Our Way 1
STONER CREEK a real HORSE PARADISE Menhammar Stud
Farm in Ekerö is the centre of Margareta Wallenius-Kleberg’s successful breeding of trotting horses. However, the question is, where would Menhammar have been today without one very special horse farm in Kentucky, USA? M argareta WalleniusKleberg remembers her first visit to Stoner Creek, Kentucky, as if it were yesterday. “It was incredibly beautiful, with rolling hills, extensive pasture and open fields.” Norman S. Woolworth, the farm’s owner, and Margareta quickly became good friends. “He had a sense of humour. I remember a photograph he took of me and a horse on the farm. When I got the photograph it said, ‘Horse on the left’ on the back!” When Margareta took over the business 6 OUR WAY MENHAMMAR at Menhammar from her father in the early 1970s, the breeding programme was a work in progress. “It was a bit like mass production at that time; we didn’t have much knowledge about how to breed successful trotting horses,” explains Margareta. During a trip to the United States in 1975, a good friend gave Margareta a tip about a horse he thought she should buy, a mare that had done well on the track and had a promising future in breeding. The mare was Eager Lassie and the seller the legendary American harness racing trainer Stanley Dancer. Eager Lassie was shipped to Menhammar where she began her breeding line, and at the same time Margareta was invited to visit the large horse farm in the heart of Kentucky where the mare had grown up. A visit that became the beginning of a new era. Margareta and Norman kept in touch and after a few years he offered her the opportunity to purchase a stallion at stud from him. Having never owned any stallion of her own, she was a little unsure whether this was the right way to go. However, after a couple of hours of talking they came to an understanding that Stoner Creek and Menhammar would begin a breeding collaboration by establishing an exchange