SIFTING THROUGH the 2021 championship results for traditional Irish breeding angles produces slim pickings. Hardly surprising though as the number of traditional-breds has dropped steadily and often the only sighting of a Traditional Irish Horse [TIH] suffix now appears in the second and third generations of pedigrees.
To recap traditional-breds achievements during the most recent Olympic Games and European championships, two – Carling King (Clover Hill. Breeder: Dr. Pat Geraghty) and Mr Springfield (Western Problem. Robert Gallagher) – placed joint-fourth at the Olympic Games in Athens, making them the highest-placed Irish Sport Horses at the Olympics this millennium.
Flexible (Cruising. Catherine Doyle) finished eighth at London and once the 2012 World Cup champion retired, the Irish Sport Horse (ISH) studbook nosedived in the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horse (WBFSH) show jumping rankings.
However, that situation has improved this year with the ISH studbook placing 10th in this year’s results. Super Chilled (Breeder: Cheryl Broderick), by the traditionally bred Gelvin Clover, is the sole TIH link amongst the top six Irish Sport Horses.
Gortfadda Diamond (Watervalley Cool Diamond. Sean Lydon) is the only traditional-bred amongst the half-dozen top performers that saw the ISH studbook finish third in the WBFSH eventing rankings. It was almost a given that the title belonged to the Irish Sport Horse studbook in past years, yet it was won fair and square in 2021 by the Selle Français studbook with the Holsteiner Verband just 17 points behind.
The most recent medal won by a traditional-bred in Olympics eventing was silver medallist McKinlaigh (Highland King. Yvonne Walsh) at Hong Kong in 2008. By the next Orient-hosted Olympics in Tokyo, there was just one close match amongst the entries to a Traditional Irish Horse by its definition of three generations of fully recorded pedigree. That was Boleybawn Prince (Colin Diamond. Brian McDonnell), incidentally, another Le Lion d’Angers graduate.
Best of the Irish-bred eventers at Tokyo were fifth-placed Ballaghmor Class (Courage II. Noel Hickey) and Grovine de Reve (Hermes de Reve. Paddy and Maria Raggett) in 11th place. Both horses are typical of what now appears to be the ISH eventer stamp of a continental sire crossed with an ISH mare, sometimes of traditional bloodlines.
Modern eventing breeding often sees a thoroughbred dam sire as in the case of the best-placed (13th) Irish team horse: Colorado Blue (Breeder: Kate Jarvey) by Jaguar Mail out of a Rock King (TB) dam.
That Selle Français stallion Jaguar Mail topped the WBFSH eventing sire rankings released this week. Its top 100 sires lists just six thoroughbreds: Water Dance (22nd), Master Imp (37th), Ostermond (55th), Helikon (63rd), Loughehoe Guy (89th) and Mill Law (97th).
Incidentally, Loughehoe Guy’s full-brother Irish (Regular Guy. Alo Tynan) was the most recent ISH individual show jumping medallist at Olympic level when he won bronze at Barcelona in 1992.
One Day Soon (Kiltealy Spring. Breeder: Donald Murphy), the silver medallist at the 2009 European eventing championships, is the most recent traditional-bred in the European medals. Both Rioghan Rua (Jack of Diamonds. Mags Kinsella) and Brookfield Inocent (Inocent. John Mulvey), winners of individual bronze and silver respectively at the most recent European championships in 2019 and this autumn are out of traditional dams. Again, typical of the current ISH eventer recipe.
1996 was the last year the usage of thoroughbred stallions (38%) outranked the current support for warmblood sires in Irish Sport Horse breeding statistics. By 2019, the most recent year for complete figures, this number had dropped to 9.3%.
These are the facts and what the future holds for traditional breeding lies in the hands of breeders, Horse Sport Ireland and the Traditional Irish Horse Association (TIHA).
There is no better person to talk with about the position of traditional breeding, event horse markets and the current hunting insurance impasse than the TIHA deputy chairman Chris Ryan, synonymous with the Scarteen Hunt and whose sharp eye spotted McKinlaigh as a youngster.
Ever busy
Catching up with Chris Ryan can sometimes take place across different time zones. He’s on his way home from judging the young event horse classes on the American west coast after a similar task at the inaugural Maryland five-star event.
After two flights back to Dublin from San Francisco, via London, the ever-obliging Ryan even offers to phone later from the Heuston to Limerick Junction train he’s hoping to catch.
