Is there anything more exciting than an American young horse championship? Okay, maybe… but not too many things. Looking at the potential superstar horses of future is really fun. Before we dive into the details though, I do have to say: breeders, owners, importers, riders, PLEASE for the love of all that is holy, make sure your horse’s pedigree is entered in some kind of online database. I spent more than 6 hours researching all the YEH entries to try to get enough pedigree information to come up with numbers and details, and it was tedious AF. Between horsetelex, rimondo, hippomundo, allbreed, pedigreequery, equine access, the irish horse register, webpedigrees, and good ol’ google, I was able to dig up and piece together the vast majority, but jesus H. That was ridiculous. It is 2thousandfreaking19.

If you don’t want to enter your own horses or don’t know how/where, send them to me and I’ll gladly enter them all for you. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to learn if we can’t even easily access a pedigree. Also, I’m convinced that there’s a special place in hell for people who own papered horses, make the show name different from the registered name, and then choose to put “unknown” as the parentage for the horse’s USEA or USEF recording. I think I’ve found my new biggest pet peeve. DO NOT DO IT. I AM JUDGING YOU.

Okay, moving on.

Let’s start with the 4yo’s, and I’ve combined the West Coast horses in with the East Coasters. Same judges, two days apart, so the scores are comparable. The highest scoring 4yo (also the highest scoring horse of the whole 2019 YEH Champs) was Courtney Cooper’s Excel Star Time to Shine, an imported Irish horse by Luidam (by Guidam) out of a Cavalier Royale mare. If those names sound familiar to you, they should… they’ve been mentioned before in these In The Blood recaps of 5* horses that I keep forcing you to read. Luidam died in 2017 but is the sire of an up and coming young stallion that was getting a lot of buzz when we were in France last month – Candy de Nantuel.

Those certainly weren’t the only “familiar” bloodlines in the field, though. Names like Ramiro B, OBOS Quality 004, Quite Easy, Jaguar Mail, Contendro, Mighty Magic, Heraldik xx, Clover Hill… we’ve seen them time and again in some of the top horses in the world.  In fact, those same sires were in the pedigrees of the horses competing in the 6 and 7yo World Championships on the same day in France. It bodes well for the quality of horse that we’re seeing in this country. Even more encouraging is that 68% of the 4yo field was bred in North America.

There were two full siblings, by Jaguar Mail out of a Primitive Rising xx mare (making them 90% blood!). Some googling showed that there were actually 3 full siblings born that year via embryo transfer, all owned by Boyd.

The average blood percentage for the 4yo field was 64%, with thoroughbred being quite popular and close up in the pedigrees, as we’ve rightly come to expect with eventers. Eight horses (25% of the field) had at least one full thoroughbred parent. There were 3 full thoroughbreds, one by Bernardini, one by Hunt Crossing, and one by Warrior’s Reward.

Two entries in the 4yo field were sired by what have generally been known as hunter stallions here in the US – Cunningham and Escapade. There’s also one by dressage stallion Sezuan.

As far as scores go, the highest dressage score and overall second place of the East Coast (and the winner of the US Event Horse Futurity) was Double Diamond C by Diacontinus out of LePrimeur mare. West Coast horse Keep Calm, by Biscayo (by Contendro) out of a Numero Uno mare, slightly edged him out for the overall best dressage score by just .2 points. The highest conformation score of the entire YEH Championship went to Keepsake, by the thoroughbred stallion National Anthem xx. Keepsake was also one of only two horses on the East Coast to get a General Impression score over 9.

Moving on the the 5yo’s, I sure hope Tara Tibbetts is reading because she’s gonna LOVE this. The West Coast winner (3rd place overall) with the highest combined jumping score of any 5yo was the full thoroughbred Mucho Me Gusto, by Macho Uno (by Holy Bull) out of a Ghostzapper mare. He raced 10 times before starting his eventing career last year.

The overall winner of the 5yo was FE Celestino, a German bred horse by Ce-Matin (by Cellestial) out of a Betel xx mare. He scored 30 out of 30 on XC, the only horse to do so.

The percentage of North American bred horses drops a bit in the 5yo group, to 54%.

Dipping further into the field, we again see some big names in eventing breeding, just as we did with the 4yo’s. There are more OBOS Quality 004 offspring, another Quite Easy, Riverman, Master Imp xx, Lux Z, Shannondale Sarco, Balou du Rouet, and so on. The average blood percentage of the 5yo field was the same – 64% – with 8 full thoroughbreds. Of all the 5yo’s, 37% had at least one full thoroughbred parent.

