IT’S all change among Hippomundo’s rankings, where the Irish Sport Horse mare Greenacres Special Cavalier (eventing) joins two other newcomers – Wendy de Fontaine (dressage) and H&M Indiana (show jumping) – at the top of the 2024 results.
How did Irish breeding fare in the 10th anniversary year of the Hippomundo rankings? Best of all in the eventing category, where Meath man Michael Callery is the overall leading breeder; his Greenacres Special Cavalier becomes the fourth Irish Sport Horse (ISH) to top the eventing horses’ leaderboard over the past decade and the ISH studbook’s unbroken title run in these rankings continues.
Plus, four Irish-based stallions – Cavalier Royale, Valent, Courage II and Shannondale Sarco St Ghyvan – feature amongst the 10 eventing stallion leaders.
In show jumping, EIC Up Too Jacco Blue is the best-earning ISH of 2024 on €668,796, a figure that places both his breeder Mark Sherry at the head of the Irish show jumping breeders’ rankings and helped his Austrian rider Max Kühner finish as the top-earning rider.
The ISH studbook finished ninth in Hippomundo’s show jumping category, down one place from 2023, while the spectacular strike rate of Irish show jumping riders continued.
Conor Swail (10th) and Darragh Kenny (16th) closed out the year, amongst a hugely competitive top-20 group, after both won over €1 million apiece, as we’ll see in the follow-up.
For the first week, we’ll look at Hippomundo’s dressage and eventing rankings. The Belgian-based website’s prize money-based rankings format differs from that of the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH), collated from points earned in FEI competitions.
Merit in both methods, although money talks loudest in the commercial Irish horse world, where good prize money helps keep owners and yards afloat.
An Olympic year can tend to skew rankings, insofar as last year’s plans for potential team horses were focused on the Games. Medals, honour and glory were on offer at Paris, therefore the Games results had zero impact on the Hippomundo prize money-only standings, compared to the WBFSH final rankings.
Dressage
Like its ISH counterpart in eventing, the KWPN’s unbroken run as the leading dressage studbook continues. The Dutch studbook had a comfortable €386,000 lead over its nearest market rival, the Hanoverian Verband (HANN).
The outlier amongst the studbooks is the Berlin-Brandenburg section of the amalgamated Deutsches Sportpferd (DSP), listed amongst the top 10 with just one horse.
Quite a horse though, as DSP Quantaz was third in the Longines FEI World Cup final in Riyadh last April and is one of just three horses that reoccupied their top 10 place of 2023 in last year’s Hippomundo rankings.
Germany’s Isabell Werth had the top-earning horse too, when Wendy de Fontaine (48th in Hippomundo’s 2023 rankings) joined her yard, after previous rider Andreas Helgstrand was barred from competing for Denmark last year.
The new combination’s biggest pay cheque (€49,500) was won after their Grand Prix Freestyle win at Stockholm CDI5* in December.
Touchdown, Patrick Kittel’s World Cup final champion in Riyadh, rounds off the dressage horses top 10.
TSF Dalera BB – the number one dressage horse in the 2023 rankings – dropped to 12th place last year, although her swansong year included two Paris Olympic gold medals with Jessica von Bredow-Werndl.
The German pair and fan favourites are scheduled to make their final gala appearance together at Basel CSI5* tomorrow (Sunday) before the Trakehner mare retires to stud.
Dalera BB and his only other offspring recorded in Hippomundo’s database – Hermes N.O.P – place their Trakehner sire Easy Game in ninth place in the dressage sires’ table. The leader here is the Quaterman I son Quaterback, the only sire with two offspring in last year’s top 10.
Eventing
The ISH studbook has led the Hippomundo eventing rankings from the front, both annually and after Kentucky last year, when Oliver Townend and Cooley Rosalent bagged the first five-star of 2024.
Winning or being well-placed, in one of the world’s seven five-star events offers a surefire way of featuring in the end-of-year rankings. And the five-star wins kept coming for Irish-breds, as Greenacres Special Cavalier and Caroline Powell won at Badminton. Townend cemented the ISH studbook title after he scored a second US win last year with the evergreen Ballaghmor Class, bred by the late Noel Hickey, at Maryland International.
All of 2024’s other CSI5*-L winners feature in the top 25: Lordships Graffalo (Burghley, second in the Hippomundo rankings), D.Day (Pau, 10th), Hooney d’Arville (Luhmühlen, 17th) and WEC In The Money (Adelaide, 24th).
Well-placed Irish Sport Horses also made their mark with just €228 separating D.Day and 11th-placed Capels Hollow Drift (Shannondale Sarco St Ghyvan. Breeder: Jenny Glynn).
Other consistent Irish-breds are Cavalier Crystal (Jack of Diamonds. Thomas Horgan) in overall 12th place and Annaghmore Valoner (Coroner. Sinead Healion) in 15th place.
Quindiva (Quintender 2) was bred in Co Sligo by Cliodhna Carroll and the 15-year-old mare, ranked seventh, is the best of the Oldenburg Verband’s event horses, ahead of Graffenacht. Now Irish-based, Richard Ames bred RCA Patron Saint (Grafenstolz), runner-up at Badminton last year with Lucy Latta. That lucrative result also placed Latta at the top of the Irish eventing riders’ leaderboard.
How do these ISH results compare with recent years? The same number (three) featured in Hippomundo’s top 10 in 2022: Vanir Kamira (Camiro de Haar Z. Breeder: Kate Jackson), Capels Hollow Drift and Swallow Springs (Chillout. Maria Keating). By the following year, the brilliant Ballaghmor Class was the sole ISH in that group, finishing 2023 on an unassailable lead after winning Burghley and coming oh-so-close to a rare double with his Badminton second.
