AFTER the first of the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH) rankings of 2024 were released and Hippomundo’s results are updated after last weekend’s action, where do Irish horses, riders and studbooks figure?

For starters, it’s not comparing like with like; the WBFSH rankings calendar year runs from October 1st, whilst Hippomundo’s clock starts on January 1st.

Points earned in FEI competitions count towards the WBFSH results, whereas prize money won, particularly on the lucrative Global Champions Tour, major Grand Prix classes and five-star eventing’s seven global competitions, has a major say in the Hippomundo rankings.

So, caveats aside, is there good news for the Irish? Yes, particularly from the Hippomundo rankings.

Two Irish breeders - Michael Callery and Woods Rosbotham - are the top-two Irish eventing breeders. Their respective Irish Sport Horses - Greenacres Special Cavalier and Cooley Rosalent - and their sires of Cavalier Royale and Valent, plus the ISH studbook, lead the way in eventing.

In show jumping, three Irish Sport Horses - Ballypatrick Tangelo, EIC Up Too Jacco Blue and after his Wiesbaden CSI4* Grand Prix success last weekend, HHS Calais - feature amongst the top-30 show jumping horses.

The Irish Sport Horse studbook stands in ninth place on the show jumping leaderboard (headed by the KWPN, Selle Français and BWP) and commands a strong lead in eventing.

Thanks to Cooley Rosalent and Greenacres Special Cavalier’s wins at Kentucky and Badminton, the ISH studbook total (€397,393) is nearly double that of its closest rival, the Holsteiner Verband (€203,571), followed by the Selle Français studbook (€159,220).

One of the best Hippomundo results is the outstanding performance by Irish show jumping riders with six - Conor Swail (fifth), Denis Lynch (15th), Daniel Coyle (20th), Shane Sweetnam (22nd), Darragh Kenny (23rd), Michael Duffy (25th) - all grouped in the top-30.

From a commercial perspective, one of the most striking takeaways from the Hippomundo show jumping rankings is the truly phenomenal strike rate of Irish riders. Ireland lies in third place in the riders by nationality section, but again, the devil is in the detail.

Only Mexico has fewer riders (151) listed than Ireland in the top-10. Ireland’s 228 riders enjoy the highest average top-10 prize money rate (€21,725).

Britain’s Oliver Townend and the 10-year-old Irish-bred mare Cooley Rosalent, pictured during the show jumping phase, won the five-star Kentucky Three-Day Event in the USA \ Michelle Dunn Photo

Even comparing the populations of the top-10 countries is revealing, as this island’s total population stands at just over seven million.

Compare that to France (64 million), Germany (83 million) and North America (334 million) to put this strike rate into real-time perspective.

The flip side though, is comparing prize money on offer in eventing, apart from the five-star rewards, and show jumping.

Eventing sires too are the least-commercial, although it’s the dual-purpose Cavalier Royale that tops Hippomundo’s eventing rankings. The late Holsteiner was also in the spotlight last weekend, as the sire of HHS Calais, just a week after producing his first Badminton winner: Greenacres Special Cavalier, bred by Michael Callery.

HHS Calais’s win also places his breeder, the late Ita Brennan, at the top of the Irish show jumping breeders’ rankings. Another result courtesy of Cavalier Royale.

Michael spoke warmly of both Cavalier and John Hughes in his Breeders’ 10 feature last week. (The top-three Irish-linked Badminton breeders continues this week with Richard Ames - see page 96).

“He was so passionate about Cavalier Royale and Michael Callery and they were great friends,” Marion Hughes, a niece of both John Hughes and Ita Brennan, told The Irish Field this week. “All his clients became great friends. He was such a genius of a vet and he brought the whole thing through.

“If Cavalier Royale hadn’t come into the country, I don’t know what we would have done. They [Cavalier stock] kept the whole breed going for 20 years. And they were sound horses.”

Hippomundo rankings

WBFSH rankings

Show jumping riders

WBFSH leaderboard

Over to the WBFSH midway rankings and it’s quite a different set of horses listed in their April rankings. The closely-bunched pair of Olga van de Kruishoeve, consistent at mainly 1.50m/1.55m level, just heads King Edward, whose FEI World Cup final win in Riyadh gives him a comfortable lead in Hippomundo’s equivalent.

Fourth on the WBFSH leaderboard is Daniel Coyle’s ultra-consistent mare Legacy (ZANG), while in ninth place is Conor Swail’s Count Me In (HANN).

The highest-ranked Irish Sport Horses on the WBFSH show jumping results are another tightly-grouped bunch. This time, it’s the trio of Maxwin Kinmar Agalux, GRS Lady Amaro and James Kann Cruz, bred by Gerrard Marron, Denis Hickey and Patrick Connolly respectively.

Everdale tops the WBFSH dressage horses and Cooley Rosalent’s Defender Kentucky CCI5* win sees the Valent mare match her Hippomundo second place, just behind JL Dublin, currently the WBFSH leader.

Badminton’s results will kick in for the WBFSH May rankings, so expect a top-10 reshuffle here, just as Capels Hollow Drift’s fifth place from there has boosted the Jenny Glynn-bred grey to fifth place in the Hippomundo top-10.

Mikey Pender and HHS Calais on their way to winning the five-star 1.55m Longines World Cup Grand Prix in Sharjah, UAE in February \ Helen Cruden

Two more Irish Sport Horse eventers in the WBFSH top-10 are the Gary Doherty-bred Cooley Nutcracker and the Justin Burke-bred HSH Blake, the 2023 Pan-American individual gold medallist horse.

