October 25, 2022 
Sometimes it takes a miracle to accomplish great things. More often than not, it takes an act of faith.
“If you build it, they will come,” was the ghostly incantation that directed Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella to build a baseball stadium in the middle of an Iowa cornfield in the 1989 blockbuster, Field of Dreams. When it comes to the story of the Mexican breeding farm and international showgrounds, La Silla, the analogy isn’t far off.
Maybe there wasn’t a disembodied voice speaking to founder Alfonso Romo Garza in northeastern Mexico in the early 1990s, but there certainly was leap of faith. Today, the La Silla Studbook and its ‘LS’ initials at the end of a horse’s name are synonymous with show jumping quality thanks to horses such as Breitling LS, Chela LS, Sancha LS, and Rebozo LS, to name a few. But at the onset of any project, there are never any guarantees for success.
Alfonso Romo Garza (better known as ‘Poncho”), a successful entrepreneur and avid equestrian, began his Monterrey-based La Silla facility with one idea in mind: improving Mexican show jumping from the bottom up.
Throughout the development of La Silla as an important player in the international showjumping breeding and competition spheres, Poncho never lost sight of this dream. La Silla horses are now sought by buyers around the world, with many competing internationally under a range of flags, including the Mexican. At the same time, the La Silla international show jumping competitions have achieved a reputation for being among the finest in the world.
“[Poncho] is a very successful businessman who has focused primarily on achieving growth in every industry he has entered,“ explains Pilar Cepeda, director of La Silla for over 30 years. “He has always had foremost in his mind the goal of helping Mexico.”
Horses for the future
A passionate rider from the time he was very young, it was only logical that he should seek out ways to expand his role in the sport.
“Poncho has ridden and jumped in national competitions from the time he was young; however, his first purchase of a horse as a sponsor was for the well-known Dutch rider, Jan Tops. This was the international mare Doreen La Silla, who was seventh in the Seoul Olympics, followed by Top Gun La Silla, who went on to win team gold for the Netherlands and place fifth individually in the Olympics in Barcelona.
Spurred by that success, Poncho became interested in sponsoring other international riders like Rolf-Goren Bengtsson, for whom he bought Ninja La Silla, European Champion in 2011 and silver medalist in Beijing.
Over the years, he turned his attention to what he could do with the mares he had bought when the moment of retiring them from the sport arrived. Breeding was the answer he came up with, but true to form, Romo Garza went one step further.
“He bought a number of very good mares that came on the market. One of them was Nick Skelton’s Olympic mount Dollar Girl, who gave us some outstanding foals—you will find her bloodline in many of the pedigrees. The same was true of Carrera La Silla, who won the Grand Prix of Aachen; Queen of Diamonds La Silla, winner of the Grand Prix of Rome and member of the gold medal Nations Cup team for Belgium in 1993; and Renata La Silla, who was successful in European competitions.
He also brought proven dams to Mexico, such as Gracia, the dam of the unforgettable ET. Because he was an agricultural engineer, Poncho knew that he had to start with the best stock; he could not afford to go “second best,” Cepeda notes.
At the time La Silla was launching its breeding operation, the sport in Mexico was undergoing a shift away from Thoroughbreds to warmbloods, reflecting a broader global change. Mexico’s relatively isolated geographic location was far from the warmblood breeding hubs of Germany and France, and getting these more “modern” horses, was a complicated, expensive and risky affair for Mexicans.
“It was always Poncho’s thinking that if the country does not have horses bred here in Mexico, the sport will not develop. It will hit a wall,” says Cepeda. The La Silla breeding operation has played a significant role in the expansion of that capability in Mexico.
Once upon a time in Mexico: International competition
“Show jumping has always been an important sport in Mexico. Participation in competitions at the local and state level is still within the grasp of many. Prize money is low but so are the entry fees,” asserts Cepeda.
At the same time, Mexico is far from a newcomer to the international scene.
“Humberto Mariles, who won not only the 1948 gold medal in individual and team show jumping in the London Olympics, but also the team bronze medal in three-day eventing, was a national hero for the Mexicans,” Cepeda explains.
And although Mariles wasn’t a household name outside of his country, he had a major impact on a young Romo Garza, whose inspiration to create La Silla was motivated, in part, by a drive to return his country to its Olympic glory days.
“After Mariles, Mexico dropped off the international stage, so Poncho set out to find a way to recuperate this competitive edge,” says Cepeda.
“He was not content with simply expanding the options available for top class horses here in Mexico but also wanted to expose Mexican athletes and future hopefuls to the top sport as part of their education. He himself benefitted from extensive competition in Europe and represented Mexico in numerous international competitions, including two Olympics. This experience he wanted to bring home to Mexico for Mexican riders.”
The solution proved a little more logistically complicated than simply ‘If you build it, they will come,’ but Poncho was not deterred.
He first sponsored the popular “John Player Special” in the 1980s in Mexico, but he was not content to leave it there. Backed in part by his own company, Pulsar Internacional S.A., Poncho persuaded fellow sponsors in the 1990s not only to support the La Silla international competitions he was proposing to hold on his showgrounds in Monterrey, but also to charter flights from top show jumping nations around the world to bring the best of the best to Monterrey, Mexico.
The result was the famed Pulsar Crown series, a pre-cursor to the Longines Global Champions League and Rolex Grand Slam. Launched in 1995, Pulsar Crown aimed to provide a link between the top show jumping events in Europe and the Americas.
“They brought some of the best 30 international riders in Europe and the United States to this newly minted competition in Monterrey, which was to have a profound impact on the sport in Mexico. The stellar list of competitors included Ann Kursinski (USA), Hugo Simon (AUT) and Jos Lansink (GER), to name just a few.
“He then did the same for children and young riders, including Marcus Ehning, who was 17 or 18 at the time, along with a young Rodrigo Pessoa (BRA) and Mario Deslauriers (CAN), who said that receiving an invitation to La Silla was a highlight of his young career.
“Still not satisfied, Poncho initiated a series of championships for young horses, which had a tremendous appeal.”
Cepeda continues: “Every detail was carefully planned, with top class course designers and world class obstacles. The grounds themselves were laid out by Arno Grego, the legendary German course designer, and Harry Confort, a British designer. These two well-known figures in the sport developed the plans for what is today La Silla.”
A star is born
The La Silla Studbook has also had a profound impact on the sport at the highest level with horses competing and winning at the highest level.
In 2010, Rodrigo Pessoa and HH Rebozo (Rebozo LS) finished fourth Individually for Team Brazil in the FEI World Equestrian Games in Lexington, KY. Four years later, Ashlee Bond (ISR) and Chela LS galloped to the win in the AIG $1 Million at HITS Thermal. Beezie Madden (USA) and Breitling LS achieved La Silla’s greatest coup to date: winning the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Finals in Paris in 2018.
In fact, every day one gets the impression that another La Silla horse is distinguishing itself on leaderboards around the world, landing one more Mexican-bred champion squarely in the global spotlight. It’s a legacy the Romo family has every intention of continuing as La Silla enters a new stage led by a new generation of the Romo family—Alejandra and Alfonso Romo.
Three decades ago, it may have all seemed like the stuff of show jumping dreams, or at the very least, a high-budget sports fantasy blockbuster—to everyone, perhaps, except the one person who could and would get it done.
“We have been lucky in that, every year, we have two or three very good horses on the scene,” says Cepeda. “That’s what Poncho did for Mexican sport—he did everything.”
Major League Show Jumping returns to El Club Hípico La Silla in Monterrey for the seventh and eighth stops on the 2022 tour, November 3–6 and 10–13. Catch all the 5* jumping action live on MLSJ TV.
