TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1056824
her girlhood. "He was a ver y discreet man," she says. " Ver y straightfor ward, ver y respected. Not ver y talkative, maybe even a little cold: he hid his emotions. Certainly compared to my grandmother, who was from the south and more voluble. A good mixture." Even the humans manage a good cross here, it would seem. One way or another, anyhow, the passion within passed down—along with the farm—to Gibson's mother Aliette, a renowned horsewoman who found a husband of similar stamp in the bloodstock agent Gilles Forien. "My grandfather didn't have that many mares, but bred Rescousse to win the Prix de Diane and finish sec- ond in the Arc," Gibson recalls. "But by 1984 he felt the time had come to let his daughter transform the farm into something more commercial. She had become passionate about horses through show jumping—and from this, I think, she developed what I think re- mains our marque de fabrique of Mon- taigu." Gibson condenses that trademark in a single word: respect. "Respect for the horse," she says. " We have never pushed the yearlings too hard during their preparation, we don't over-lunge, we don't overdo any- thing. And, whatever happens, they get turned out in the paddock ever y morn- ing. I know other people also take great care of their horses. All I know is that my mum's been doing it the same way Claude Guerlain