FYI, The US Event Horse Futurity is not associated or aligned with either the FEH program or USEA.
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My bad! I assumed it was under USEA.
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I think there would be a riot if the actual USEA refused entry to OTTBs like the US Event Horse Futurity does.
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As well there should be. Le Lion will not accept Thoroughbreds at the World Breeding Championships either. I’d love to hear the explanation for how they got here if no one bred them 
They are phenomenal athletes, and deserve to have the best sport lines in the breed highlighted and tested against the rest.
Of course, Butt’s Avondale - a Hanoverian with 99.8% Thoroughbred blood - would be absolutely welcome.
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No hate for OTTBs, but the purpose for the Futurity is to encourage and support purpose bred event horses and their breeders. From my understanding, it has a bit more specification. There is no age documentation required for the YEH program
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Sure, but that is why you enter them in shows and horse trials to begin with. It’s not the goal of a breeding futurity.
IIRC, US Event Horse Futurity does allow purpose-bred (unraced with no published works) TBs to enter. IMO entering an OTTB, who was bred to race, in a sporthorse breeding program is as pointless as entering a horse of unknown origin bought from a killpen as a weanling, no matter how lovely an animal either one turns out to be.
An OTTB could easily be from lines that are largely inaccessible (five- and six-figure stud fees) to the sporthorse market. Sure if it does well it’s still useful information for people shopping off-the-track, but that’s not the purpose of a futurity.
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Because its to highlight the breeding. Its for horses bred to be eventers, through the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses. While a TB can absolutely be a successful event horse, they are not “generally” purpose bred for eventing. When registered with the Jockey Club, many are intended to race.
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Correct, because none of the USEA programs were created specifically to promote the US-bred, purpose-bred sporthorse, whereas that was one of the main purposes behind the creation of the Futurity. Different programs with different purposes. TB’s that were bred for sport are eligible for the Futurity.
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To be clear for anyone reading, this has nothing to do with discrimination against the Thoroughbred. Le Lion is the FEI WBFSH Eventing World Breeding Championship. The Jockey Club (along with many other breed registries) is not a member organization of WBFSH, therefore obviously not eligible for the WBFSH Championship.
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Right - it’s to highlight the breeding. Thoroughbreds have phenomenal lines for sport that deserve to be highlighted as well. There are lines of Thoroughbreds that produce excellent eventers, and that are sought after when people are looking for sport prospects. Just because the breed may have jobs other than eventing (just as many other breeds have non-eventing jobs, like show jumping, or dressage) doesn’t mean there aren’t breeding lines that shouldn’t be highlighted and celebrated, and tested against the best other breeds have to offer.
We wouldn’t exclude a warmblood because it was bred for dressage and then showed more aptitude for eventing - why should we exclude a Thoroughbred that was bred to race but showed more aptitude for eventing? Fully leaving aside the point that others have well made, which is that purpose-bred TBs do exist in their own right.
It is not pointless - the point, as alyssa said above, is to highlight the breeding. To enter a horse of unknown origin is unfortunately somewhat pointless. If the breeding is unknown there is no breeding to highlight. But we know how the Thoroughbreds are bred, and the lines that produce exceptional eventers have just as much right to be highlighted as the lines from any other breed.
Could you explain a little bit more about this, please? What other registered horses are not eligible? This seems to be a gap in my understanding.
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I don’t know what WBFSH membership criteria are specifically, but looking at the member list as it is, basically any stock horse, draft horse, gaited horse, even Arabian (or Anglo like Vermiculus) would not be eligible for Le Lion. Of course the vast majority of people with those horses don’t care, just like the vast majority of OTTB owners don’t care. 
Le Lion aside, the US Event Horse Futurity was created by event horse breeders to recognize event horse breeders (including event horse breeders breeding TBs) and help identify which lines are producing promising horses earlier on so that they can be greater utilized relatively early in their breeding careers. Including OTTBs is not useful for any of those purposes.
If a dressage or jumper stallion is producing good event horses, event breeders have the option of using him. No event breeders were booking to Malibu Moon, as much as they might have liked to, unless they won the lottery. Never mind that many TB farms only offer live cover and wouldn’t want their stallions bred to non-racing mares, regardless of the money, because those foals could dilute their stats.
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Appreciate that info, thank you.
I understand your points (and truly appreciate your engagement), but I do disagree with this. I think, for all of the reasons you stated, including Thoroughbreds would be useful. Certainly there are some (or even many) TB stallions that are out of the price range of sport breeders, including MM. And you are correct that not every TB stallion is available to non-racing mares. But this is not true of all Thoroughbreds or all people who breed Thoroughbreds, and I would love to see just as much opportunity for those breeders and those lines that are producing promising horses to be recognized and utilized.
The point @MsRidiculous made about membership is one I didn’t know, and is helpful for understanding why things are the way they are, but I still don’t believe it is ultimately to the benefit of the sport. Especially with the reliance the other registries have on bringing TB blood into their programs, I think it is critical that breeders and shoppers are educated about the Thoroughbred lines that create the best event horses. This would be a logical and useful way to accomplish that.