Second to Ballaghmor Class in those 2023 rankings was another Limerick-born grey: Colorado Blue (Jaguar Mail. Kate Jarvey), registered with Sport Horse Breeding (GB).
He and Austin O’Connor scored that historic win at Maryland International, the first Irish win at five-star level since 1965. Ballaghmor Class made it a Limerick double by winning there last year, the second of his two starts in 2024.
So, with three Irish Sport Horses matching the 2022 figure, the ISH studbook appears to be more than holding its own. Greenacres Special Cavalier and Cooley Rosalent are comparative youngsters at five-star level; however, Ballaghmor Class, a brilliant ambassador for Irish five-star event horses, has now turned 18.
Britain’s Oliver Townend and the 10-year-old Irish-bred mare Cooley Rosalent, pictured during the cross-country phase, won the five-star Kentucky Three-Day Event in the USA \ Michelle Dunn Photo
Continental competition
Two decades and two horse generations on from the introduction of short-format eventing, it is realistic to say that the Irish market continues to face increased competition from continental and UK studbooks. For example, Belgium celebrated its first five-star win, when Lara de Liederkerke and the home-bred Hooney d’Arville, by the 1.60m show jumping stallion Vigo d’Arsouilles, won last year at Luhmühlen.
Numerically, the ISH studbook, which slipped to second place in the WBFSH eventing rankings last year, had the most horses (1,288) on Hippomundo’s 2024 database, double the figure of its closest rival; the Selle Français studbook (632).
(The lowest figure amongst the top 10 studbooks was 67 for the Australian Warmblood registry, which appears in 10th place on account of WEC In The Money’s Adelaide 5* win).
€806 is the average prize money won per horse on the ISH team, which puts it in fifth place amongst the top 10 studbooks. Highest studbook average? The Holsteiner Verband (€1,753 from its 334 horses), closely followed by Sport Horse Breeding GB (€1,739, 181 horses).
Best win strike rate? Again, the Australian Warmblood outlier on 6.4%, followed neck-and-neck by the Holsteiner Verband (4.7%) and Hanoverian Verband (4.6%, 320 horses).
The ISH studbook ties for joint-sixth place with the Anglo-European Studbook (214 horses), both on an average win rate of 3%.
Horses read neither passports – Ballaghmor Class is missing a chunk of his pedigree – or statistics, however there is no room for complacency, if the Irish-bred eventer is to maintain its leading reputation.
Caroline Powell and Greenacres Special Cavalier (ISH), winner of Badminton Horse Trials 2024 \ Equus Pix
Badminton dream
The switchover, from thoroughbred to continental is already copper-fastened in the eventing sire rankings. Birkhofs Grafenstolz, to give the number one sire his full title, retains his 2023 top place, followed by Diamant de Semilly and Cavalier Royale.
Of the Irish-linked stallions, both Cavalier Royale and Courage II are Holsteiners; Valent and Shannondale Sarco St Ghyvan were bred in the neighbouring Netherlands and Belgium.
The late Coroner, mentioned in Bridget McGing’s Breeders’ 10 (see page 64) is the highest-placed thoroughbred (17th) amongst the eventing sires in last year’s rankings.
40% of the top 10 eventing breeders are Irish: Michael Callery (first), JW (Woods) Rosbotham (third), Noel Hickey (fourth) and Cliodhna Carroll (seventh).
This is an impressive result for an island with a population of just over seven million.
Michael Callery, busy looking after his herd in this week’s cold snap, took the news of him being Hippomundo’s top-ranked breeder in his typical modest manner, saying: “I’m delighted and thrilled to be up there and to breed a mare that has won Badminton and now be the top-ranked eventing horse. And she’s young, she’s only 12.
“I’ve 14 broodmares, so I’m a busy man! Touch Cavalier, her full-sister, is expecting a foal this year to a thoroughbred stallion, Primary. I thought I’d go thoroughbred to bring in more blood.
“I speak to Caroline [Powell, Greenacre Special Cavalier’s rider] occasionally. Maybe they’ll go back to Badminton this year. Please God, if she goes, I’d love to go there to see them.”
Another good result by this pair and more Irish-breds throughout 2025 is the key to the Irish Sport Horse continuing to retain its top place in the rankings.
Next week: Show jumping rankings – top-earning horses, sires and riders
By the numbers
47 – years after her Holsteiner stallion Cavalier Royale was foaled, Greenacres Special Cavalier wins Badminton. The power of AI.
18 – show jumping riders won over €1 million last year. Oliver Townend was the sole eventing rider to earn over €200,000 in 2024 (€217,009).
5 – other eventing riders won six-figures last year: Ros Canter (€181,265), Tim Price (€163,016), Caroline Powell (€139,727), Tom McEwen (€123,571) and Harry Meade (€107,052).
4 – times that Irish Sport Horses have topped Hippomundo’s leading event horse category: Vanir Kamira (2019, 2022), Ballaghmor Class (2023) and Greenacres Special Cavalier (2024).
3 – mares: Greenacres Special Cavalier, H&M Indiana and Wendy de Fontaine are the top-earning horses of 2024.
2 – studbooks: the Irish Sport Horse (eventing) and KWPN (dressage) again retain their unbroken lead in their categories.
1 – home-bred Irish Sport Horse in the top 10 eventing horses by the breeder’s own stallion: J.W Rosbotham and Cooley Rosalent, by Valent. A rare achievement.