![\"OLYMPUS](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Christopher.jpg\")
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He, like a number of commentators, suggested that the various breed societies had lost their way and that despite years of selective breeding, finding a top horse, particularly one with piaffe, was difficult to find. He suggested that the fanfare around the stallion licensings and young horse classes, has resulted in stallions that only produce young horse stars, being popular with the breeders…<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, three-year-old stallions have to create an optical illusion of balance, energy and power, despite only trotting in-hand.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Pinkus suggests: \u201cThe other cause for concern is the breed societies\u2019 insistence on directing towards a hypothetical type. They ignore the fact that Valegro, the world\u2019s best dressage horse \u2013 nearly perfect in physical ability \u2013 is a completely different type, one that would be rejected in stallion selection. Give me a good cob any day; at least he\u2019ll hack if he fails in dressage.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Essence of Young Horse breeding – but will she go FEI? Isabell Bache and Fasine<\/em><\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at the world\u2019s best dressage horses and see how the theory fits. Now I think the problem has been compounded by some of the statistical \u2018aids\u2019 to breeders set into place by the breed societies, and the national federations \u2013 like the German FN breeding values, which tend to favor young stallions with no Grand Prix progeny, over stallions with proven Grand Prix performers. Thus we have F\u00fcrstenball and Lissaro in first and second place on the FN standings \u2013 both of them young horse class stars \u2013 while stallions like De Niro or Breitling with a host of progeny doing Grand Prix, don\u2019t make the topliste.<\/p>\n Another problem is that there are any number of \u2018rankings\u2019 of dressage competitors, but most of them are just testimony to how far (and how often) some riders are prepared to travel in search of a ribbon. This means that horses like Valegro, or Charlotte\u2019s new star (three Grand Prix, all over 70%) Barolo, don\u2019t get a mention, while some seriously indifferent performers hog the limelight.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start our examination with Charlotte\u2019s two. Valegro, as David has noted, is hardly the modern type, indeed he, like so many other stars, was rejected at the KWPN licensing. His sire, Negro, is again, a short legged, stocky chap, and while he is by a dressage star, Ferro, it might be remembered that Ferro started life as a showjumper, and Ferro\u2019s dam sire is the very substantial Holsteiner, Farn. Negro\u2019s dam sire is Variant, another slightly old fashioned type, by the Thoroughbred, Afrikaner, and out of a jumping mare, and grand-daughter of another substantial Holsteiner import to Holland, Amor. Valegro\u2019s dam has a pedigree that screams JUMP. His dam is by Gershwin, a 1.50 showjumping son of Voltaire, out of a mare by Nimmerdor, with more Holsteiner jumping blood on the bottom line.<\/p>\n The chestnut Hanoverian gelding, Barolo looks more like the modern dressage type \u2013 which is lucky since his dad, Breitling, had the reputation of producing prodigiously talented Grand Prix horses that were perhaps a little plain and old fashioned looking, like the stallion. But if Barolo\u2019s sire fits my theory that dressage breeders have been concentrating too much on the refined dressage type, his dam side breeding would seem to shoot the theory down in flames, since Barolo is really concentrated dressage breeding on the dam line.\u00a0 Charlotte Dujardin and Barolo<\/em><\/p>\n Barolo\u2019s dam, Highlight, is by Hitchcock, by the Irish Thoroughbred, Hill Hawk who appears on a number of dressage pedigrees, and is the dam sire of all the Welt Hits. Hitchcock\u2019s grand-dam, Baronesse (by the Thoroughbred, Bleep) is the dam of one of the early influential dressage sires in the Hanoverian book \u2013 Bolero. Highlight is out of a mare by Wenzel, another of the Hanoverian dressage pioneers, out of a mare by Shogun, more Thoroughbred blood. Okay, I wasn\u2019t saying that it is impossible to produce dressage stars with dressage breeding, just that in many, if not most of the cases, strong jumping blood plays a r\u00f4le.