I think with heavily bred stallions, most will have a limited performance career.
With Nevada, he did a lot of in-hand winning, high score at inspection, winner several times at Lexington, Morven, VADA Champion stallion, 7th at Devon, behind 6 Iron Spring and Hilltop Farm 3 year old Colts, highest scoring Belgian Warmblood in a Qualifying class for 1999, etc.
Performance, he has only done a couple of Hunter shows or Combined Tests per year. He has won or been highly placed each time shown, but his breeding schedule just did not allow for a regular training and showing schedule.
With 4 - 5 collections per week, an hour + away, and no in-house trainer, it was just impossible to keep him in work. Trying to be worked into a heavy repro center’s collecting schedule (anytime between 7 and 5), rushing to make a counter to counter flight or FedEx deadline, day after day, week after week is a logistical nighmare by itself.
Nevada’s foals have had to do the performance showing for him. I think you will find that with many popular stallions.
Farms that collect themselves, and have trainers on staff that can adjust their schedule around the stallions collections can do more. Another consideration though is that for cooled semen, we want to ship the best product to the mare that we can. A heavily competing stallion may not be able to maintain that, along with their semen quality as the season goes along, even if training schedules can be worked out.
