Yeah I know, two boring breeding nerd posts in a week. Stick with me on this one though, because thoroughbred lovers, there’s fun stuff for you this time too! US events always have more thoroughbreds than European events do, and Fair Hill and YEH are no exception.

Small disclaimer, I did all these stats before we lost a few entrants before/at the first jog, but decided to leave those horses in the stats. They were interesting, and worth looking at, and well-qualified, so I think they’re still relevant to the data.

First of all, let’s look at the Fair Hill 3* horses.

Originally we had 41 entries, before we lost 3 at the last minute. 44% were bred in the US or Canada, with 51% originally hailing from Europe (the rest of either Unknown or from elsewhere, like Australia).

The most popular breed registry is Irish Sporthorse, with 10 entries, followed quickly by Thoroughbred, with 9.

The average blood percentage is 63%.

One stallion, Chacoa (who is by Contender), has two offspring in the field. Contender himself is also the damsire of 2 others.

On the thoroughbred side of things, none of them share any parents in common, but there are certain names that show up repeatedly across the nine entrants. Danzig shows up within the first few generations of 4 different horses, with Mr Prospector showing up in 3.

Now that I’ve broken down the breeding on 10 different upper level events (I haven’t shared most of them, maybe eventually I’ll make graphs or something and condense this stuff, as I have more data), the trends in the thoroughbred lines are interesting. You see Danzig a lot (he was the most common among WEG entrants as well, if you remember) which does not surprise me being a Danzig lover myself, but I have been a little surprised at the prevalence of Mr Prospector. He gets a bit of a bum rap, and I myself have even tried to avoid him in the past, but clearly having him in the pedigree is not a detriment. And I think it’s safe to say that he isn’t showing up repeatedly simply because he was so popular that he can’t be avoided. Storm Cat is super popular too but I have yet to come across him in the pedigree of the horses from any of the upper level events I’ve looked at so far (fear not, Storm Cat fans, you’ll feel better after we look at the YEH horses). Of course, Storm Cat is 13 years younger than Mr P, but only 6 years younger than Danzig, so I don’t think the age excuse holds much water either. I’ve also come across a fair bit of the Mr P son Fappiano (especially via Unbridled’s Song, another horse that gets a bum rap), Nijinsky, and Mt Livermore.

Aside from the 9 full TB horses in the field, there are 9 others that have a full TB parent. Of those, 4 horses have a full TB sire, and 5 horses have a full TB dam.

Alright, on to the YEH horses! I only did the 5yo’s, because everything is just way too much of a wildcard at 4, but historically the 5yo’s have gone on to see a decent bit of success at the upper levels.  Again, I worked my numbers based off of the original entry list. These horses are, generally, a lot harder to track down since they aren’t at FEI level yet and therefore still flying under the radar paperwork-wise. Some of them I couldn’t find much on at all, but I was able to at least figure out the sire. I wish people were more diligent about entering their horse’s breeding completely and correctly, but alas, I digress.

While I wasn’t able to track down breeder information for everyone, I was able to figure out that the majority of the horses are imports. Of the 41 entries, I could only confirm that 12 (29%) are USA bred. Of those, 8 are full thoroughbred.

One of the thoroughbreds is actually by the same sire, Flatter, as one of my trainer’s OTTB project horses, which is probably relevant to no one but me, but hey fun fact.

Among the thoroughbreds, Mr Prospector, AP Indy, and Storm Cat are quite popular within the first four generations. Mr P shows up in 5 horses, AP Indy shows up in 5 horses, and Storm Cat shows up in 3 horses. We also see some of the same names that we saw in the 3* thoroughbreds – Danzig, Unbridled, and Mt Livermore – but with less frequency.

There are some warmblood sires in common between our YEH 5yo’s and the 7yo horses over in Europe at Mondial du Lion, too – Diarado, Shannondale Sarco, and Zambesi in particular have offspring at each.