Some of the TB names on repeat were National Anthem – who had a direct offspring in each group, AP Indy – who is represented THREE more times, and Distorted Humor. It’s notable to me to see AP Indy show up as the sire’s sire on three horses, all through different sons – Bernardini xx (that offspring was out of a Gold Tribute xx mare), Malibu Moon xx (offspring out of a Brahms xx mare), and Dance with Ravens xx (offspring out of a Broad Brush xx mare). Distorted Humor showed up through sons Understatement xx (offspring out of a Welsh Cob mare) and Distorted Reality xx (offspring out of an Atticus xx mare).

Lovers of a less traditional event horse – yes you did read that right, there was a Welsh Cob/TB cross in attendance. MFS High Octane has a full TB sire and is out of a mare by Brynarian Brenin ap Maldwyn, the same sire as 5* horse Honor Me.

The feel-good story of the weekend definitely goes to full TB mare Not Ours (registered as Small Batch, by Cherokee’s Boy out of a Broken Vow mare) who came out of the New Holland kill pen as a 2yo having already raced 7 times. Not Ours placed 2nd overall in the East Coast 5yo’s, with the second highest dressage score and second highest XC score.

All of this is even more exciting knowing that we’ll finally have a 6 and 7yo international event next fall. Will we see some of these 5yo’s again in the 6yo 2* class next year at Morven Park? I guess we’ll find out…

Putting together stats on younger horses is always a bit more difficult. It’s harder to find info about them and harder to dig up complete pedigrees, which makes all the stats more challenging. I spend a lot of time digging through the depths of the internet trying to piece things together. One day we’ll have a nice, official, all-inclusive database right? A gal can dream.

But anyway, it’s Mondial du Lion time again, one of my favorite events of the year. It’s the World Championships for 6 and 7yo horses held every fall in France, with 6yo’s competing at 2* and 7yo’s competing at 3*. Some of the very best 5* horses in the world competed at MdL on their way up the ranks, with a whopping 35% of 2018’s entire WEG eventing field having competed at Lion. My research has shown that it doesn’t even necessarily matter how they place – some future superstars finished way down the leaderboard in their year – but just having competed here seems to give them a leg up. Lion is touted by riders as being a fantastic and essential learning experience, with a bit tougher courses than these horses have seen so far, and certainly A LOT more atmosphere. They tend to leave MdL much more seasoned, regardless of the score. Last year’s 7yo winner, Asha P (who has a stallion full-brother, Araldik), was just part of the gold medal winning Nation’s Cup team for Germany at Boekelo.

Looking at this year’s 6yo field, we see a lot of the typical bloodlines we’ve come to expect from watching the 4* and 5* horses: a lot of jumper breeding, largely holsteiner and selle francais, mixed with blood. The average blood percentage of the 6yo’s (the ones that I could verify for sure, anyway) is 51%. Six horses (14% of the field) have a full thoroughbred parent, and another 3 have a full thoroughbred damsire. The thoroughbred stallion Esteban xx has two offspring in the field, one Belgian Warmblood and one Holsteiner. Esteban is well-established as a sire of eventers, with multiple offspring having competed through 4* and 5* level.

The 7yo field boasts a similar average blood percentage at 50%, and also has 6 horses with a full thoroughbred parent. Interestingly, only one of those is the sire, the other 5 are full TB dams. An additional 7 horses have full thoroughbred damsires.

Several other stallions are represented by multiple entries across the two divisions. Trakehner stallion Grafenstolz (who we met in France last month) is the sire of 5 horses, Mighty Magic (also met in France last month) is the sire of 3, Quite Easy is the sire of 2, Rock Forever is the sire of 2,  King Size is the sire of 2, OBOS Quality 004 is the sire of 3 and damsire of 1, Shannondale Sarco is the sire of 2, Ramiro B is the sire of 2, Cavalier Royale is the sire of 1 and damsire of 3. Spoiler alert: you’ll see some of these names again next week in the Young Event Horse Championships recap.

A few dressage stallions are represented as well, something that you see sometimes at the middle levels but is quite rare at 5*. Most of the ones in this field, though, are not too surprising if you look at the actual pedigree. Rock Forever, while a Grand Prix dressage horse himself, is quite jumper-bred, from Ramiro, Landgraf, and Grandus lines. The stallion Catoo (sire of one of the 7yo’s) has a similar story – he had a GP dressage career but is completely jumper-bred. One stallion that is perhaps less expected to see as an event horse sire is Vitalis, sire of 7yo Victor 107, from dressage lines Krack C, Jazz, and Donnerhall.

As we’ve become accustomed to seeing by now, the French and Irish are sat almost exclusively on horses bred in their home countries. Only two French riders have non-French bred horses, and only two Irish riders have non-Irish bred horses.

