National Pride: Brothers say horses should be an Armenian treasure
By Vahan Ishkhanyan

ArmeniaNow Reporter
18 Feb 2005

During 10 years the Mirzoyan brothers have created Armenia’s largest
stable of sport horses. Their number is at 56 now (the second is the
hippodrome in Yerevan that was established during Soviet times and
now has 46 horses, of which a few are the property of individuals).

The stable is in their birthplace – in the village of Lernamerdz in
the Armavir region. The big stable situated in the unsightly rural
area catches the eye from the distance with its grove of young poplars.

“My brother brought the first horse from Echmiadzin,” says stable
director Gevorg Mirzoyan. “Then horses were given to us as gifts. At
some point we began to attend to it seriously. A horse is a dream. My
dad was very much fond of horses too (his father is a well-known
patriot in the national circles, Janpolad Mirzoyan). The news that
we were setting up a horse-breeding farm pleased him very much.”

Gevorg Mirzoyan, 56, graduated from the Philological Department of
the Yerevan State University. In 1987, together with Paruyr Hairikyan,
he founded the Union for Self-Determination, which was struggling for
Armenia’s independence. He worked at the State TV and Radio Committee,
from which he was fired in 1988 by KGB for his political views. A court
later reinstated him. In 1994, he participated in the Karabakh war.

Mirzoyan considers horse-breeding to be the continuation of his
nationalistic activities: “I thought at that time that we should
fight for independence, then I fought in the war, now I consider
horse-breeding to be the right thing to do. In a country that has no
horses a horse becomes a national wealth.”

He considers politics to be a damaging occupation and that it is the
scum of society that are engaged in it: “The war ended and I don’t
know where they came from and became ministers. Those who sincerely
fought for Armenia saw the country in a different way.” A piece of that
“different way” is the stable of Lernamerdz.

He considers even the place to be symbolic – it is in the center of
the triangle of three mountains – Aragats, Ararat and Ara.

Horse-breeding is not a business for the Mirzoyans. Gevorg’s brother
is a businessman, who only spends on the horse-breeding farm from
his incomes without any profit expectations: “If I sold the horses,
I would drive a Jeep. But if it were so, I would be among the animals
who take 50,000 dollars out of the pocket. Not drams, but dollars. They
(officials) spend 12,000 dollars a day in casinos, and they pay a
pension of 12,000 drams a month to people. If someone gave (officials)
12,000 drams, their heart would break.” Gevorg Mirzoyan says that
several times rich people and officials came to buy a horse from him,
but he didn’t sell. He told them that they’d better spend the money
to build a school in the village.

During the Soviet years, there were farms breeding sport horses which
disappeared in the ’90s, since during the crisis it was impossible
to maintain horses. The Mirzoyans once bought a few horses from those
horse-breeding farms, and they now gave offspring.

A worker at the stable, horse trainer Norik Sargsyan worked in the
horse-breeding farm of Ddmashen, which was the largest and had about
80 horses. He remembers how horses began to die there because of lack
of food: “So many horses died of hunger at that time. We could not
find food, they couldn’t stand the winter cold. There was no water,
foals were born in heavy conditions. Once I came and saw that six of
them had died, then 10 of them had gone.”

Sargsyan has worked as a horse trainer and jockey since 1972. He has
trained about 300 horses. He says that the best studs he had seen are
in Lernamerdz, built by the Mirzoyans from foundation to top. Here,
he has trained nine youngsters in the skills of horseriding. Every day
except on Sunday the horses are trained by specialist trainers. Many
of the horses participated in championships organized in Armenia and
won prizes. One of their lot, “Clever” last year placed first in a
championship called “Call of the World”, held here.

Twenty of the horses are thoroughbred English saddle-horses. The
Mirzoyans decided to create an Armenian breed that will be a mixture
of the local horse and the English one. They already got one such
horse and called the breed “taron”.

“When we say local it is conventional, in reality there is no such
breed,” says Gevorg Mirzoyan. “The locals are a mixture, during Soviet
times horses were brought from different places and they mixed up with
each other. Then, horses were not properly kept in villages, they were
fed with remains from other animals’ food, and that’s why they have
no good look, their bodies are small. My goal is to create a local
breed – a taron-horse. This horse-breeding farm will be called the
Taron-Horse Medical-Sports Complex to where people will later come to
ride horses. Sporting and healthcare arrangements will be held there.

However, the Mirzoyans already now consider that they have achieved
the result, which is not only theirs but also of Armenia: “During
those years horses were dying of hunger. Offspring of some of them
are now here, whom we have saved and won by that.”