“Breed the best and ride the rest” works as a result of a depth of knowledge from multiple generations, rigorous inspection (utterly lacking in the US stock horse world), and ruthless culling. It’s obviously been a successful model in Europe and the Iberian peninsula. While there has in the past been perhaps a stigma against Performance mares, I really think that’s dissipated. What remains is a very sound breeding culture that greatly values exceptional mares for what they bring to the genetics. Why would a breeder sacrifice possibly a decade of foals when their actual business is breeding and improving with each generation?
Why on earth would someone not want to breed the best? If you’re trying to improve of course that would be the choice. Otherwise you would be downgrading with every generation.
The advent of ET puts a new spin on this. I myself have a coming three year old gelding who is the result of ET. His dam was bred as a young horse, and had one foal at four. Then she was started. Her first foal was bought by an international GP rider. She was the highest scoring horse in North America when she was inspected by the KWPN.
The mare produced three ET foals the next year, and went into training with the same GP rider in wellington.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the future.
Picture of my boy because I love him.
