GG Valentine & Heartbreaker

Champion Hunter Mare and Her Foal

Until her retirement from the show ring in 2007 at the prestigious Devon Horse Show, GG Valentine was the grandest of champions in the hunter show ring.  Imported from Europe as a six year-old by Redfield Farm in 2001, her sire and dam are a mystery, but her German breeding – Mecklenburg –has deep roots in European history. In Alexander Dumas’s 1844 novel, The Three Musketeers, d’Artagnan rides a “vigorous Mecklenburg horse.” She was named for her owner Barbara Kearney’s grandmother, Gramma Gail, who was born on Valentine’s Day.

Under the training of Susie Schoellkopf and Jennifer Alfano of SBS Farms and ridden by Jennifer, for six years “GG Valentine” was synonymous with winning.  A gifted natural athlete, GG and Jennifer started their dream career with an unbelievable winning streak in the First Year Green Working Hunters where she won the championship at Devon (PA), the Washington International Horse Show and Madison Square Garden, turning in the two best rounds in New York’s $100,000 National Horse Show Hunter Championship.

She was named USEF Horse of the Year in the First Years. In 2002, she was Second Year Green Working Hunter and Grand Green Working Hunter Champion at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show.  GG’s 2003 and 2004 highlights included winning Regular Working Hunter titles at Harrisburg and Syracuse and, in June 2006, she won the Grand Hunter Championship at the Saratoga (NY) Classic shortly after winning Best Mare in the Hunter Division and Bunty Sellers Perpetual Trophy at Devon.  During her farewell lap at Devon, her trainer said, “GG always wanted to win; all you had to do was stay out of her way.”

© Somerset SportArt

As her competitive career came to a close, GG switched gears to become the mother of future champions like her colt, Heartbreaker, born January 14, 2010 in Ocala, Florida. A light bay with two hind socks, his sire is the chestnut Belgian warmblood stallion, Oh Star, owned and ridden by 2000 U.S. Olympic show jumping team alternate, Todd Minikus. The veterinarian attending the colt’s birth called him one of the “fastest” he’d ever seen to get up and on his feet.  Much like his extraordinary mother, it sounds like Heartbreaker’s show career is off and running.

GG Valentine and Heartbreaker were immortalized as a mare and foal in
Breyer's Traditional line from 2010 to 2019.