The showjumping stallion Verdi is the sire of two horses in the YEH 5yo field.

One of Dom Schramm’s rides, Quadrocana, is out of the full sister to Michael Jung’s phenomenal mare FischerRocana. Quadrocana’s sire is Quadrofino.

Fernhill Turbo’s dam, Royalty van de Heernis, also has an offspring competing in the 6yo class at Mondial du Lion with Piggy French.

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I guess the reason I do all this is that for a long time people believed that you just couldn’t breed event horses. That, much like hunters, they were simply the castoffs from other sports, more like accidents that happened purely by chance. It’s obvious to most breeders by now (especially those crafty Irish and French), that this clearly isn’t true. It is entirely possible to breed eventers, it’s just not tracked and studied and logged the way that it has been with showjumpers and dressage horses for so many decades. Not to mention that our sport has changed a lot in the past 20 years, and the type of horse needed at the upper levels has changed right along with it. I find the whole thing really fascinating, and I’m striving to better my own understanding, because I think it’s really important – not just for breeding, but also for sport. Thanks for hanging in there on a subject matter that I’m sure bores most of you to tears. Fear not, I think y’all are probably off the hook for more of these posts until LRK3DE.

First off, if anyone is interested in watching Mondial du Lion, they’re live streaming the 7yo dressage here, and the order of go is here. Because seriously, that’s way more fun on a Thursday morning than, like… working.

I was finally able to make it out to the barn yesterday and ride Henry/mess with Presto. I hadn’t sat on Henry since the jumper show on Saturday, which was before this 45 degree temperature drop and disgusting, never-ending rain (for real, send an ark and a waterproof parka and a few gallons of hot chocolate). It had also been about a week since I’d put my hands on Presto at all. The turnouts have been too slick for turnout since Sunday, although the barn worker has been turning them out in the arena on half hour rotations, when the rain lets up. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Still, Henry and Presto are both starting to get that slightly frazzled, freedom-seeking look in their eyes. Y’all know the one.

Henry handles captivity pretty well, for the most part. His manners don’t change, he just gets a little spookier under saddle and does a lot of crowhopping when you canter. It’s 0% intimidating, as evidenced by the fact that I chose to do a bareback and bitless dressage ride in the arena yesterday. In true Henny form, he was totally fine except for a few slightly dolphinesque canter laps that are nothing but entertaining.

Presto, on the other hand, is having a little bit more difficulty coping. He’s back in his shed row barn now that the water system out there has been fixed, which is actually a good thing in this situation. He basically has a double stall out there, giving him more room to move around. He hasn’t made a pest of himself too much yet… nothing is broken and the buckets are still attached to the wall, although he appears to have spent quite a while pulling his halter over his gate and playing tug-o-war with it, if the layers of dried slobber are any indication.

As soon as I started leading him into the barn I could feel him slowly turning into a baby horse balloon. He was snorting lightly, and growing steadily taller with each step. You could feel the crazy rolling off him. I decided to pass right by the barn and head to the arena first instead, to let him blow off some steam. Clearly there was no way he was gonna stand politely in the crossties for grooming at that point. So I turned him loose in the arena, where he spent the first two minutes ambling around, sniffing things, then all the sudden took off like a little banshee. There was a lot of galloping, a lot of bucking, and a lot of screaming and squealing. Quality entertainment.

What Presto doesn’t have is much stamina or dedication. His psycho circles lasted all of 2.5 minutes before he broke back down to a trot for a lap and then promptly trotted straight up to me, declaring himself finished.

At that point I took him inside to the crossties for grooming, where he was semi-behaved. As long as he stayed in his space, I let him be. Some days you just have to pick your battles and lower your expectations a little.

By the time I left the barn it was raining AGAIN. It’s supposed to keep raining til Saturday, then stop just long enough to make us realize what nice weather is, and then start again. I give up. Good thing I have a pretty new raincoat on the way.

