Spontano

Spontano is not the first racehorse to run in Stall " Lone Ranger " ´s colours, but he was (and is to the date) the most successful by far. Spontano is a brown gelding, born 1996, by Kondor out of Spontana, by Nebos, though representing really oldfashioned german bloodlines. He never ran at 2, and was restricted to just a couple of starts as a 3-year-old, due to injury. Nevertheless he managed to win his maiden and a Handicap III, raising some hopes. Another injury and the subsequent castration was followed by year to forget, but as a 5-year-old Sponti was back, repaying all the patience. He won a Handicap III at the prestigious Baden-Baden May-Meeting, scored back-to-back victories in a Handicap II in Hamburg during the Derby-Week, and has never looked back since. 7 more wins in Handicap II and even Handicap I (Germany´s highest Handicap-class) followed, as well as several places (and a heroic try in a Listed Event in Munich, where Sponti finished just under 9 length behind World Champion EPALO) on tracks all over Germany. Spontano even took us to France, to the historic track in Chantilly, where we finshed a honourable 5th, beaten 1/2 length of second place.
His Top-Handicap mark was 86kg (= 92 english rating). A try to bring him back to the track in 2006 failed as Sponti aggrivated his old injury, and he is retired for good now, enjoying a leisure life with our friend Carola Seebauer.

Sponti´s winning in Baden-Baden, May 2000, under a jubilant Martin o´Reilly

In Frankfurt, prior to a Handicap I
(Photo: Jochen Nass)

Thirst
(Photo: Tanja Dietzmann, with many thanks!)

Friends: Belle Fee & Spontano Hannover 2002

Updates 2008 / 2009
Spontano settled in nicely with Carola, who visited us last summer and was amazed to learn how popular our Sponti still is. We took her racing in Hamburg and introduced her to almost everybody as "Spontano´s new owner", and people fell over backwards to tell her what a grand horse he was, and jockey Andreas Helfenbein happily recalled his win on him and posed for a photo. We all grew a couple of centimeters :) !!
So Sponti was merrily adjusting to his new life, until on the 15th of feb.08 Carola found him in his field, in obvious distress. It emerged that he had injured his right eye badly (even though we still really don´t know what happend), and vets had no other option than to remove it.
So our Golden Boy with his big bright eyes is now a bit worse for wear, but, as Carola pointed out, still "the most handsome horse, but only from the left side". The latest news is that Sponti, being the clever boy he is, is adjusting again really well, and is already ridden out again, relying a little bit more on his partner Carola. We breath a sigh of relief, and wish both the best for all the years ahead of them