“It was great and fantastic to see state involvement in the event. Maryland is horse country and I wish we could see that same capital investment here,” he said about the new five-star where he was impressed by the standard of youngsters he judged.
“There’s a hardcore band of people in America keen to breed eventers although what they produce is still outnumbered by imports. The top three were imported. And then the top three on the west coast would fit nicely into the top 10 on the east coast, the five-year-olds were very strong too. Compare that to Ireland where our four-year-olds are much stronger, but then we’re a selling nation and some of those are sold on by the next year.”
At the other end of the scale, given the results at the Olympic and European championships, where does he think the traditional Irish horse sits in modern eventing?
“That’s a very big question! There’s traditional campaigners like Gortfadda Diamond, he’s an exciting prospect and we’d a Watervalley Cool Diamond [Gortfadda Diamond’s sire] sold nicely away so I think he’s a stallion worth noting.
“Performance is the best critique and the French-breds were very strong this year at the Olympics, to have the first four horses (Amande de B’Neville, Toledo de Kerser, Vassily de Lassos and Vinci de la Vigne) at Tokyo was an amazing, that was a hell of an achievement.”
For many decades, the Selle Français studbook was ran on a closed basis before it opened up to other bloodlines and breeds. “There is a native French breed running along the Selle Français studbook, the same parallel as we are in the TIHA with the Irish studbook. So I do see similarities between ourselves and French breeders and the need to keep a foundation herd.
“Some of our best performers are out of TIH mares and I fully understand that decisions are made on commercial issues. Most breeders look to sell as foals, who could ‘begrudge’ them? Everyone wants to make a living and the continental foal is very flashy. So it’s a domino effect.
“If you don’t keep a pure traditional herd though, where is the Irishness? And that is what buyers mainly come here for, that Irish brain and fifth leg. So I do feel we need to keep traditional lines for that presence in modern eventing.”
By the numbers
Breeding is often a numbers game in the bloodstock and sport horse worlds. Stallion A covering 10 times the amount of mares as Stallion B will in theory have 10 times more opportunities to make his mark. Before the 1990s, traditional-breds were practically the only Irish horse on the market and that has now changed. Are we breeding enough traditional horses to play the numbers game in eventing?
“Again, that’s a good question. I think we’ve about 700 or 800 TIH foals born in a year, that’s an approximate figure. That’s where we are. I would have to say that some of the TIH’s lack that bit of quality, it worries me. We’re not just looking at quantity, it’s got to be quality as well,” he replied, about the dual battle for keeping both numbers and standards up.
There are no precise figures available for the percentage of TIH foals within the 2019 foal crop as the results of the various crosses between thoroughbred, Irish Draught, traditional sport horse and Connemara crosses – the staple ingredients for the TIH recipe – are contained within the general statistics.
However, given the frequency of seeing, for example, young event horse pedigrees often containing two and three crosses of continental breeding, how can the numbers of traditional-breds be increased?
One idea he’s particularly keen on is for owners of mares to cover her with a traditional stallion for one year to build up reserves. “Those top dam lines are so valuable and we have to commend the breeders for that. We all understand what the high end of the market dictates but for one year, would they go traditional? Even just for one foal? It will take time, there is always a time lag in breeding horses in that it will take at least 10 years to see the true results, but it is worth considering.”
What about the TIHA incentives mentioned in this year’s Breeding Supplement?
“We got a very good response to the top genetic producing mares to go for one year to a traditional horse and receive €300 once that foal is on the ground. We’re looking at a colt retention scheme as well. We have to look out for outcrosses from Cruising and the old Clover Hill lines. We’ve identified a couple and so we’re working on that too.
“We’re the only ones working on it, that’s the thing! For me, we’re doing the work to keep and ringfence a traditional Irish horse band to ensure that we don’t lose the TIH because otherwise, those figures are not encouraging.
“Unique selling points (USPs) are huge and in Ireland, we’re very keen as the TIHA to see if we can retain traditional-breds. The TIH is our unique selling point.
"There is no other country that can produce what we can produce: that unique Irishness. And that is marketable.
“And, yes, we’re hoping the figures will pick up but there’s enough appetite [from mare owners]. In the response we got for those top producing mares to go traditional for one year, we have had a nice pickup on that and in 10 years’ time, we’ll know the results”
The need for speed
Facebook’s recent rebranding as Meta is a reminder of the huge marketing and advertising budgets corporations have at their disposal. At the other end of the scale, the TIHA marketing is done on an absolute shoestring budget.
