THE Michael Callery-bred Greenacres Special Cavalier and an uninterrupted run by the Irish Sport Horse (ISH) studbook meant top results for Irish eventing breeding in the annual Hippomundo rankings.
How about its 2024 show jumping rankings? Not quite as good news compared to the previous standout year. Pacino Amiro ranked eighth overall in 2023 after a phenomenal season with Bertram Allen, plus the ISH studbook had a matching eighth place in the show jumping studbooks category.
Pacino Amiro was one of three Irish Sport Horses to feature in Hippomundo’s top 25 show jumping horses that year; GRS Lady Amaro (19th) and James Kann Cruz (24th) were the other two.
Moving on to the 2024 rankings, EIC Up Too Jacco Blue (13th place overall) is the highest-earning Irish Sport Horse (€668,796); his breeder Mark Sherry is the top-ranked Irish show jumping breeder and the ISH studbook finished one place lower this year, in ninth position.
HHS Calais (44th) and James Kann Cruz (56th) are the next highest-ranked Irish Sport Horses in the Hippomundo rankings of 2024, the year when all eyes were on the Paris Olympics.
An Olympic or championship year can impact rankings. Likely team horses can bypass ‘big prize money’ events, such as the World Cup finals and some Grand Prix classes, en route to their goal.
Checker 47, the top-earning horse in 2023, dropped to 10th place in last year’s Hippomundo rankings, but also earned an individual gold medal at the Paris Olympics with Christian Kukuk.
Millionaire horses
Incidentally, Checker 47’s owner Madeleine Winter-Schulze was presented with the Longines Owner of the Year award, presented by the Jumping Owners Club, at Basel CHI International last weekend.
Her Olympic show jumping individual champion had previously deposed the 2022 Hippomundo top-earner Killer Queen VDM by the following year.
Now, the Comme Il Faut gelding is one of four show jumping horses to retain that top 10 place in Hippomundo’s 2024 rankings. Leone Jei; the Basel World Cup qualifier winner Donatello D’Auge and King Edward are the other three.
Killer Queen re-enters the top 10 charts in fourth place, but none could catch last year’s number one horse: H&M Indiana.
Bred by the eye-catchingly named W. Vanderlinden-van-Turtelboom-Ruys, the Belgian-bred mare won €1.3 million with Sweden’s Malin Baryard-Johnsson throughout 2024, to overtake Leone Jei in the final standings. By December 31st, ’just’ €1,705 separated the pair in the final result.
The Swedish pair’s place on the Global Champion Riyadh Playoffs winning team in late November earned them €833,333; the same amount as won by teammates Nicola Philippaerts with Katanga v/h Dingeshof and Julien Epaillard and his Basel World Cup qualifier winner, Donatello D’Auge. These lucrative GCT results were a major factor in the trio finishing with the top 10 rankings places.
The Longines CHI Classics show at Basel has also influenced the start of the 2025 rankings, with Donatello D’Auge taking an early lead (€110,990) over the Grand Prix winner there: Iliana (€68,000).
In 2022, Killer Queen VDM was the only horse to win more than €1 million during the competition year; by 2023, that figure rose to a half-dozen: Checker 47, Stargold, King Edward, Zineday, Donatello D’Auge and Leone Jei.
Last year, six horses again reached that million-mark milestone: H&M Indiana, Leone Jei, Donatello D’Auge, Killer Queen, King Edward and Point Break. Numbers that underline the fact that the best prize money within equestrian sport is found in show jumping.
Sweden's Malin Baryard-Johnsson and H&M Indiana \ FEI/Richard Juillart
Irish factor
Over to the top Irish Sport Horses. The Mark Sherry-bred EIC Up Too Jacco Blue helped boost Max Kühner to finish 2024 as the year’s top-earning rider on €2,090,205.
Kühner’s top-earning horse – Elektric Blue P (DSP-BRAND. Eldorado van de Zeshoek) – came close to joining the millionaire horses (€949,996) in 2024. The Austrian rider relied too on the ISH pair of EIC Up Too Jacco Blue (€668,796) and EIC Cooley Jump The Q (€286,393).
