abdullah out of Kluwall.  That colt was aptly named Special Memories.  

Kluwall was the dam of  two grand prix jumpers, Touch of Class and Special Memories.  A third foal Crocodile Tears xx (Elephant Walk) was a successful show horse and one of America’s leading  timber horses (won or placed in 8 out of 13 starts over fences) winning the richest Steeplechase at the time. 

In addition, another foal Skibbereen proved to be a successful show horse, field hunter and later in life dressage horse. 

A full sister to Touch of Class, Summer High is a successful broodmare and part of the Touchstone Valley’s small but select broodmare band..  Summer High is the dam of a young, yet unproven,  thoroughbred  stallion Chase the Memory (by Corridor Key) for whom the Farm has high hopes.  Summer High is expecting a 2003 foal by Oxford (by Burggraff out of a Voltaire mare) with a return breeding to Novalis (by Olympic Jus de Pomme )   Her daughter Easy Elegance (Abdullah/Summer High) has a two year by D’Accord (by Olisco) owned and bred by
Jennfier and Jacqueline Small.She is booked to Noble Champion (multiple grand prix winner by Noble Roi)  for 2003.

Thus, Special Memories carries two strong “blue hen” mare lines on his sire and dam line: Abiza, awarded Elite status  by the ATA because of her incredible produce record,  and Kluwall,  rightly noted as a premier American Sporthorse broodmare and an example of the finest in the American thoroughbred mare base.

Abdullah at the 1984 Olympics

Donauwind

Kluwall

Touch Of Class at the 1984 Olympics

Crocodile Tears

  Skibbereen at Elkridge Harford HunterTrials

Abdullah

Donauwind

Pregel

Donaulied vom Schimmelhof

Boris

Donau vom Schimmelhof

Abiza *E*

Maharadscha

Famulus

Marke

Abendrot

Absalon

Arbeitgeberin

Kluwall xx

Cornwall xx

Some Chance xx

Chance Play xx

Some Pomp xx

Corinne Dailey xx

Swift and Sure xx

Headdress xx

Klutassen xx

Rustom Sirdar xx

Nearco xx

Mrs. Rustom xx

Hilena xx

High Cloud xx

Felina II xx