“Absolutely, we’re all voluntarily involved. And it isn’t a ‘Them and Us’ situation, we’re looking at the industry as a whole. Most of our TIHA members have both, continental and traditional Irish horses, there’s room for everybody at the table. Of course there is.
“All we’re saying is we need to retain a band of traditional Irish horses. If we don’t invest in it, speculate to accumulate I suppose, we will lose the best traditional bloodlines. We don’t want to turn out poor-quality horses, anybody can do that. It’s high-quality horses, top-end horses, that we need to produce.”
Another suggestion of his is a breeder reward scheme by Horse Sport Ireland, possibly diverting funds from its annual foal championship.
“I would love to see a scheme that instead of Horse Sport Ireland having its €40,000 foal championship, would it be a better spend to instead award 40 premiums?
"Say, for every show jumping horse competing at 1.45m level and above, give 40 of these horses’ breeders a grand apiece to keep those breeders in the game.”
One scheme Horse Sport Ireland has operated since 2020 is the thoroughbred percentage scheme to incentivise the breeding of sport foals with at least 70% thoroughbred blood. According to the HSI launch details, analysis of foal registration between 2015-2019 demonstrated that only 5% of foals produced in Ireland were of more than 75% blood, pointing out that Irish Olympian Padraig McCarthy and renowned team trainer Chris Bartle had emphasised the need for greater than 80% thoroughbred blood for the top event horse.
Two other advocates are Joachim and Michael Jung, who, in their 2013 feature in The Irish Field, stated that horses with a high percentage of thoroughbred blood were needed for four-star (now five-star) level. Several of both Jung’s and Ingrid Klimke’s best horses have at least one thoroughbred parent or grandparent in their pedigrees, including La Biosthetique Sam (75%) and Hale Bob (70.32%).
Interestingly, Vassily de Lassos, tipped by Ryan as a Tokyo medal contender – was the only one of the three individual medal-winning horses to meet that percentage. According to Horse Telex data, the Anglo-Arabian weighs in at 77.93% thoroughbred, while the gold and silver medal winners, Amande de B’Neville (45.13%) and Toledo de Kerser (47.85%), are less than 50% TB.
Similarly, at the European eventing championships at Avenches, it was the silver medal-winning Irish-bred Brookfield Inocent (Inocent. Breeder: John Mulvey. 65.82%) that came closest to matching this number. Gold medal champion JL Dublin (44.53%) and bronze medallist Corouet (40.63%) are significantly lower.
Chris has an interesting take on the whole thoroughbred percentage issue. “The thoroughbred percentage works out as an equation on that pedigree, I’m not comfortable with it and I’ll tell you why,” adding that a Californian laboratory checked the thoroughbred percentage of some famous horses and found they were higher than that recorded on paper, often by 15%.
“If you’ve lost the thoroughbred percentage of the third dam or further back, that just doesn’t get put in, obviously it doesn’t. People who base articles on TB percentages worked out by an equation can be way off the mark and DNA for me is a much more conclusive determination.”
Insurance crux
And finally, the hunting insurance issue. “It’s unsettling, this difficulty in finding insurance. Our claims culture doesn’t help,” he said, adding that in some American states such as Florida and Georgia, there is no legal footing for claims by riders taking part in high-risk activities of their own volition. “You cannot sue over there.
“It will get sorted,” he added about a training ground and way of life. “There is no place like the hunting field for training both horses and riders, those soft hands and balance.”
Scarteens black n' tans opening meet at Knocklong in 2017, Chris Ryan in action \ Catherine Power
Keeping that balance between commercial and traditional bloodlines is in the hands of Irish sport horse breeders. Ryan’s helpful offer of a telephone interview on board the Limerick Junction-bound train was postponed to the following morning, however his journey was a reminder of a similar conundrum. Busy commuter lines vs quieter branch lines. Whether it’s rail services or breeding traditional horses, the message is clear: “Use them or lose them.”
What is an Irish horse?
“Well, I think there is a simple definition of what is now an Irish Sport Horse and that is any foal born in Ireland. That is the definition. It’s a geographical, not a genetic one. So the genetic one for me is a traditional Irish horse. The TIH is the native Irish horse. An ISH means it was foaled in Ireland, you could have a Hanoverian mare in foal to a Swedish warmblood, foaling down here in Ireland and that foal is an ISH. So we know what the definition is – foaled in Ireland – but that’s all it means.”