LED ASTRAY AGAIN - 'HOLSTEINER' WINS PAU CCI ****

Germany's Dirk Schrade has just won the last four star international horse trials of the season at Pau in France. He was riding his 'Holsteiner' gelding King Artus. The reports of his win have quickly spread around the world...to the delight of those breeding and selling Holsteiners.

However there is no mention of the fact that his sire is in fact a thoroughbred, King Milford, out of the Holsteiner mare Alida 1V. Then one looks at Alida 1V's breeding and we finds out that she was by a stallion who was himself 50% thoroughbred, being by the great Ladykiller, and out of a mare that was 75% Thoroughbred with the legendary thoroughbreds Heathersett and Cottage Son supplying this blood. Then some more thoroughbred comes to light with some Selle Francais in the breeding.

So this means King Artus is by a Thoroughbred out of a mare who is very close to being 3/4 thoroughbred, and his total percentage of Holsteiner blood is only slightly over 8%, while the Thoroughbred percentage is 85%. We need to know this in the sport if we are to encourage the breeding of the right type of horses for elite eventing and not be led astray by brand names.

In second place was the 'Hannoverian' Butts Leon ridden by Andreas Dibowski. It is the same story...he is less than 2% Hannoverian. The question is how many people will ever discover this?

William

www.WilliamMicklem.com

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Comment by Over Fences on October 26, 2009 at 4:34pm: This is because the most valuable equine blood in the sport world continues to be Thoroughbred, this means that within the warmblood populations there will always exist vast amounts of TB blood.

This does not mean that these breeds are'nt truly breeds, or that the TB should be the only horse.
Every Warmblood registry should be made up of roughly 50% Thoroughbred lines along with the distinctive type for the region, and even crossed to other Warmblood breeds for improving it.

Many great Thoroughbreds have been influencial in Warmblood breeding, and even approved into several different books.

I for one believe this to be the only way to succesfully manage these types of breeds

Comment by Kamikaze on October 26, 2009 at 3:49pm: That is really interesting and i have wondered why that was. My horses sire is registered and advertised as dutch warmblood, but when I looked back at his breeding he is in fact 50% TB

Comment by Jackie Cochran on October 26, 2009 at 11:53am: The English developed the almost perfect riding and competition horse in the Thoroughbred. Thank you so much for repeatedly pointing out that if a breeder wants a perfect horse for competition he does not have to reinvent the wheel, all the hard work has already been done. Breeders for centuries have used TB blood (a LOT of TB blood) to turn their harness breeds (carriage and cart) into saddle horses. Ignore this history and you will not progress in developing the "perfect" competition horse.