PrintOur columnist tries to imagine what eventing will be like when today’s foals reach the peak of their careers.
The horses currently excelling in modern three-day eventing were not “purpose bred” to be good at this sport, because when these top horses were foaled, eventing was altogether different.
When a sport changes radically, and virtually overnight, as eventing has changed, the breeders are caught flatfooted. They have about a 10-year time lag before they can catch up with the new requirements.
Event horse breeders are in a bind, I think, because it’s problematic whether eventing is set and fixed for the foreseeable future, or whether it’s still a sport in flux. Right now upper-level eventing is an unsafe sport, despite the many honest attempts to lessen the dangers. Too many horses are getting injured and killed, as are some of their riders. This state of affairs can’t remain. If the sport isn’t made safer from within, some powers will change it from without, and we don’t know what those changes will be.
This means the event horse breeder is caught in a guessing game. Will the speeds be reduced? Will the cross-country jumps be made easier? Will the show jumping tracks get bigger? Will the dressage tests get more difficult? The point is, we don’t know, so we have to guess. The mare we breed in 2011 won’t have her foal until 2012. That foal will hit its prime at 10 or so, in 2022, and that’s light years from now.
So, here’s my guess, because I don’t think we’ll have 2010 eventing in 2022. Dressage will become more technical and more testing. Show jumping will be higher and more technical. Cross-country speeds at the preliminary, intermediate and advanced levels will be lowered between 10 and 20 meters per minute, and the jumps will be less dangerous, less “daunting.”
So at the advanced level we’ll need very good movers, who are sane enough to let us “get at” that movement.
We’ll need very good jumpers who can get around a 4'3" to 4'6" track and leave the rails up. We’ll need horses fast enough and sound enough to gallop somewhere between 550 and 570 meters per minute for 10 to 11 minutes, over fences which are less likely to cause rotational falls than those we have today.
To create these horses, breeders will need to creatively mix the modern Thoroughbred with the modern warmblood and the modern Irish Sport Horse. Thoroughbred blood, now about 75 percent to 90 percent in the average top eventer, will drop to between 50 percent and 75 percent. There will be full Thoroughbreds and horses with very little Thoroughbred blood excelling in 2022 eventing, but the majority will have “a bit of this and a bit of that.”
A 2022 pedigree will still have Bold Ruler, Hail To Reason, Native Dancer, Ribot, Mr. Prospector, Northern Dancer, Tom Fool, Seattle Slew and the rest of the usual Thoroughbred suspects. Those Thoroughbreds, as well as such Irish stalwarts as King Of Diamonds, Jumbo and Clover Hill will increasingly be joined by the names of such warmblood jumper line stallions as Cor de la Bryere, Alme, Capitol, Argentinus, Indoctro, Quidam de Revel, Darco, Cassini I, Landgraf and Contender.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some big name dressage sires creeping into eventing pedigrees either, stallions such as Jazz, Sandro Hit, Donnerhall, and probably someday, Totilas.
