Does anyone have photos/or links of top stallions or athletes when they were young? Would be fun to compare the greats, then and now.
example : KWPN stallion Variant http://www.vdwhorses.net78.net/presentations/Variant.html
I want to say somewhere on the internet there is a video or photo of Gribaldi (Trakehner) as a youngster.
Looking forward to your posts!
so funny just the other day i was thinking about this same thing! i wish stallion pages had photos of them as foals, so you could see and compare their offspring at the same age. I have an awesome Apiro colt and i would love to see how he stacks up to his daddy at this point. The AHS inspection judges said my colt had a very strong influence from Apiro’s sire, Argentinus. I wish I could see foal pics of both!
I distinctly remember COTH running an article on Galoubet (it might have been in reference to frozen semen as he was one of the first to be utilized that way) and they had a foal photo of him. Had the Galoubet head from birth on up :)!
he’s not one of the “greats” yet, but he’s great to me 
Here’s Amazing as a foal in Holland, and now…
There is little correlation between what a foal is and what that foal will be as an adult… performance wise. You have to look for athletes as foals…this is the only correlation.
It is next to impossible to pick out a stallion as a foal. Dr. Nissen from the Holsteiner Verband compiled stats on approved Holsteiner Stallions. He found that 65% of them were NOT premium foals. They were… from a young age , all athletes however.
I have personally not bought 2 approved stallions as foals. I happened to be NOT shopping for colts at the time but I remember that they gave me no inclination whatsoever that they were stallion prospects at 4 or 5 months of age.
Some time back, there was a pic floating around of Donnerhall as a foal. It caused a lot of comment, because there was very little in that photo to suggest he would become such a highly successful dressage horse, as well as probably the greatest dressage sire of our time.
And I think I saw at one time a photo of Sandro Hit as a foal - nice little guy, but no indication he would become such a “hit” as a dressage sire. In fact, he sold as a weanling at the Vechta auction as a jumper prospect.
There is a picture out there of Secretariat as a foal. I’d love to see that again.
Along the same lines, I would love to know if there are stats on if premium graded foals go on to be superior show horses.
Interesting thread!
I started a Facebook album recently where I’m putting photos of famous horses as foals (and as adults), so when I see these pics I pop them in there. So far, I only have three! Secretariat, Vallegro, and Wizard.
Here’s the link:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3609374201941.2136960.1501311931&type=1&l=66e18d21dc
http://isportsweb.com/wp-content/uploads//2010/12/Secretariat_foal_008_6x4_lr.jpg
I don’t think anyone is saying there is a correlation between foals’ athletic ability and that of their adult self. But it IS educational to see the great horses as we know them to be now, as they were as foals - conformation and movement.
Inspectors get to see a lot of foals every year, and I’m SURE they remember the ones who are pegged as stallion prospects. Many of those same inspectors get to see those boys in a couple of years, and then of course (hopefully) get to see them as competing adults and as breeding stallions, and see THEIR foals.
The rest of us don’t get to see that, so I agree, it would be pretty educational to be able to see confo pics of these horses (mares too!) as foals and then as adults.
I think foals will give you a good idea as to their future abilities as far as gaits are concerned. What you don’t know is whether or not the eventual trainer of this youngster has the capability to develop those talents to their fullest extent.
It is interesting to see the stallions that went on to great success as babies regardless. I love to look at foals of any sort – !
PennyG
This. And this is why I wouldn’t expect a high correlation between foals named as top or premium foals and the horses who become great performers.
:yes::yes::yes::yes::yes::yes:
This gets to the core of the matter.:yes: A good horse can be made great and a great horse can be ruined in how it is brought along and developed.
I have found in my own breeding and sport program a high correlation between athleticism exhibited as a foal and athleticism exhibited as an adult.
There is not a perfect correlation between athleticism and sport performance for a number of reasons mentioned above (developmental problems, injury, problems with training, mistakes in management, for some stallions behavior that is normal and natural but counterproductive in a sport career, etc.). But none of the foals that I bred that later became CSI or CCI/CIC horses were unathletic as foals; in fact all showed a lot of athleticism. And none of the ones that were not very athletic as foals became super athletes as mature horses. And none of my stallions were anything less than very athletic as foals. I had no surprises there.
I have videos up of most of my 2012 foals. I will be completing this task in the next few weeks. Take a look. But first define the variable “athleticism” for yourself (hint: it had better be multidimensional) and assess the foals for yourself. Put your notes away and in 8 or 10 years see how good your assessments were.
[QUOTE=hansiska;6567951]
This. And this is why I wouldn’t expect a high correlation between foals named as top or premium foals and the horses who become great performers.[/QUOTE]
I think this exercise is best worked the other way. Look at top horses and their baby pics/videos and see how they looked back then. That way you’re starting with the known entity - performance for example - and looking back in time to see what they looked like starting out.
If you can start to see correlations between confo and movement then vs now, you get a better handle on forecasting future performance of foals, regardless of what happens in the 10 minutes of an inspection
^ exactly, JB. which is why it would be really neat to see the stallions photos and videos as foals. because, obviously them being stallions, someone noticed their potential as a foal, and they are most likely high-end performance horses now.
I would kill to see my baby’s daddy, Apiro as a youngster!
That’s interesting, because I was just told the opposite by the inspector from another German registry. He said the stallion rearers will often buy prospects when they are only afew days old and they have a fairly good rate of success.
Of course, much of their choices have to do with pedigree, especially the mother-line.
I remember reading somewhere that Rubinstein was a real “ehh” as a foal, and even as a young stallion, so I’m not sure where I stand on this.
Personally, I don’t think I am astute enough to pick out a stallion prospect as a foal, but (I’m told) some folks are very successful at it.
It’s the talent on two sides
There is no talented horse who achieves without a talented rider/trainer/manager and the rider, trainer, manager can be three seperate people or any combination.
We often sell our best horses to the people with the most money not the most talent.
There is no way to know if those foals we saw unusual talent in could indeed have been the high achievers we imagined unless they went to the best trainers/riders/managers. Even to qualify the best trainer/rider/managers to be the best one for that individual horse especially considering the reactivity being bred into many modern sport horses.
I am 56 this year and over my time I have know a handful of horses that had gobs of talent but who never met a person to realize that talent. I knew a Saddlebred mare in a big name show barn…a Baron de Bastrop daughter…she had all the talent in the world to be a jumper and dressage horse but she would not gait and was a total loss in the Saddlebred world as a 5-gaited type who would not break gait. I met an astounding TB gelding bred by a lady I knew who was built like a potato…the horse belonged in the Olympics as a eventer but she wouldn’t let anyone else ride her baby. The world is filled with horses who were stuck on the wrong path with no one with equal talent to redirect them.
We breed the best we can and are so delighted to see what we get but then we either have to see they are developed or sell them to make money. In Europe the industry is large and the number of talented riders and managers and trainers give these horses a greater chance to emerge from the cocoon. In the US we have so few trainers and riders that the huge majority of them, regardless of their native talent, drift off into obscurity.
If you can move them along in their training before you sell them or if you can afford to hangon til the talent finds them…and you can recognize human as well as equine talent…their chance of achieving dreams is more likely. PatO
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