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Your post made me think of the joke I hear all the time about WB x TB horses: it’s a Hanoverian if it can move and jump, and it’s a TB if it can’t.
All joking aside I agree with you. There are OTTBs that flunk out of racing young enough to reasonably be in a Futurity, some with some very desirable sport lines. We probably would have noticed that horses like Musketier, Malibu Moon, and El Prado are making nice horses much sooner if they were allowed to be showcased. For many of these out-of-budget stallions, thei market is flooded with their daughters.
It would be hard to make the argument that any TB is “purpose bred” for eventing if their page looks like an average page in a Keeneland catalog. Either they should be allowed as a whole or disallowed, the grey area can be very disingenuous and confusing. There are almost no “sport bred” TBs standing exclusively for sport left.
We don’t have many US Event breeders left and guess what most of them are using in their program.
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Exactly this. Bolding my own - thank you for phrasing it better than I could. It feels like such a missed opportunity.
I didn’t mean to spark such a debate. The OTTB exclusion is something that frustrates me to no end however. As a small racing breeder, I breed not only for racing but also their entire life. We know we are not breeding the next KY Derby winner. Therefore we exclude certain stallions and bloodlines that don’t lend themselves to easy and excellent sport careers. We also know far more and further back on the pedigree than just about any warmblood book around.
Why should my horses, who might have excluded themselves from racing early on, not be considered sport horses? One of our lovely black type broodmares is approved in some warmblood books, what if I did the paperwork on a stallion that would automatically be approved with Westfalen and entered a “Westfalen” with recorded works in the futurity? It is possible after all.
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I think it’s important to remember that the US Event Horse Futurity is not directly comparable to any USEF or USEA funded program. It’s not affiliated with any governing body, is run entirely by a couple of volunteers (quite literally) in their extremely limited free time, and is entirely self-funded. At this point it makes more sense to have broader, more easily-enforceable rules rather than either a) open it up to something it was never meant to be in the first place b) have to try to regulate and vet any and every possible exception. I think they’ve done at admirable job in the first few years of it’s existence, especially given the limitations.
The good news is that OTTB’s can still compete in FEH and YEH classes, so they aren’t being excluded from anything except that one program (the Futurity). RRP could be a fantastic supplemental option for OTTBs that don’t meet the Futurity entry criteria but would still like to participate in another program beyond FEH/YEH.
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The World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH) was set up in the very early 1990s to provide an umbrella organisation to promote and support warmblood studbooks that had come to prominence in the Olympic disciplines in the 70s and 80s after breeding practices changed to focus on sport after WW2. One problem the organisation was trying to address was insufficient information about pedigrees and the other was a lack of coordination between breeding and performance in sport. The TB breeders are not breeding specifically for the Olympic disciplines, the TB isn’t a warmblood and TB breeders have had “thorough” and published pedigree and performance data since the first edition of The General Studbook in 1791. Possibly the key cultural difference, however, is that warmbloods mainly originated in European countries that don’t have a strong tradition of TB racing.
The fact that TBs are wonderful and can turn a hoof to almost anything doesn’t mean they should be part of a group established to promote warmblood sport horse studbooks.
Every eventer purchasing a horse wants to know how much “blood” it has and these days everyone comments in amazement if a horse does well and is less than, say, 40% blood. And of course, a German horse bred in the State of Hanover will be registered as a Hanoverian horse because breeding stock needs to be officially approved. State interest in breeding goes back centuries as horses were essential in war.
ETA clarity and spelling
That is useful to know. I had not appreciated that US Event Horse Futurity is a separate enterprise and nothing to do with the USEF or USEA.
But then, what does USEF or USEA do for its members? British Eventing has an interest in breeding and annual data on leading sires is available online.
ETA readability
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For breeders, they don’t do a whole lot honestly. USEF does keep track of leading sires, but obviously since you aren’t required to have USEF registration/membership until upper levels, it’s missing the vast majority of lower level horses. https://www.usef.org/compete/rankings-results
Also a lot of the data they have regarding sire and dam (and even registry) is incorrect, because it’s only as good as whatever the owner puts in, if they put in anything at all.
Granted, I don’t really like straight up points-based sire rankings in the first place, but that’s a whole 'nother discussion. 
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Hey everyone. I am one of the founder/organizer/supporter/contributor persons of @theuseventhorsefuturity which is not affiliated in any way with the USEA. We started it to recognize and support US breeders, young horse trainers and riders and try to link them to support US horses as a whole. We do not include OTTB who have had a recorded work or start as they have the entire TIP program behind them and we wanted to support the small breeder who finances the breeding program on their own, vs the large commercial TB breeders who have financed the OTTB. That is the only reason, not because we don’t believe in Tbs.
We do require age verification for our program, and the USEA will require it in the future for any YEH.
A big thing for all of us though and to hopefully improve our support of US breeding is that the USEA is going to allow a lifetime number for all horses with a discounted rate if done in the year of birth, just like the USEF does, starting with 2023 foals. Breeders will make sure the info is correct , and hopefully our record keeping of the parentage will improve with this move forward!
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