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s quickly look at another emerging star on the dressage scene, Cosmo, because that fits my thesis perfectly. Twenty-one year old S\u00f6nke Rothenberger and nine-year old Cosmo are rapidly emerging as very strong contenders for a place in the German dressage team to go to Rio later this year, kicking off the season with a win in the Grand Prix at Jerez, beating British team gold medallists, Carl Hester and Nip Tuck in the process.<\/p>\n Cosmo is by the current super star of world showjumping, Van Gogh, who has just picked up a \u20ac250,000 bonus for winning both the Grand Prix of Los Angeles and Hong Kong, and then reaped in lots more cash with a win in Shanghai, with Marco Kutscher in the saddle. Van Gogh is pure jumping bred, by Numero Uno out of a grand-daughter of Ramiro out of a daughter of Burrgraaf. Cosmo\u2019s dam is similarly jumping bred, by the Landadel son, Landjonker (Fr\u00fchling in Holland), although we do remember that Landadel was the sire of Leonardo da Vinci, who S\u00f6nke\u2019s mum, Gonnelien, rode very successfully in international dressage competition. There\u2019s more jumping blood on the bottom line with Farn and Amor, although the grand-dam is by Aktion who was an international dressage competitor \u2013 who looked like a Holstein jumper – with Hungarian, Gyula Dallos. S\u00f6nke Rothenberger and Cosmo<\/em><\/p>\n Indeed it is precisely this jumping breeding that appealed to S\u00f6nke\u2019s father, former international dressage star, Sven Rothenberger, although he points out that Van Gogh has shown dressage quality as well:<\/p>\n \u201cHe had for more than eight years the highest mark in dressage in the stallion test. It was not a surprise that he could breed dressage horses, there are some really good dressage horses in Holland by Van Gogh. We knew there was something special in him, not only as a jumper, it is more the old Holstein breeding that comes a little bit through. This makes special horses, not normal horses, they have big movements, a lot of elasticity and they feel happy with their bodies, they use all their muscles \u2013 this is jumping, good jumping, that the horse is loose in itself, not stiff. They have strength to carry weight, but also big gaits, they have a really good canter, that\u2019s what I really love.\u201d<\/p>\n A quick look at the pedigree of some of the other stars of dressage in recent years, points again to horses that come from outside of the dressage \u2018box\u2019. Salinero was bred to jump, and indeed his brother showjumped at the Olympic Games. Totilas was by the Grand Prix dressage stallion, Gribaldi, but his dam was solidly jumping bred: Nimmerdor, Marco Polo, Amor.<\/p>\n The world current number one, Desperados, is obviously the product of specialist dressage breeding. He is by the great De Niro, out of a Wolkenstein II mare, with the slightly left of centre addition of the French Anglo Arab, Matcho, to give him that wonderful black skin. But \u2013 and only future years will bear this out \u2013 my feeling is that if he produces dressage stars in the future, they will be out of solidly athletic mares with a good dash of jumping blood.<\/p>\n Similarly, the current top horse in the Dutch ranks, Voice, is solidly dressage bred, by De Niro out of a\u00a0 Rohdiamant mare, out of a mare by one of the first Dutch dressage sire stars, the Trakehner, Doruto \u2013 with just a dash of Amor on the bottom line.<\/p>\n I am reminded on Dorothy Parker\u2019s jibe at Alexander Wallcott \u2013 it doesn\u2019t take courage to sit on the fence, just a bloody fat arse \u2013 but am forced to say while I agree with David Pincus that most of the licensing stallion stars, and young horse stars will never go into Grand Prix ranks, an examination of the current crop of top horses shows that some are purely dressage bred\u2026 and some are not. Chris Hector discusses in which the way of dressage breeding may be heading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[715],"tags":[1499,3,1425,1500,601,1268,636],"class_list":["post-26915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-big-issues","tag-barolo","tag-breeding","tag-cosmo","tag-david-pincus","tag-dressage-breeding","tag-fasine","tag-valegro"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26915"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32108,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26915\/revisions\/32108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"FasineFRomancierSirDon\"](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/FasineFRomancierSirDon.jpg\")
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