Ones to watch
Olympic shortlisted showjumper Kimba Flamenco
OWNER/BREEDER KIM BARZILAY
“WHEN my rider Emma-Jo Slater was pregnant, it seemed a good time to put our great mare Uttah Van Het Indihof in foal and Billy Twomey suggested Je T’Aime Flamenco. He gets his name from being born at my Kimba Farm Stud, by Flamenco, and at home he’s known as Codi, from FlamenCO and InDI.
“Emma does a fantastic job teaching the young horses the ropes and we knew Codi was special from his first couple of shows – he didn’t want to touch any fences. He’s a bit like a librarian – he always seems quite studious, so if he thought he’d done something wrong in the ring, he’d probably go home and Google it to see how he could have done it better.
“Billy had already had his London 2012 ride
Tinka’s Serenade and King George V Gold Cup winner Lizziemary from me and he got in touch to say, ‘I hear your horse is going well!’ The idea was possibly that he would be sold, but we were enjoying ourselves so much I decided we should actually do the VIP bit at these nice shows and it’s been wonderful. Of course, there are days when he has a pole or a time-fault and you think, ‘Why am I doing this? This horse is worth a lot of money and probably ought to be sold,’ but seeing him win the Falsterbo grand prix was the proudest moment.
“Receiving the letter in January that we’d been shortlisted for the Olympics with our home-bred was a dream come true – who knows whether he’ll actually go, but that was the start of the dream.”