Leanne Wels

From early childhood, Leanne has continued with her passion for horses and their wellbeing, embracing the Karoo landscape in which she has grown up.

Born to a Karoo farming family and raised initially on the Camdeboo plains, she became an experienced rider before completing her Primary Education. By the age of 11 she was riding in her first Endurance event.

Educated at Union High School in Graaff Reinet in her early teens her family moved to manage the Schanskraal Estate in the Bo Karoo. The contrasting terrain and altitude of Schanskraal from the flat plains of the Camdeboo, further enhanced not only her personal skills as a rider but contributed to an even greater insight into the breeding, trading and maintenance of Endurance horses.

By her early teens she had begun to develop her dream to build an Endurance stable. Management who were involved at the time of the building of the Schanskraal Estate remember her persuasive arguments that their plans should encompass extensive stabling. It was not until she graduated from Union High School and approached Roger Beach (the owner of the Estate) with her proposal to establish a Stud that her motives became clear.

At the age of 16 Leanne was appointed Captain of the Junior South African Endurance team, where she earned her junior Springbok colours. Her many successes participating in endurance events in South Africa and adjoining countries, riding more than 5,000 kilometres in endurance competition, has culminated in her appointment as Captain of the South African senior endurance team for the 2009 challenge in New Zealand, which Leanne led to victory both in New Zealand and at the return challenge here in South Africa.

Leanne has studiously acquired an extensive knowledge of the husbandry of horses and the ability to selectively determine bloodlines in the breeding programme of her stable. This knowledge has been acquired not only during her life on the Karoo but has been enhanced by a period spent in the United Kingdom where she worked at several prestige stables.

It is her dream that the Welbech Stud will become the pre-eminent Endurance stable in South Africa with its protégée eventing both in South Africa and internationally. It has been her intention that the stable should be strongly represented by Arab bloodlines with the development also of horses which combine the hardiness of the Karoo bred animals with pure Arab blood.