Mendoza’s Moreno
Gelding
1986 bay stallion 1.54 m, gelded at 6 yo, passed away March 2017
Sire: Pearls Sjamal
Dam: Nasira (by Padrons Kadar)
Full pedigree: https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/mendozas+moreno
Best results: 106 km in Wanrooij The Netherlands
Moreno came into Esther’s life in 1999, he was a beautiful, spoilt opinionated, troublesome stallion and Esther fell in love instantly. She started him under the saddle, he did a few races, in which he got exceedingly excited with each race. And then they started an endurance ride with the racing stable Moreno was living at. He was so full on that he managed to injure himself on that first ride, but the endurance virus had struck and slowly but surely Moreno and Esther started competing at longer distances.
As all Moreno wanted to do was run, he did not see any need for drinking or eating on rides, which gave some challenges for the longer rides. They managed a 90 km and a 106 km ride as their longest distances, but many attempts at 80+ rides fell into difficulty because Moreno would not look after himself. Later on, he was competing with a young rider at shorter distances, and he was great as a daddy-horse for anything Esther needed to do with her young horses. When he got a little bit older, he had some health problems that could not really be explained, but he still enjoyed his outings and was looking fit and happy in his herd of mares. A freak accident at 21 years old when Esther was in England to coach at a training weekend proved fatal. In a way it was typical of Moreno: he made the decision not to come to the UK for Esther.
Moreno was gelded at 6 years old, and before that he produced 2 offspring. In hindsight, he was not really good enough to sire offspring, but at the time he was Esther’s pride and joy, so she made it happen anyway by leasing 2 mares. Moreno was a good looking horse but did not have the best legs and a challenging temperament. He is out of Russian (and Crabbet) ancestors, some that have done well in showing, but not much in performance, though we see a few more with similar lineage these days)
Moreno will live on, in Moragh and his grandson Araghnid and possible other grand foals, but also in everything he has taught Esther about training horses and keep them injury-free (even when they are as injury prone as Moreno was).