Another fun fact – Leprince des Bois, another horse that we saw last month in Europe, was a 5* event horse in his own right (competed at Pau, Badminton, Luhmuhlen, and Burghley under Kai Ruder) and is the damsire of one horse – a Selle Francais ridden by none other than Chris Burton. He finished 7th in the 6yo class here at Lion last year.

Want to watch Mondial du Lion and try to pick out your favorite future superstar? The live feed is on their home page, along with links to the start lists and results.

The fact that Mondial du Lion, YEH Championships, and Fair Hill are all happening this week has got me absolutely knee deep in spreadsheets right now, so this fun blog hop from Raincoast Rider is super timely. I’m hoping I’ll have at least one In The Blood post ready to go tomorrow (I don’t think it’s possible to fit 3 events worth of horses into one post, I’ve got something like 300 horses to sort through) but we’ll see what happens. This morning I’m incredibly distracted by the MdL live feed. Who’s excited about watching 6yo event horses do dressage at 5am? Me. Duh.

1. Favorite show venue:
To visit? Nothing compares to Burghley for me. I loooove grass arenas on lovely turf like that, it feels so authentic and more in touch with the sport’s roots. No crazy huge grandstands or artificial anything or recycled golf course feel. It was beautiful.

2. Favorite discipline:
Eventing, for sure. It helps that there are 3 disciplines in one, so it’s pretty hard to get bored. I also love how pretty much any type of horse can compete successfully, it just has to want to jump. We get a wide variety, and I think that’s really cool. Even at the highest levels we’ve got anglo arabs, welsh cob crosses, draft crosses, connemaras, etc.

Anglo Arab, anyone?

3. Favorite horse color:
Dark bay. Preferably with either no white or just a little.

4. Favorite tack store:
Oh man. Riding Warehouse is my most frequented, for sure, and they’re great people so I love them a lot. Luxe EQ is a big sentimental favorite and always has the prettiest new stuff to drool over. My latest addiction seems to be Premier Equine.

5. Favorite breed:
Thoroughbred, or warmblood with a lot of TB blood. They’ve just got so much “try” and athleticism.

6. Favorite place to ride:
Give me a big pretty wide open space and I’m happy (still internally crying over my fields being paved over and houses put in, I might never recover). Although Coconino is pretty hard to beat too… riding through those big pretty pine trees on a nice crisp morning.

7. Favorite piece of riding apparel:
Hmmmmm. This is hard, I like pretty much all of my things. I live in my Kastel shirts like 9 months of the year, so those would have to go on the list. Also LOVE my Motionlite jackets, you can tell me it reminds you of a scrim sheet all you want, those things are magical AF. I’m tied pretty equally on my Champion skull cap (I’ve never had a skull cap that nice or one that fits me that well) and TraumaVoid helmets. For breeches, I’m still liking the Horze Grand Prix the best, for the money. Also, like… honorable mention to my interchangable helmet pompoms that I made, because I love the shit out of them even if I look like a massively overgrown 10yo. Yolo.

8. Favorite horse related web site:
I don’t think there’s one I visit super consistently, I see pretty much everything on facebook with all the stuff that I follow. I probably click on stuff from Eventing Nation, Horse and Hound, and The Horse Magazine the most.

9. Favorite piece of tack:
Wow just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse than the “favorite riding apparel” question. My god. I guess my saddles win this one (Devoucoux Chiberta and Devoucoux Loreak) but also really loving those Premier Equine merino wool pads and I have used Majyk Equipe boots daily for like 5+ years, so clearly they’re a staple. OH and my spiked Dark Jewel Designs browband. And my Freejump stirrups. And my Eponia and Lund bridles. Ok I’ll stop.

10. Favorite horse book:

Basic Training of the Young Horse, the newer edition with Ingrid. Ok so I’m a little bit of an Ingrid groupie, whatever. It’s a fantastic book.

11. Favorite horse movie:

Either Seabiscuit (love the historical angle it took) or The Horse in a Gray Flannel suit (cheesy but I love it). And International Velvet because eventing.

Do you ever have one of those moments when you see, with perfect clarity, just how effing creepy you are? This was me last weekend at the barn.

I was riding Henry, heading out toward the arena. To get there you walk up the fence line of Presto’s pasture, and he always comes up to the fence to be nosy say hi. So I stopped to talk to him, as one does, and just sat there on my best boy, rubbing my next-best-boy’s face, staring at them with hearts in my eyes and grinning my fool head off. In that moment I realized that I was looking at them the way same way Meghan looks at Harry.

You know that look… 98% adoration, with just a tiiiiinge of that super crazy stalker chick from Wedding Crashers.

