TB in eventing?

[Noogle]

Just a bit of a general question really, is tb blood becoming less and less needed in modern eventing?
Recently have been seeing many event types on the market, either competing at a high level or thought to be able to do so in the future, many have as little as 30-40% tb.
Are warmbloods/horses with little blood taking over the sport of eventing, or will lots of blood always be needed to make it to the top?

 

[flying_high]

Just a bit of a general question really, is tb blood becoming less and less needed in modern eventing?
Recently have been seeing many event types on the market, either competing at a high level or thought to be able to do so in the future, many have as little as 30-40% tb.
Are warmbloods/horses with little blood taking over the sport of eventing, or will lots of blood always be needed to make it to the top?

It's not a simple question, as some full TBs are licenced into WB stud books. (Else if you keep breeding WB to WB the horses get heavier).

So a registered WB can be 50% or more TB. So I dont think it is absolute. But I also dont think heavier horse stamps do as well as eventing, you are IMO always going to need a bit of blood.

 

[sbloom]

It was inevitable with the removal of the roads and tracks.

Edited to add - steeplechase too of course, thank you @ihatework !

 

[ihatework]

Certainly the sport has changed pretty significantly over the last 10-20 years, loss of steeplechase, change in course designs, far more influence from the improvements in dressage and showjumping.

As such, the success of various types of horse, has also changed.

There is definitely less reliance on the TB, although I'd argue it is still significant.

For me, at the upper levels we have two types of event horses coming through. We have the super flash, these are the ones that turn heads in the dressage, jump clear sj pretty reliably and are seen at the top of the leaderboard at the short format. We then have the ones that climb the leaderboard at the long format and 5* level based on their speed and endurance in the xc phase. Sometimes you get a horse that overlaps these types and then you are laughing.

Now whilst it would be far too simplistic to say warmbloods take up the former and TBs the latter, I do believe (although have no solid stats to demonstrate) that you would find a greater proportion of warmblodd/low%TB in the former than you would the latter.

Another thing to consider is longevity in the sport. There is no denying that the training an event horse at the upper levels undergoes takes its toll physically on all of them. There is definitely a sweet spot whereby the ratio of bloodlines that makes the dressage/sj easier on them, versus the TB % to aid the natural gallop optimises how much behind the scenes training needs to be done without laming them too prematurely.

I'm not sure if that makes sense or is too jumbled. I suppose in summary, there is definitely a shift towards less TB, however bear in mind warmbloods are evolving into a far more refined creature than the heavy things they used to be - many event warmbloods look far more blood than their parentage says on paper.

But most of all in an eventer, you need a bloody big heart and a love for the job

 

[Horseysheepy]

You can't beat a good % of TB blood in an event horse for speed, stamina and courage.
This may be an outdated opinion in modern day though.

 

[Flowerofthefen]

I still think you need a good percentage of tb blood. A couple of friends have heavier horses and really struggle to get anywhere near the time on the xc.