Another excellent result from 2023 - that of Colorado Blue, bred by Mellon Stud’s Kate Jarvey - has placed him the WBFSH top-10 after his Fair Hill International CCI5* win last October.

How does the ISH studbook fare in the WBFSH eventing rankings? Second place (848 points), behind the Holsteiner Verband (892) and ahead of the KWPN (697). Again, expect some changes across all scoreboards in the May rankings.

The other WBFSH top-three studbooks are the KWPN, Oldenburg and Hannoverian Verband in dressage and in show jumping: the BWP, Zangersheide and Selle Français.

The ISH show jumping studbook holds ninth place on both the latest Hippomundo and WBFSH April rankings.

This year’s Paris Olympics will have a major impact on the WBFSH rankings, not so for the Hippomundo set, but it’s already shaping up to an intriguing race in an Olympics year.

See: www.hippomundo.com and www.wbfsh.org for the full set of rankings.

Balmoral Show lauds Woods Rosbotham and Suma’s Zorro

Then And Now: Six years after Cooley Rosalent won the Balmoral young event horse championship with Colin Halliday, her breeder Woods Rosbotham was honoured for breeding the 2024 Defender Kentucky Three-Day-Event winner. Woods is pictured with his daughters Barbara Allen (left) and Lisa, RUAS president John Henning OBE and Diane Gibson, Balmoral Performance Championship Chief Steward \ Susan Finnerty

DO we honour our stalwarts and breeders enough? No. However, two rankings’ stars were highlighted at Balmoral Show last week: Woods Rosbotham’s achievement in breeding Kentucky winner Cooley Rosalent and Suma’s Zorro’s glittering career.

First up was a special presentation to Woods and daughters Barbara and Lisa after Cooley Rosalent’s five-star result last month with Oliver Townend (GBR), which has placed herself, her breeder and sire in second place across the Hippomundo eventing horse rankings.

Balmoral’s main arena was a fitting location too. Six years ago, Cooley Rosalent had won the four-year-old event horse class here, then ridden by Colin Halliday, before her sale to Richard Sheane, also present for the occasion.

Then, after the Balmoral Grand Prix prize giving, Suma’s Zorro was officially retired. Bought by Joanne Sloan Allen at Suma Stud’s dispersal sale, the many career highlights of the ‘millionaire mare’, particularly her stellar year of 2018 were recalled during the ceremony.

Several wins on the Global Champions Tour and 1.60m Grand Prix circuit placed the Anglo European Studbook-registered mare in sixth place in Hippomundo’s rankings that year (2018).

Another fitting location too for her send-off, as Suma’s Zorro and rider Sameh El Dahan had won the 2015 Balmoral Grand Prix.

“She’s the mare of everybody’s lifetime,” said Joanne. She was accompanied by her daughter Arielle, who helped unsaddle Zorro during last Friday’s ceremony. “She’s retired safe and sound and was riding out a couple of weeks ago. Sameh and I both decided we just didn’t want to jump her any more.”

Bred by the late Susie Lanigan-O’Keeffe, Suma’s Zorro is by Ard VDL Douglas out of the Horos mare Vixen’s Frolic, whose own pedigree goes back to Royal Penny. This orphan foal later became both a top show jumping pony with Susie and, when bought back from England as a 16-year-old, the Suma Stud foundation mare.

One of her first offspring - Foxes Frolic (Blue Cliff) - won the Gold Cup at Balmoral and jumped on the Irish team at Rome with Susie, who founded Suma Stud with Marily Power. Both received the Outstanding Contribution to Sport Horse Breeding award at the Horse Sport Ireland 2015 breeders’ awards.

Now retired in Co Kilkenny, Marily wasn’t the only one tuning in on the Balmoral livestream, as two Suma Stud proteges - Kylemore Stud’s Olive Broderick and Catriona Shanley – also watched online.

“There should be more acknowledgement of mares. Susie and Marily are the gold standard breeders and have left a lasting legacy for Irish breeders and bloodlines. They understood their mare families over generations, bred for soundness and longevity in sport, not just fashion. Zorro is a true testament to this, as are so many more that they bred, which had long careers and were much-loved by very happy owners!” Olive remarked.

Thanks For The Memories: Suma’s Zorro bows out at her retirement ceremony at Balmoral with Sameh El Dahan and Joanne Sloan Allen \ Susan Finnerty

Catriona, a working pupil during the 2004 foaling season, had the good fortune to be present on the night Vixen’s Frolic foaled.

“What an amazing mare Suma’s Zorro ended up being. It keeps the dream alive, because little did we know that night foaling her, what she was going to achieve in her life! I’m so happy for them that they bred that one-in-a-lifetime top mare and Susie got to see it all before she passed.”

“It is so important for all horses to get to the right person and Joanne Sloan-Allen, who bought her as a foal, was definitely that,” said Marily. “And then, at the right time, she met up with Sameh El Dahan and the rest, as they say, is history!

“Vixen’s Frolic’s last foal, Zorro has proved what is always possible for a small breeder, but very rarely happens.”

And it’s not the end of the line yet. “We have an embryo due in a couple of weeks’ time by Agalord KCX Berghoeve, another by Livello and she’s now going to get covered next week,” Joanne revealed.

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