Hugh Graham has big hopes for the elegant gray.

Hugh Graham will be one of the first to tell you that breeding horses is far from an exact science.
It’s a recipe made up of careful matching of bloodlines and trusting fate, with a healthy sprinkle of optimism for good measure.

The breeding program Graham and Seymour Epstein developed at KingRidge Stables now has more than 75 offspring to its name, with many talented prospects coming of age.

The headliner at the moment is Executive Privilege 3E, a classy gray Canadian Sport Horse gelding. Graham rode him to the top of the $82,076 Caledon Cup Final CSI-W on Sept. 27 in Palgrave, Ont.

“This was the biggest track he’s seen, but he handled it really well—he jumped around like a hunter,” Graham said of the 9-year-old gelding. “I was impressed. I haven’t seen the video yet, but I know what it felt like. It felt pretty easy for him.”

Just four of the 28 starters qualified for the jump-off, and Graham, who was 26th in the original order, had the advantage of going last in the second round. He and Executive Privilege 3E easily shaved a full second off second-placed Yann Candele’s time aboard Mustique.

“He’s very competitive in jump-offs—he’s very quick and handy,” Graham said. “He may have an unlucky rail here and there, but I always come out of the ring thinking he jumped great. He always gives you a really good feeling off the ground. He’s a trier.”

Graham broke Executive Privilege 3E as a 2-year-old, and after a brief stint in the pre-green hunters the gelding switched to the young jumper divisions and was quite successful there at 7 and 8. He won a few smaller grand prix classes in 2008, then began stepping up the ranks this year.

“He’s really a nice horse—he’s got a nice personality and he’s talented. I really like him,” Graham said. “He’s got a little bit of blood in him, but I’ve spent a lot of time getting him broke. He’s very well educated on the flat. It makes him very competitive in jump-offs, because he’s so well broke.”

Despite collecting 20 World Cup points in the class, Graham isn’t focusing on qualifying for the FEI World Cup Final (Switzerland) next spring.

“He’s quite a good horse,” he said. “If he keeps developing the way he’s coming along, and he doesn’t sell, he could be a horse for the [2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games]. It’s always in back of your mind, but I don’t want to go there just to be there. I’d want to go if he looked like he’d be a contender.”

Graham plans to show Executive Privilege at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto, Ont., in November, then aim for the HITS Ocala Winter Circuit (Fla.).

Graham, 60, is a veteran of the Canadian Equestrian Team, having represented them in two Olympic Games, three Pan American Games and one World Equestrian Games. He began his partnership with Epstein in 1990, and he acts as head trainer and vice president of operations at KingRidge, in both King, Ont., and Reddick, Fla. Roberto Teran shares the riding and showing duties at KingRidge.

“We were breeding 15 or 20 a year, but we’re cutting back a bit,” he said. “It’s just a lot of work for me to manage all that. I think we bred nine or 10 this year. I manage it all, but we have some other riders. I got away from the actual breaking of the young ones a few years ago—I used to break everything.

“Now I more or less manage the operation, and when they get going, I make sure they stay on track,” he added. “It’s always fun to find one that’s got talent and develop it.”

Executive Privilege 3E is a product of an extensive embryo transfer program at KingRidge.

“We used to do mostly embryo transfers until the last two or three years,” Graham said. “It’s interesting, because if you have a really nice mare and you breed her to the same stallion three or four times [in the same year via embryo transfer], you get three or four horses that are all different. It’s not a science.”

Graham said one year KingRidge had four full siblings out of one mare, and one was 17.2 hands and one was 15.2. They were all different colors.

“Just because you get two full siblings doesn’t mean you have two of the same horse,” he noted.

Executive Privilege 3E is out of the first foal produced by the KingRidge breeding program, a mare named Galaxy, and by Class Action.

Galaxy, who is by Aerobic, competed in the jumper ring but found her calling as a broodmare. “She’s a sweet horse and a nice jumper, but she kind of stalled at the preliminary level. She just didn’t have the scope to go on into the opens. We bred her, and we’ve got several really nice jumpers out of her,” Graham said.

KingRidge also stood Executive Privilege’s sire, Class Action, “but we ended up gelding him because he was too difficult to manage, and I didn’t want him to hurt somebody,” Graham said. “I sold him as an equitation horse a year ago. He was an OK horse in the ring, but he wasn’t a superstar. He had a lot of scope, but I think the stallion thing affected his brain—he didn’t always focus the best.

“We tried to freeze [his semen], and we couldn’t get it to freeze,” he continued. “But now, I’ve got three or four jumpers coming into the grand prix ranks by him that are all stars. That’s the way it goes.”