It should be here tomorrow, just in time for my volunteering gig this weekend. I also entered one more show for the season, because sure, why not. Nothing like a solid couple weeks of rain to inspire me to throw money at situations in which I’m unlikely to arrive prepared. Meh. I can dream about sunny days, right? In between all the squealing and crowhopping, that is…

Help me, I can’t stop obsessing about eventing breeding and statistics. Actually, don’t help me, I am a nerd and I love this stuff way beyond what anyone would consider normal. It’s expanding my own education to do these little breakdowns for big events, so whether anyone else is actually reading or not… that’s ok. The more I break this stuff down, the more correlations and patterns and commonalities I find, so when I see them, I try to point them out – hence there are several mentions of WEG in this post too. And I actually already have stats for Fair Hill 3* and YEH 5yo Championships as well (lots of TB data to be had there!), but they were too much to fit into this post. Maybe I’ll subject you to that tomorrow, if anyone is still awake by the end of this one.

I am a particular sucker for young horse events, be it Bundeschampionate or YEH or the biggest of the big guns when it comes to finding future stars: Mondial du Lion, the World Championships for young event horses at Lion D’Angers, held every fall in France. You may have heard of a few of the past MdL competitors, like FischerRocana, Mr. Medicott, La Biosthetique Sam, Seacookie, Avebury, Quimbo, Bay My Hero, Bayano, Hans Dampf, Upsilon, and so on. An impressive amount of 4* horses have passed through Lion d’Angers on their way to the top. The 2010 7yo Championship title was captured by none other than Mighty Magic, Presto’s sire (that was a pretty big year – the field included eventual Burghley 4* winner FRH Butts Avedon, Rolex 4* winner Quimbo, Rolex 4* winner Bay My Hero, 4* horse Paulank Brockagh, 4* horse Onwards and Upwards, 4* horse Qwanza, 2018 WEG competitor Carriem van Colen Z, 2018 WEG competitor Pivoine des Touches, and 2018 WEG competitor Rumour Has It). Basically, if you want to get a good look at the future superstars of eventing, the 7yo World Championship in particular is a really good place to find them.

MdL is way up there on my bucket list of events I want to attend. I was hoping it would happen this year, but alas, no dice. One of these days it’ll work out and I’ll actually get to France in the fall for this event. One of these days.

Until then, I can obsess over it pretty well from home. There’s a live feed, there will be tons of pictures on the Mondial du Lion facebook page, and I’ve met a few of the horses that are competing. I saw US-bred Quantum Leap (piloted by Doug Payne) at YEH Championships at Fair Hill in 2016, where he finished 8th overall, and this year he is one of two horses representing the US at MdL. Long time blog readers have also already been briefly introduced to 3 other competitors in the 2018 field: Figaro and Max, both by Mighty Magic, and Leipheimer, by Vigo d’Arsouilles. We met all of these boys when we were in Belgium in 2015, on separate barn tours. The two Mighty Magic’s are actually a huge part of the reason why I chose him as Presto’s sire.

I did my usual spreadsheet (the very fact that I have a “usual spreadsheet” routine is probably weird, isn’t it…) and research routine with the field of 7yo/2* horses, breaking them down by how they’re bred, studbook, blood percentage, and any other interesting information. Here’s how they stack up:

15 different nations are represented, along with 21 different registries. The USA has two – Quantum Leap and Irish-bred Cooley Quicksilver.

The most represented registry is Irish Sporthorse with 18 horses. However, only one of those is of completely traditional ISH breeding, with no outside European warmblood in it’s lines. The other 17 are at least 1/2 European warmblood (with 7 being half and 10 being 3/4). The full warmblood parent is almost always the sire, on an ISH mare. Four of those ISH mares have full TB sires. If you want an event horse, clearly jumper-bred warmblood (particularly Holsteiner and Selle Francais) + blood + a splash of Irish is not a bad formula.

