It’s no surprise that the Olympics dominated our choices as Horses and Horsemen of the Year in this annual American Horses In Sport issue. From a purely American perspective, the best news from Athens was that we were the only nation to win team medals in all three disciplines (plus two individual medals). But the bad news was that only one of the 13 U.S. horses who competed in Athens was U.S.-bred, and that horse (Poggio) isn’t one of our Horses of the Year, although rider Amy Tryon is our Eventing Horseman of the Year.
Our three Olympic Horses of the Year are an English-bred Thoroughbred (Winsome Adante), a Dutch-bred Dutch Warmblood (Authentic), and a German-bred Baden-Wurttemberger (FBW Kennedy). Winsome Adante and Authentic arrived on our shores as already competing youngsters, while Kennedy had been a Danish championship stalwart for years. OK, this isn’t exactly a new trend. Still, it’s hard not to be just a bit embarrassed as an American rider and discouraged if you’re an American breeder.
But I think there just may be a light at the end of the tunnel, a light that’s primarily economic. A growing number of owners and trainers are frustrated by the increasing cost of importing horses from abroad. The dollar’s decline against the euro means that foreign horses are no longer the great deal they were, and rising fuel prices have sent air-freight costs through the roof. You can now expect to pay about $15,000 to import a horse from Europe (for flight and quarantine), a fee that can double the cost of a young event horse. And that’s why riders in all disciplines are getting serious about establishing the framework of national breeding and young horse programs.
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We already have the roots of a figurative national breeding tree. The first requirement is breeding stock, and we have that, between the warmblood, Irish-bred and various draft stallions and mares imported or bred here, plus the quantity and quality of Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse and Arabian stock that’s long been available. Second, you need people willing and able to produce foals from this stock, and we’ve got that too. In fact, we’d
probably have a lot more if producing sport horse foals were more economically viable.
The other two factors are the parts of our tree that need water and fertilizer. Third, we need performance and pedigree records that are useful and available. Numerous breed registries keep statistics, as do the U.S. Equestrian Federation and other national affiliates. But those records need to be more centrally available (in an annual publication or on a website), and the USEF’s sire rankings should record all known offspring of each stallion, not just
the foals someone has paid to record. Fourth is having a network of riders and trainers to develop young horses, to make them sellable by getting them from the field to the competition arena. As we reported last week (“A Young Horse Training Symposium Will Address The Education Gap,” p. 21), some horsemen are really starting to address that problem.
Probably some of you are wondering why this matters? Well, there are definitely micro- and macro-economic reasons. A strong domestic breeding and production industry means revenue and jobs, and the laws of supply and demand suggest that it could help buyers by stabilizing prices too. And there’s no doubt that if Kim Severson, Beezie Madden or Robert Dover could win a championship medal on a U.S.-bred it would bolster our equestrian world. Besides, is there anyone who wouldn’t smile if he or she saw a U.S.-bred Olympic medalist on this issue’s cover in 2012 or 2016? I didn’t think so.