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by Jody Hartstone
June 2004
As a three year old Mick and Sandy Fryatt purchased him along with another Ramzes II colt “Chatswood”, and so the “Belmont” prefix was added. Mick has always had a love for competition stallions, so the decision was made to keep Golden Boy entire and begin to show him.
Breaking in a colt though can be a trying experience – Mick often recounts to me that they could never lead him out of the paddock, he would be easy to catch, but then half way to the gate he would just turn and ‘bugger off’. Mick always has a ‘trick’ for naughty horses, and so a long rope was attached to Golden Boy’s halter to lead him in (unbeknown to the young colt, Mick had tied the end of the rope around a post).
Well when he did his usual turn and gallop off trick he only got so far before the rope pulled tight on the post and the poor colt lost balance and ended up sitting in a ditch!
Far from panic though, he just sat there eating grass and sulking for a long while! After that he was always fantastic to catch and lead in to the stables.
Mick and Sandy competed the young “Goldie” in eventing, dressage and showjumping, but he managed to injure a tendon in a paddock incident. He was then turned away and used to breed a few mares. When I first met the Fryatts they had already moved from Wellington up to Otaki to a brilliant big stud farm. How I met the Fryatts is another story in itself, but I started doing a bit of work for them, and had always admired this small, but gorgeous chestnut stallion out in the colt paddocks.
It was in 1996 when I had finished a successful Pony Club eventing season on the evergreen “Belmont Warendorf” (Winnebago/xx) that I was offered Golden Boy. I was looking for a horse to do dressage on, and Sandy just said “Why don’t you take Goldie?”. At this stage he had done pretty much nothing for three or so years, and was a 10 year old.
I can still remember phoning my parents in Raglan to say “I’m bringing home a stallion – we will need to build some tall fences!”. My parents were shocked to say the least, but are never ones to question my ’hair-brained’ schemes. And so he came home to Raglan.
We really knew nothing about riding and handling stallions, but Golden Boy was so well mannered he really made it easy. In those days we only had a single horse float, but we dragged him all around the countryside in it, competing at Elementary level (I had never really done graded dressage before this point). It certainly was a bit of a novelty competing on a stallion; none were around here six or seven years ago. I think I won my first few classes in a row, and so was bitten by the dressage bug – I thought it was easy!
Golden Boy (now called GB) went on to be Reserve North Island Elementary Champion behind JK Lots of Fun and Katherine Gorringe.
After that first season Mick and Sandy decided to up and move to the UK. GB, who had been on loan, was now for sale. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him so we managed to get the money together to purchase a half share in him. The other half of him is owned by Sandy’s father Howard Hunter, past Chef to the NZ eventing team. It was also about this time that GB passed his Licencing test to be entered into the NZ Warmblood Studbook.
The season that followed saw him progress to Medium and he just kept progressing until we got to Prix St George. We had many wins and placings along the way, at local level right up to Nationals and Horse of the Year.
It was at PSG and Intermediare I level that this horse really began to shine. In his first season at PSG he won both the National Accumulator Leaderboard and the Esprit Musical Leaderboard. He was also awarded the St Georges Trophy for the leading newcomer horse to PSG level. To cap off a beautiful season we were selected to represent NZ at the Brisbane CDI. We placed third here in the PSG class and won the three show “Sunshine Series” at that level.
Once I had a stallion I knew we had to breed from him. Again we were lucky that his manners and temperament were there to lend a hand. There were a few sticky moments (figuratively and literally!) and I thank my somewhat non-horsey parents for their patience as we all learnt the ropes. We have it all down to a fine art now, collecting semen off a home-made dummy (we call her “Marmalade” after her yellow carpeted exterior), and hand-serving visiting mares.
GB’s progeny are doing very well for themselves. His oldest son represented NZ in Australia in the Young Rider team – surely making him the only NZ stallion to gain his Silver Fern and have a son do the same? That son, Kintyre has since been exported to the US but there are plenty of others competing with success in NZ across the discipline.
He is a very prepotent stallion, passing on his looks, paces and temperament to his offspring.
Before this year’s Horse of the Year show I made the decision that Golden Boy was to be retired. He is now 17 years of age, and has nothing left to prove to me or anybody else. Although he never made it to the lofty heights of Grand Prix, he was a fantastically consistent performer at Small Tour level.
His list of major achievements include:
There certainly have been bigger, fancier moving dressage horses around in the past decade or so. But a horse with a bigger heart I have not seen. “Mr B.” is one of those horses that never seems to have an off day. He has been such a trier for me and I will always be indebted to him for his efforts.
One thing I will miss most is the breakfasts we used to share together at the shows. Every morning when I would get my cereal, Mr B would puff himself up at the truck and lean over to me. He loved eating off the spoon, with sweet dishes like Cocoa Pops and Honey Puffs being most to his liking. Afterward he would lick up the remaining milk out of the bowl just like a dog – we loved watching him do that!
GB is now leaving me to head back to Otaki to stand at stud – he is going back to the paddocks of his youth to live out a well-earned retirement. I will certainly miss him.
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