Two stallions have three offspring each in the field: Mighty Magic and Shannondale Sarco. All three of the Mighty Magic’s are from different registries (one sBs, one Hanoverian, one Holsteiner). Two of the 3 are from very “blooded” dams – one from a full french Anglo Arab mare, the other from a TB x Hanoverian mare. The latter is particularly interesting to me, since that’s how Presto is bred. I’ll be watching Mama’s Magic Way closely (fun fact – he is being ridden by Andreas Dibowski, who was also Mighty Magic’s rider when he won here in 2010). As for the Shannondale Sarco offspring, all 3 of them are registered Irish Sporthorse. While Shannondale Sarco stands in Ireland, he actually has a full brother available for breeding right here in the US: Wonderboy.

Ok, ok, this is unrelated to the 7yo class, but Mighty Magic also has an offspring in the 6yo Championship, representing Canada. The same rider also has a Diarado offspring entered. Clearly we should be friends since we have the same taste in horses.

There is one horse in the 7yo’s, Leipheimer van’t Verahof, who is a full sibling to one of the 2018 WEG eventing horses – Fletcha van’t Verahof. Both are by the showjumping stallion Vigo d’Arsouilles, out of a full thoroughbred mare.

Out of the 12 French riders entered, 11 of them are sitting on French-bred horses. If you remember back to WEG, every single French rider there was also on a French-bred horse. This is pretty standard for them. Clearly we need to be looking at what they’re doing right, both with their breeding programs and with how they produce and develop their horses and connect them with their best riders.

The average blood percentage for the field is 51%.

62% of the field has the majority of the blood in their pedigree coming from the dam’s side.

Much like the WEG field, Selle Francais and Holsteiner blood are overwhelmingly common among these horses. 76% carry one or the other or both within the first few generations.

 

Not that I’m biased or anything, but here’s a video of Figaro (Mighty Magic x AA) in his last jump school before heading to MdL. Baudouin tells me they’re planning on freezing a bunch of Figaro’s semen this winter and that it’ll be available for US import. Just saying.

Are any of these stats interesting to anyone else? Any other numbers you would be interested in seeing from this group or from the Fair Hill/YEH groups?

 

 

Remember, like… yesterday, when I was complaining that it was still hot? That’s because it was. And then Texas was like “haha, hope you enjoyed 6 months of summer, because now it’s WINTER, bitches!”.

Yeah it was literally in the 90’s on Sunday, and mid 40’s with constant rain and wind on Monday, continuing into today and… all week, they say. Guess we’re not doing fall? I’ve lived in Texas for over 2 decades and don’t remember it ever getting this cold this early. Normally the weather isn’t like this until December. Watching the cold front march steadily south was just ridiculous. I mean, I know Texas is huge, but an almost 60 degree temperature range from north to south?

And now it’s just windy and cold and gross. I’m barnsitting, so the horses have been stuck inside, which means constant stall cleaning and hay throwing and wet toes and cold hands. I’m grumpy. They’re bored. We all agree that this is not okay weather for October. Texas better snap out of this shit real quick, because I don’t suffer through endless disgusting heat just to then turn around and freeze my soaking wet ass off. We’ve earned some decent weather by this point, dammit.

Luckily I had already gotten my horses’ sheets and blankets cleaned and fitted and ready to go. They’re stuck inside too, and bored, and Henry in particular looks kind of sad, but at least they’re snug and cozy. These are the days when you really have to appreciate the barn workers… this shit sucks to work in, but somebody’s gotta do it.

And yes, I’m really glad I ended up buying Presto a 72″ sheet, because I think he would have outgrown a 70 in no time. Hopefully that little bit of extra room in the butt will at least allow us to make it through this winter, and then it’ll definitely never fit again.

