Piggy March has taken over the ride on the three-star winner Scuderia 1918 Humphreys, who has been renamed Halo.
The grey nine-year-old stallion started his eventing career with Australia’s Kevin McNab and was owned by the multi-discipline equestrian team Scuderia 1918. He won Osberton CCI3*-L in October last year with Kevin, who was an Olympic team silver medallist at the Tokyo Games. He has now been bought by Jayne McGivern, whose previous horses with Piggy include the 2018 world team gold medallist and 2o19 European team silver medallist Quarrycrest Echo.
Piggy told H&H: “We went and tried him straight after Osberton last year and he looked a really cute little horse. I knew Jayne is quite excited by and interested in breeding lines, so we thought it was an interesting way of looking at owning an event horse and having a bit of variation and a different interest. We all really liked him and thought it’d be fun to have a go.”
Piggy’s husband Tom March has a breeding operation under the March Stud banner and the Marches hope Halo will be an asset in this in the future. He is a Holsteiner by Humphrey 61 out of the Contender daughter Kimberly III.
“Halo hasn’t covered yet and we will keep it that way for a while until I get a good relationship with him eventing and see what he is,” said Piggy. “I’d like to try to get him to advanced this year and maybe we’ll start covering with him at the end of this season.”
Piggy March added that Halo had a quiet time after Osberton and since then she has just been keeping him ticking over and getting to know him.
She said: “We had a stallion pen made for him so he’s been in work all the way through but also having turnout. Kevin has done an amazing job producing him so it’s just been figuring him out, getting to know what he’s like. We’ve taken him out on the lorry a few times to different places.
“I don’t have much experience with stallions and of course it’s a change of routine and set-up for him, so it’s just finding out more about him. We treat him like the others, but with respect too.”
Halo has only done one CCI3*-L, when he won at Osberton, so Piggy expects to do another competition at this level this spring, with a view to the horse going advanced in the summer and aiming for the Blenheim Horse Trials eight- and nine-year-old class and potentially a CCI4*-L such as Boekelo at the end of the year.
“I’m very interested in him and looking forward to getting him out,” said Piggy. “We’ll do an open novice first, then some open intermediates and three-stars and hopefully an advanced at the beginning of summer time.”
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