Hermitage Kalon | Ermitage Kalone

چهار نعل: Hermitage Kalon | Ermitage Kalone

In the red-earth stables of La Ferme de l&39;Amans in southwestern France, a bay foal was born whom no one knew would one day, beneath the Eiffel Tower,…

Ermitage Kalone, the bay stallion of the Selle Français breed, was born on 11 May 2014 at La Ferme de l'Amans farm in Moissac, in southwestern France, bred by Magali Dessalles. Standing at about 173 centimeters, he is the son of the famous stallion Catoki from the Holsteiner line; a stallion whose offspring also include Cath Me If You Can and Contanga 3. His dam, Bellaventure Kalone, was a daughter of the great stallion Kannan who was injured at a young age and never entered the competition arena; thus Ermitage became her first and most famous offspring. His granddam, Blague du Maury, also produced the 1.60-meter Prestige Kalone, whom Olympic veteran rider Philippe Rozier rode; a pedigree that places Ermitage within a truly proven maternal line.

The Belgian rider Gilles Thomas took the reins of this horse at the age of six. Since Ermitage also served as a breeding stallion at the same time — including at Stal Nieuwenhof under Marc Van Dijck — his sporting career was designed with caution and calm; he only moved up to the 1.60-meter level about a year before mid-2025. This horse, owned by the Thomas family’s relatives, the Van Dijck family, according to Gilles Thomas himself combines “the style of a show horse, the precision of an equitation horse, and the speed and power of a jumping horse”; and what sets him apart from his peers is the temperament that Thomas has repeatedly emphasized.

The brilliant season of this pair began in 2023, when Ermitage Kalone secured Gilles Thomas’s first senior national title at the Belgian Show Jumping Championship. 2024 continued with even greater momentum: the pair’s first five-star podium at the Longines Global Champions Tour Grand Prix of Madrid with third place, qualification for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with the Belgian team (eighth place and also advancement to the individual final), the bronze medal in the Rolex Grand Prix of Geneva from the Rolex Grand Slam series with a double clear round, and at the end of the season, second place and the runner-up title in the Longines Global Champions Tour Super Grand Prix in Riyadh.

But the defining moment came in June 2025. Gilles Thomas, who at that point was leading the LGCT standings, and Ermitage Kalone crossed the finish line in the final jump under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris with a stunning time of 42.92 seconds and claimed the Longines Global Champions Tour Grand Prix of Paris title; a victory that left Lillie Keenan and Denis Lynch behind.

Just a few weeks later, at the Longines FEI Jumping European Championship in A Coruña, Spain, the pair led the Belgian team to team gold with five faultless rounds and also won the individual bronze medal. This double European achievement earned Ermitage Kalone the title of “Cheval de l'année,” or French Horse of the Year, for 2025.

In the autumn of that same year, Ermitage Kalone, together with Gilles Thomas’s two other horses, Qalista DN and Luna van het Dennehof, led him to the overall season championship of the Longines Global Champions Tour; an honor that made Thomas, at the age of 27, the youngest champion in LGCT history.

Today Ermitage Kalone holds a steady place among the global elite rankings of show jumping based on the Longines/EquiRatings scoring systems; a horse whose rare combination of breathtaking speed in the final jumps and flawless precision at heights of 1. 60 meters has made him one of the enduring names at the summit of the sport of show jumping.

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