Of course, I kind of feel like an asshole, because I clipped Henry last week after Willow Draw… where I had also felt like an asshole for not clipping him beforehand, considering it was almost 90 degrees when we were running XC. You just can’t win around here. And his coat is growing back so fast that I might actually have to clip him AGAIN before Holly Hill. Assuming that the whole state doesn’t float away by then, anyway. At this point, who knows.

There is a bit of good news here though… I got to break out a hoody. Favorite item of apparel, for the win. I guess I should have been more specific about the circumstances that I wanted to necessitate said hoody. The other good news is that I’ll be back to our riding schedule on Wednesday, rain or shine or cold be damned. Even if it just means trotting circles in the arena.

What’s the weather like where you are? I hereby declare today Bitch About The Weather Day, so if the weather is nice where you are… I hate you in advance.

Also Texas sucks.

A few times a year my trainer’s barn hosts little jumper shows/open schooling days, where you can do jumper classes for $5 a round and/or XC school for $25. I try to always come to these and do a couple jumper rounds, because at $5 a pop, they’re super cheap miles. They start with poles on the ground and go up to Prelim, so the shows are great for green horses or green riders or just riders who can’t get their shit together in stadium and need all the practice they can get (ahem). Plus it’s really really laid back, so if you have a problem or want to jump something again, or even want to make up your own course – go for it. Clear rounds get a blue ribbon. You really can’t beat that. Two rounds plus the grounds fee bring my total up to a whopping $20. You REALLY can’t beat that.

I also talked Hillary into coming along with me. She hasn’t been to a show since way pre-baby, when she lived in Tennessee, and this was a perfect little outing to knock some rust off plus introduce her to all of my peeps. Hillary might dabble in the h/j on the side, but it’s clear that she’s an eventer at heart, and I feel that it’s my duty to reconnect her with Her People now that she’s moved to Texas. And she fit right in, as I knew she would.

I’m barnsitting at the moment, so I had to get up before 5 to get the horses fed and stalls cleaned, then I made the drive up to Henry’s barn to get him ready. Hillary picked us up just after sunrise and we made the 2 hour trip out to Sleuth Wood with Henry trying to figure out if her mare, Annie, was friend or foe. He settled for making some nasty mare faces at the solid divider between them, while Annie was blissfully unaware of her overly emotional co-passenger. It never fails that Henry is the most marish horse in any group, even when in the company of actual mares.

We got there with plenty of time for Hillary to get in a couple of Beginner Novice rounds and then a Novice round, while I took up my position as videographer and jump crew. Annie seemed thrilled to finally be back in the ring, and Annie and Hillary both gained some admirers among the crowd. Nice horse plus good rider? Yeah, she can sit with us.

After that I got on Henry, did a quick canter around part of the XC field, jumped a little 2′ vertical out in the pasture, and then went in the ring for a Training round as our warmup. Of course no one videoed this, because it was probably one of the best rounds we’ve done in a really long time. He was perfect, I was adequate… we looked competent. A nice, clear, smooth, steady, solid round that I have no actual proof of whatsoever.

After one more rider and a jump change (in which I swear I saw Trainer raise one of the oxers like THREE HOLES, what the hell are you playing at, woman???) we did a Prelim round. Henry was still actually really good for this one too, he just ticked the first jump not really realizing the height had gone up (we’d been sitting for a while between rounds), and I got quick with my shoulders coming out of the inside line, bringing down the front rail at the square oxer. Oopsy for both of us.

Either way, at Prelim height my goals are still just to go in and not make any huge mistakes, and not feel like the jumps look ginormous. The size didn’t worry me, so that’s good… my eyeballs are getting more and more accustomed to the height.  And I didn’t do anything spectacularly stupid (except get lost on the way to 4 before I remembered which one it was and weaved my way back to it). Henry felt good. I’m totally okay with that.

It was a warm and humid day, and I needed to get back to the barn, so I quit with that. We came, we put in two decent trips, and we got to jump some height. Mission accomplished, I think. We’ll be back for the next jumper round day to do it all again!