Balubeh do roeh | Baloubet du Rouet

چهار نعل: Balubeh do roeh | Baloubet du Rouet

In the Normandy gardens of France, amid the green pastures of Saint-Aubin-de-Terregatte, a bay foal was born whose name would forever be linked with the word…

Baloubet du Rouet was bred on May 8, 1989 in Normandy by Louis Fardin. His sire, Galoubet A, was by Almé Z and had a place in the gold-medal French team at the 1982 World Championship in Dublin; his dam, Mesange du Rouet, was also deliberately infused through her sire Starter with the Thoroughbred blood of Rantzau xx to enhance speed, courage, and jumping ability. In his early years, this bay horse was developed in France under the saddle of the experienced Brazilian rider Nelson Pessoa; at six he reached the final and in Fontainebleau, after winning the young stallions test, claimed the title of French champion in the seven-year-old stallion class in 1996.

Baloubet’s destiny changed when, at nine years old, his saddle passed from Nelson to his son, Rodrigo Pessoa, and from then on he competed under the Brazilian flag for owner Diogo Pereira Coutinho. This partnership became one of the most successful in show jumping history. In 1998, this same horse, still with Nelson Pessoa on his back, finished eleventh individually and fifth with the Brazilian team at the World Equestrian Games in Rome; shortly afterward, that same year, Rodrigo and Baloubet finished first in the FEI World Cup Final in Helsinki and celebrated the first of their three consecutive titles.

The following year, in Gothenburg, the same pair became World Cup champions for the second time, and in 2000, in Las Vegas, they produced a faultless final and stood on top of the world for the third year in a row; an achievement no other horse or rider has repeated to this day. That same year, at the Sydney Olympic Games, Baloubet won the team bronze medal with the Brazilian team, but in the individual final he was eliminated after three consecutive refusals; a bitter outcome that many considered the loss of a certain gold medal.

Revenge for that disappointment came four years later, at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Rodrigo Pessoa and Baloubet du Rouet, with an almost flawless round, initially finished second, but after the Irish champion Cian O'Connor and his horse Waterford Crystal were disqualified for a doping violation, the Olympic individual gold medal went to Baloubet and Rodrigo. That same year, Baloubet was named the world’s best horse and also topped the major finals in Paris-Bercy, Spruce Meadows, Geneva, and Las Vegas; in 2005 he also won the Las Vegas World Cup Invitational Grand Prix title.

He officially retired from international competition in February 2008 at the age of nineteen; a horse whom the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) later called “the horse of a lifetime” in a review of a century of competition.

But Baloubet du Rouet’s legacy was not limited to the competition arena. He entered breeding in the late 1990s and was approved in multiple studbooks, including Selle Français, Holstein, Belgian and Swedish Warmblood, and Hanoverian. His offspring, including Gitane du Brumans II, Palloubet d'Halong, Querly-bet Hero, Bubalu VDL, and the influential stallion Balou du Rouet, joined the ranks of the world’s top international show jumping horses, and the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH) placed him among the world’s leading stallions. Baloubet du Rouet died peacefully in Portugal on August 7, 2017, at the age of 28; but his name still lives on in the pedigrees of many of today's show jumping champions.

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