[QUOTE=Donella;7843003]
Interestingly, the calibre of high performance horses has grown exponentially in the last 15 years. Clearly breeders are doing something right. …[/QUOTE]
questions:
what do you mean with calibre?
physical size/weight or performance as such?
if the latter is the case, how do you define performance horse?
by scores reached in GP?
like 80+ percent are more often seen today than it used to be?
if that is what you mean, then
a) your wording needs to be corrected from presnet tense “peolpe are doing” to past tense, people DID s.th. right back than, and
b) the answer is:
yes, of course. with ongoing specialisation in dressage and jumping horses have become a lot better - and they should, since that is what thoughtful breeding is all about.
it is what breeding progress (“zucht fortschritt”) is supposed to add to the equasion:
next generation(s) should ideally add value and progrees over ancestors.
breeding progress should be the initial goal of “breeding”.
everything else (“fast market”) is simple reproduction or multiplication.
however, todays 80+ scoring horses (of the last 15 years) have been bred 15 years ago - most of the sires (and dams) are not breeding anymore.
question is:
how will our current breeding decisions look in 15 years? will nowadays crosses succeed as well as those from 15 years ago do today?
time will tell.
and i am sure some will. as quality descends from mass and from any given population ther ewill always be 10% of high quality output.
and nature has it that these ten percent will be evenly spread over the production, thus, some successful horses will eventually descend from “popular” breedings, too.
but i am also sure that the stellar performers we refer to in 15 years will not necessarily descend from common “flavour of the day” breedings.
as most of the best GP horses in the world descend from coincidental nicks.
this is true for all disciplines, race horses, jumper, dressage and eventer.
i doubt the breeder of totilas ever planned the record GP horse he turned in to. even when he was perfomring at the WEGverden age 5 noone did. (ever heard of damsire glendale before?)
it was more a question of gribaldi being available nearby.
same is true for bella rose (ever heard of damsire cacir before?).
legolas (ever heard of sire laomedon before?).
valegro (ever heard of damsire gershwin before?)
and so on…
i think those same 15 years might cover it well.
maybe it started a little earlier.
if i had to put a name on it i would say: sandro hit.
having said that, this doesn’t mean SH is responsible for today’s shift to foal market alone, but his appearance sure helped to shift focus towards a foal market in the first place.
his appearance, however, also coincides with one major other factor:
the popularity of the internet and with it the tool to “remote” breeding.
before the internet people had no other chance but go out and see the horse in flesh. today, many people have never seen sire or relatives of the foals they are planning to breed.
so internet certainly is a relevant factor.
another factor is frozen insemination vs live coverage.
this probably changed the world of breeding another 15 years before the internet started but it’s multiplication factors stayed within given limits of the “established” horse breeding world. it didn’t create a new type of breeder as much as the internet did. a desired stallion or or any of its progeny creating demand for this stallion still needed to be seen in the real world in order to create demand for the stallion.
i.e. rubinstein - 20 years before SH and most certainly one of the first stallions of high popularity. yet, “pictures only” were the most derived marketing you got from him.
to become a fan, you needed to have been at the scene.
makes sense?