“Max is a great guy to have as your marketing department for the Creighton/Sherry breeding endeavours! He has bought some of the youngstock in 2023 and 2024,” disclosed Mark, who in his Breeders’ 10 feature in October 2023, told of how he started breeding sport horses with the support of Imelda and Alan Creighton.
Mark Sherry and Imelda Creighton catch up with Max Kühner and Up Too Jacco Blue at the Global Champions Tour in Rome in September in 2023
EIC Up Too Jacco Blue’s best payday in 2024? €300,000 for the 14-year-old’s second place in the Monaco Grand Prix last July.
Where did the other top-earning ISH show jumping horses rack up their winnings?
HHS Calais, bred by the late Ita Brennan, is the second highest-ranked Irish Sport Horse.
His and Mikey Pender’s memorable Grand Prix win at the Longines League of Nations Cup final in Barcelona last October earned €99,000, their best single financial reward of the 2024 season.
The Kannan-sired James Kann Cruz is another pillar of Irish-bred results. His first Hippomundo entry shows he won €35 for winning a seven-year-old class with Francis Connors in Oliva just five years ago.
Last year, the Patrick Connolly-bred grey won €334,731 in prize money, a figure that brings his international career earnings up to €1,415,584.
His and Shane Sweetnam’s biggest pay cheque last year? Their €100,000 America Cup Grand Prix win in Traverse City and, as a 12-year-old, there are surely more good paydays ahead for this Irish Sport Horse.
Two more 12-year-olds are next amongst the Irish-breds’ top 10: EIC Cooley Jump The Q and GRS Lady Amaro.
Bred in Co Carlow by Pam Walshe, EIC Cooley Jump The Q banked €75,000 after his and Kühner’s third-place Grand Prix result in Dinard in July, on top of a similar sum (€70,000) earned after their Grand Prix runner-up place in the Miami round of the Global Champions Tour last April.
Those results move the Pacino son up from eighth place (2023) to fourth last year amongst the top 10 Irish Sport Horses.
GRS Lady Amaro appeared amongst this Irish top 10 for the first time in 2023 (€563,968). Her 2024 prize money dropped to €273,779. Included in that sum is the €100,000 won for her and Mark McAuley’s second place on home ground in the Dublin Grand Prix last August.
Bred by Denis Hickey, the Amaretto D’Arco mare is out of the thoroughbred mare Legal Lady, by the Garryrichard Stud’s top National Hunt sire Over The River.
Strike rates
The John Carey-bred Ballypatrick Tangelo moved to the top of the ISH pack last May after the Tangelo van de Zeshoek gelding and Argentinian rider Juan Batista Pidutti Hortas won €154,206 for their third place result in a 1.50m class at San Miguel de Allende in Mexico that month.
To compare the prize money on offer in eventing and show jumping, that figure was more than Badminton winner Greenacres Special Cavalier’s prize money.
The consistent Rincoola Milsean is the sixth Irish Sport Horse to hold his top 10 ISH ranking. Bred by the late Harold McGahern, the Aldatus Z 12-year-old’s biggest pay cheque in 2024 was the €36,667 earned last June for his and Charlotte Jacobs (USA) 1.50m Grand Prix win at Langley.
The next band of Irish Sport Horses – CBS Khantastic, WKD Aimez Moi and HHS Seattle – won between €105,300 up to €153,713 last year, when 1,055 Irish Sport Horses on the Hippomundo database earned €5.5 million in total.
Although the Selle Français studbook deservedly recorded a massive €25 million total in 2024, that prize money was won by their army of 7,057 French-bred horses.
The highest prize money average amongst the top 10 studbooks was notched up by Belgium’s BWP with a €6,258 prize money average won by 3,847 Belgian-breds. Top BWP earner? H&M Indiana.
Sweden’s SWB studbook is next: €6,164 average for just 543 horses, the lowest figure in this group. Ben Maher’s Point Break was the best of the Swedish-breds.