I’m willing to admit that I might possibly be a little bit obsessed with these two horses, like way more than any others I’ve had before. Just looking at them makes me smile, no matter how bad my day was. I don’t even know if there’s a human on this planet that I like that much.

I have full-blown conversations with Henry sometimes. I even tell him about the course before we go out on cross country (“there’s a corner out of the water, don’t be surprised” or “I’m legit terrified of the weldon’s wall, please help me out, I’ll give you a whole bag of cookies if you jump it” I have no problem with bribery, and yes I always pay up). He stands there and at least pretends to listen intently, humoring me most likely. He does that a lot. I know Henry so well at this point, and he’s so outwardly emotional, I swear I can tell what he’s thinking. It’s easy to have a conversation with him.

The discussions with Presto tend to be more along the lines of “let go of that, it’s expensive”, “did you just eat a rock?”, “he/she does NOT want to be your friend… see, I told you”, “you’re gonna scare yourself if you don’t drop it…. see, I told you”, “PERSONAL SPACE, BRO”, etc etc. Maybe someday I’ll be having full-blown conversations with him, too.

I haven’t always been like this. There’s something about these two horses that has turned me into a stage five clinger. Hence how I find myself sitting there staring at them like one of them hung the moon and the other hung the stars.

You know when you’re younger and you sit there imagining your Dream Horse… probably the perfect shade of dapple gray or some shit, with perfect markings, the perfect size, your favorite breed, with a certain personality, blah blah blah. Oh how little we know. I look at my two (like a creeper), both very very different horses, neither of them top level anything, but at they same time they’re both a dream horse for me in their own right. Henry, in all of his very emotional, broody, downhill, appendix-lookalike glory, who really HAS hung the moon in my world. And then Presto, the outgoing, happy go lucky, resilient, athletic homebred that represents the future. I’ve adored him completely from that very first second when I saw his tiny little white nose enter the world, and there’s already so much history between us even though he’s only 2 1/2.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking and you’re right… I’m definitely that crazy horse lady, no doubt about it. I realized that about two seconds after I realized I was staring at my horses like Meghan stares at Harry. Please tell me I’m not alone.

Last week I was watching a video from a meeting that happened last winter, with upper level riders talking about young horses. Yes, I am a boring person, these are the kinds of nerdy things I love to watch.

It was an interesting discussion, lots of different takes on what people look for in a young horse, buying from the US vs importing from Europe, the development of a horse as it goes up the levels, etc. As the session evolved, one particular very big name rider/coach said  “This country has to – HAS TO – want to win at all costs and it has to have horses that want to win to do that”. It was said in the middle of a statement about the top level horses really needing grit and heart and a strong desire to do the job, which I agree with completely. But then I was like wait, hold on… what was the first part of that?

I paused it, backed up, and listened again. “This country has to – HAS TO – want to win at all costs”. Paused, backed up, listened one more time. “At all costs”. At. All. Costs.

It kept echoing in my head. My heart sunk, to be honest. That kind of statement, in a sport like this, is enough to make me more than a little physically ill. Just the very idea of saying “win at all costs” in horse sports, much less living it… vomit. Is that really what it takes to win gold medals? What does “at all costs” really mean? Maybe, at least I really really hope, I’m reading too much into it. I’d rather this country never go to another team competition again, much less win, if it meant we had to do sacrifice horsemanship or welfare (or, well, a lot of things) to get there. And perhaps I’m just jaded or cynical, but that’s the vibe I got. I know there are people that think like this, it’s inevitable, but I’ve never heard anyone actually say it, especially not someone like that. Is that mindset more common than I thought? It has me questioning and rethinking not just the past, but also the future of the sport as a whole.

I’ve spent almost a week now mulling over that statement, playing it on repeat in my mind. It’s made me incredibly uncomfortable. Is that the kind of perspective it takes to get to and stay at the upper levels? If so, is any of this worth it? With all the issues we face in eventing, which ones are we sweeping under the rug and accepting as being just another “cost”? What all is disposable, exactly, in this quest for gold? Are there people at the top of every sport that share this perspective? I’m sure there are. Maybe this is the completely accepted normal among the elites and I’m just incredibly naive. I’m looking at things under a new light, especially the high performance aspect, and I don’t really like it.

Maybe it’s just this person’s perspective. Maybe she’s the exception, not the rule. Maybe she didn’t mean it in the way it sounds. I don’t know. I’ve tried to reason it away many times over, yet haven’t succeeded. The truth is – it bothered me, it still bothers me, and I can’t get it out of my head. What do you make of that sentence? Am I taking it the wrong way, overreacting, reading too much into it? Or does it give you the heebie-jeebies too?