Dian George, Tinwee Glen, Roscrea, Co Tipperary.

MADAM, – I read John Osborne’s opinion piece (The Irish Field, January 18th) with great interest and note that he makes many valuable comments. He rightly identifies the difference between the thoroughbred sector and the sport horse sector in terms of time and reaching an end product.

Due to the vast international status of thoroughbred breeding, there are many people engaged at every level of the industry where the pursuit for excellence is relentless, both in breeding terms and in terms of managing a product until it reaches the market place.

In the sport horse industry we do have many excellent breeders, but sadly these are in the minority. Far too many foals are bred that shouldn’t be and then left to their own devices, where some of them are lucky and grow well and make it to market, but many don’t.

There is also the difference in using artificial insemination between the two sectors. Like many people, I would be horrified if this was allowed into the thoroughbred sector. It is very sad when stallions such as Mozart and St Nicholas Abbey do not live long enough to have decent stud careers, but in the main the breed has survived and flourished even with such losses.

I am a great advocate of AI, in particular with frozen semen. The sport horse sector cannot afford the large fees that many thoroughbred stallions command and cannot afford to ship mares around to overseas stallions, so I think AI provides access to world-class stallions who would otherwise be unavailable. As the turnaround from the initial covering to the market place is at least double that of the thoroughbred industry, it is vital to use the best stallions possible to ensure the best price at market.

In both the thoroughbred and sport horse industry the mare is a very important element, but the difference is that in the thoroughbred industry they do not get so hung up over the mares’ performance. They understand that mares like Urban Sea are one in a million and that almost the most important element is the mare’s back breeding.

Of course it helps if a mare can win a Group 1, witness the recent sale of Immortal Verse and Dancing Rain, but these mares are in a very small minority. The majority of mares will barely scrape a win in a Group 3 (probably equivalent to 1.30m in show jumping). A good example is Kind, the dam of Frankel and Bullet Train. Her best wins came at listed level and yet she bred two incredible stallions. In any other era but Frankel’s, Bullet Train would have been a multiple Group 1 winner.

In the sport horse sector there is so much hype over mare performance that we are in great danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. We have to concentrate much more on pedigrees and learn skills from the thoroughbred sector like line breeding and in-breeding. This is something that the Dutch and Germans are adept at, yet most Irish sport horse breeders wouldn’t know where to start. This is definitely an area that we should work on.

There are also other ways I think the sport horse sector can improve, firstly by improving management skills in terms of the mare, foaling and producing a foal for the market. Many mares are not well-fed and the resultant foals do not reach good size and condition unless they are forced. Many foals arrive at sales without much handling and then get weaned at the sale. This is not a generalisation as there are many people who do these jobs well, but there are sufficient incidences for this to be noteworthy.

The second issue is the production of youngstock – many riders take these on not with the intent to produce a really good young horse, but with an interest in balancing their books. Many of these riders will claim to have potential sales which fail to materialise and the disillusioned owners eventually take their horses home. Again, this is not a generalisation as there are good producers of youngstock out there, but there are also far too many with an interest in balancing their own finances.

David Broome’s comments regarding the relationship between riders and owners was a potent one and is certainly something that riders should always pay great attention to.

The advent of elite sales has led to an improvement in the prices attained for youngstock, but we have to keep on delivering a quality product. We have to ensure that we build these sales into our first choice of market place and work hard at creating a product that auctioneers can sell and purchasers want to buy.

I think that the positive take home message is that with the success of recent top flight sales, Ireland has received worldwide promotion. We have to maximise the effect so that we can benefit and build on these successes in the future. By working on these objectives we can make Ireland an important port of call for international buyers and producers alike. – Yours, etc.