The eighth-placed Westphalian studbook recorded the third-highest average: €5,468/1,197 horses, led by the mighty Checker 47 and followed by United Touch S (€743,297).
In fourth place, the ISH studbook recorded an average of €5,223 from its 1,055 horses found on the Hippomundo database.
Best win strike rate of the top 10 studbooks? The Irish Sport Horse (4.6%) is just ahead of the Selle Français (4.3%), followed by the Zangersheide studbook (3.8%). This is an excellent result for a studbook that does not have the same numbers in show jumping as its market rivals. In eventing, yes, but not in show jumping.
Leading sires
Imagine sales teams in the bloodstock industry compiling a The Irish Field advertisement for the upcoming breeding season: “Progeny winnings – €5 million!” A fantastic marketing fact.
Diamant de Semilly achieved just that in 2024 to become Hippomundo’s leading show jumping sire for a fourth occasion. Blood Diamond du Pont (€415,445) is the late Selle Français sire’s top earner of 2024.
Plus, the Diamant de Semilly factor is also seen in the Irish results, through his son Pacino (ranked 69th in the 2024 Hippomundo show jumping sire rankings).
How many Diamant de Semilly offspring though were required to tot up that five million euros total? 1,045, second to Kannan (1,220).
Toupie de la Roque (€506,754) has succeeded James Kann Cruz in the 2024 rankings as Kannan’s top earner.
Smallest number of contributing offspring amongst the top 10 stallions? Seventh-placed VDL Cardento (249 offspring), followed by third-placed Eldorado van de Zeshoek (273).
Eldorado van de Zeshoek also rates as the sire with the highest average earnings of the top 10 sires group (€15,231), which isn’t surprising, considering his best three earners last year are Killer Queen VDM, Elektric Blue P and Highway TN N.O.P.
While slightly unusual to see Chacco Blue in fourth place, it’s not surprising to see that EIC Up Too Jacco Blue is his most-winning offspring in last year’s rankings.
Chacco Blue also features in third place amongst Hippomundo’s top 10 damsires of 2024.
The top three damsires are completed by frontrunner For Pleasure, followed by Kannan and then Chacco Blue.
The ubiquitous Killer Queen VDM, followed by Elektric Blue P and Messi van’t Ruytershfof are For Pleasure’s top three second-generation winners.
Interestingly, four of the Selle Français top 15 show jumping earners of 2024 have Kannan as a damsire: Foxy de la Roque (ranked second amongst the French-breds), Ermitage Kalone (third), Caracole de la Roque (eighth) and Bond Jamesbond de Hay (15th).
The Irish damsire equivalents of Kannan in the 2024 rankings are O.B.O.S Quality 004 (HHS Calais and EIC Cooley Jump The Q) and Cruising (James Kann Cruz and Rincoola Milsean).
Hippomundo’s rankings (www.hippomundo.com) will provide breeders with endless details amongst their prize money-based rankings.
Prize money is a yardstick, a reference guide in determining rankings in the bloodstock and sport horse worlds. However, one constant found in compiling rankings articles is referring to the amounts ‘won’ by a breeder or rider, when in reality, it’s the owner, who foots the bills, who generally receives the cheque.
So next week, riders’ prize money and what, if any, are the financial rewards for breeders of top horses?
By the numbers
201 – show jumping horses earned more last year than the top-ranked eventing horse: Greenacres Special Cavalier (€137,817).
177 – show jumping horses earned more last year than the dressage top-earner Wendy de Fontaine (€154,921).
4 – times when both Chacco Blue (2018-2021) and Diamant de Semilly (2017, 2022-2024) were the leading show jumping sires in the 10-year history of the Hippomundo rankings.
3 – mares are the top-earning horses of 2024: Greenacres Special Cavalier, H&M All In and Wendy de Fontaine.
2 – more stallions – Kannan (2015) and For Pleasure (2016) – were Hippomundo’s leading show jumping stallions.
1 – the Irish Sport Horse studbook has led the Hippomundo eventing category since their rankings began in 2015.