Are warmbloods beginning to dominate eventing?

However - I think if you look back in to some of the breeding, there is perhaps a considerable amount of ID in there?

For example, Headley Brittinia, Tankers Town etc., and (sorry, brain dead - too late for me) and many, many others....Clover Hill, King of Diamonds lines etc.....with a touch of TB in there of course.

I think (correct me if I am wrong - sure you will!!) - that some of the best eventers are TB x ID's (the TB being prevalent in most (some) cases). So many eventers have SOME ID in their blood lines.
 
2 of the most exciting horses across country in my view are Armada and Opposition Buzz, both warmblood and I don't think that either Andrew or Nicola would worry that their horses lack energy at 11mins or more, they both seem bottomless. Idalgo is another that doesn't seem to run out of petrol. Much as I love TB horses, the modern warmblood has the quality to gallop across country for 11 mins and do not need to lack the courage to dig deep for you. They are not necessarily easier to train - the above horses could not be classed as straight forward - but perhaps have more strings to their bow and are suited to the way the sport is going at the moment.
 
I never understand the "a bit of warmblood but lots of TB" argument. If it's not a TB then it's not a TB. And ALL warmbloods are a mix, the vast majority of which contain considerable TB refining influence. That's pretty much the definition of the modern sport horse.

BUT this doesn't make them TB and it certainly doesn't prove unequivocally the superiority of TBs for sport. That's like saying you can't make a good cake without sugar so sugar must be the *best*/most important ingredient. It's not, it's the MIX that's important. And the part that seems to get lost is the warmblood books don't take any old TB, they take ones that have been inspected and proved for SPORT. Some have also been good race horses but that's not as important as being the right stamp and genetic blueprint for modern competition. Just because Lauries Crusader is a great dressage sire doesn't mean TBs in general are great dressage sires. If they were you'd be seeing a lot more TBs in the upper reaches of modern competitive dressage because, well, people like to win.
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Here is the results list from the Euro Championships http://www.fontainebleau-2009.com/clas/12-clas-finale-indv.pdf. The third place horse has a TB sire and grandsire but is registered Bad-Wurtemberg, which shows how confusing the whole thing is. Almost every horse on that list has close up TB influence but very few are full TB. (And yes, the winner is full TB. But he hasn't won everything he's ever entered.
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I'm not arguing, by the way, against TBs for sport. I just think it's very short sighted to divide into "warmblood vs TB" camps and think that information means anything on a practical basis. The individual horse is more important and modern breeding programs reflect that in their goal to get the absolute best mix of ingredients for the job, looking at it objectively.
 
I reckon that if you looked at it mathematically and worked out the percentage of TB, ID blood etc in all 4* horses, you would find that the significantly largest percentage across the board belonged to the TB but equally I think you'd find that, of those horses, very few would be pure hot blood horses (and none would be pure cold blood!). Technically, anything that is between a hot blood and a cold blood draught horse is a warmblood so I am sure that the majority aren't full TB, arab or anglo arab and therefore the warmblood (not to be confused with Dutch Warmblood but rather a horse that resulted from crosses of hot and cold blood) does predominate. However, I feel that the importance of TB blood is that much more influential than the cold blood but, as someone's already said, it is the combination of the two, in the correct proportions, that is the most successful in the eventing world.

I'm a sucker for a national hunt type TB though
 
Well put TarrSteps. That is exactly what I mean. The modern sport horse/warmblood or whatever you like to call them has the TB blood for the speed ,stamina and "heart" for the cross country but also the attributes of the warmblood for the other 2 phases. It is probably because the mix has become so good that the dressage and show jumping has become so important. The TB that was perhaps at a disadvantage in the dressage and maybe the show jumping had the upper hand on the cross country enough to stay supreme. This is no longer the case so both types are influential but under the banner of warmblood.
 
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