Jenny L-C on British Breeding

I have to say that it is not necessary an age thing as CH said Charlotte Dujardin has done a great job at producing her horse Fernandez. Charlotte though has had a good grounding right from an early age. I have been disapointed to see a horse that obviously has talent being ruined by poor riding/handling. There are so many different elements to consider, & they have all been highlighted at one stage or another on this & other posts. It is looking at the whole package, & not everyone is trying to breed Olympic horses, but all the horses that are bred should be recognised. We should not have this situation where a horses breeding can not be traced, it is such a crime especially if it turns out to be a talented individual. We need to improve from grass roots so that there are the riders who can get the very best from the horses that they ride. Whether it is lazy to go across the waters to find a horse is debatable. People are under time constraints & it is more that then laziness. Sorry but I would not slate anyone for wanting to go to Germany, France, Holland or where ever to find a horse. Why because as mentioned so many times, they can go to ONE place & see 50 or so above average youngsters. The only place we can do that in the UK that I am aware of are the auctions like Brightwells, Addington & I belive there is one happening in Hampshire soon. The market place changes all the time, look at eventing, before it was the TB's that made their mark. Now the format has changed, so will the type of horse change. My personal view is that the UK has always been ahead of the game where breeding sports ponies are concerned. Why else did so many get bought up by the rest of Europe & the US. Now though we are loosing ground in that area, because we did not expand on it. We also did not always keep the breeding records or they got lost. We therefore lost a lot of valuable information on which sires were producing the best jumping, dressage or eventing ponies. How often do you see any information about breeding? At the affliated level, I know that eventing will show the sire where known. The societies need to work together more I think, because it there are a number of issues that need addressing. The UK is at a disadvantage because our government do not take our equestrians seriously. That does not mean we can not work together to change things. And as already mentioned that also means improving our young riders. How many have access to a good schoolmaster or mistress? How many get the chance to feel what a piaffe is like? In Europe it is easier for young riders because they dont have the a shortage of these horses to train on. How many riding schools in the UK can offer horses of that calibre? Not everyone is lucky enough to belong to the Whitaker clan or have access to that kind of knowledge. Just as there are talented riders going unnoticed one reason being they lack the horse power, so there are talented horses because they lack the rider.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Anyone fancy sponsoring a competition like this ???

[/ QUOTE ]

A few years ago our company put up £1000 for the best "home bred" in the Loose jumping Championship, the best hombred was placed fourth. The other horses in the top line up of six were imported as were the majority of the horses in the class.

If the organisers had prevented the imports from allowing them to enter, the total entries would have been around six.

In France they offer an interesting prize money system in the young horse classes, higher prize money is given to the French Bred horse. Horses without papers cannot compete.

British Eventing, British Dressage and the BSJA could make the effort and try to do something similar, however they cannot completely bar foreign horses in young horse classes from competing as this would be against the EU legislation of fair trade.

However I feel that by removing the "competion" by not allowing foreign bred horses to participate in order to wave the British Flag defeats the purpose of what such an event would be trying to promote - that British is best. By allowing British Bred horses to compete on equal territorty with imported horses is the only way to quantifiably measure just how good the British horse is and that is what the existing bodies such as the futurity classes and BEF are trying to do.

The other factor to bear in mind is that by the time a horse is four five and six, very few British Breeders actually own the horses therefore the incentive is lost. Those that are competing the horses are very rarely interested in the breeding of a horse or promoting the fact that its "British Bred"

Another major break through would be for major publications to start printing more about the breeding of a horse. In all the foreign magazines the breeding when known, not just the sire but the dams sire and grand dams sire is published. the result is that the competition rider is far more educated about the countries breeding than our public at large.
 
but in France the breeder is entitled to 10% of the prize money a horse wins for it's lifetime - providing the horse remains in France. If it is sold abroad then the breeder gets nothing

that is an incentive for the French to keep their best horses at home and therefore do well - instead of chasing $$$$s and selling them overseas - obviously unless the $$$$s outweighs what the breeding prize will make

However - we do already have a 'restricted' competition - the one that is only open to horses sold at Addington.

By having one open only to horses with 1 generation of British pedigree we would be doing nothing much different tbh

or we could do a competition with decent prizemoney where the best 'foregin bred' goes head-to-head at the end with the best british bred - now that would be fair - esp. if the brit beat the foreigner ;-))

I find the 'lack of a lead' shown by the one "sports horse breeding" page in H&H to be awful

every tom dick and harrry of an imported stallion seems to get written up - yet nowt about 'great successes of UK bred stallions' - e.g. it took 2 months for H&H to mention the champion Cleveland Bay stallion !! and they do make good competition horses when xed with TB types for example.

maybe a start would be to award two prizes at the YE and YDress. horse classes - one for top brit bred and one for top foreign bred and then have a ride off for the champion and reserve - bit like showing classes tbh

and again - to promote british breeders who are trying to 'do things right' - only permit entries from horses with stated and known breeding.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top