A USEFUL yardstick or skewed by their top performers results?
Show jumping sire rankings can prove as time-consuming as its eventing equivalent to decode by breeders.
The growth in support by Irish breeders in the past decade of both rankings-established and future sires available on the continent is evident and on the home front, Irish-based sires are scarce in the World Federation for Breeding Sport Horses (WBFSH) rankings of last year with just Guidam (31st) and Lux Z (48th) making it into the top 50.
One of Guidam’s progeny – HHS Figero – is listed as an Irish Sport Horse amongst his points-earning progeny, while Lux Z has seven Irish-born offspring in his list with his highest-ranked offspring being Hamilton H.
Diamant De Semilly tops this year’s WBFSH top 10 sires list, with Quickly De Kreisker, a previous Lanaken finalist that has now qualified for Rio this summer for his Moroccan rider, Abdelkebir Ouaddar, heading his French sire’s list of successful progeny.
Ranked sixth individually in last year’s WBFSH rankings, Quickly De Kreisker is the leading prize money earner to date this year, bolstered by his recent Grand Prix win at Paris. That’s according to the Horse Telex rankings and this Dutch website’s fledgling sire rankings system will be another useful information source for breeders.
Prize money earnings are a long-established yardstick and advertising tool in the thoroughbred world, although this method also requires some sifting through to evaluate and is not necessarily reflected in the sire rankings.
For example, last year’s top money-earner Hello Sanctos won over one million euros (€1,297,952), mainly on the lucrative Global Champions Tour, with Scott Bash but his Heartbreaker sire Quasimodo Van De Molendreef comes in at 70th place in the WBFSH rankings.
Kannan takes second place this year after topping the 2014 rankings and unsurprisingly his best offspring is Molly Malone V, third in the 2015 Longines FEI World Cup final with Bertram Allen. With Romanov ranked as sixth-placed Heartbreaker’s leading offspring, Allen, like Michael Jung, has the ability and results to boost his horse’s sires in their rankings too.
The highly commercial Cornet Obolensky completes the 2015 sires top three with his highest-ranked WBFSH performer being Cornet D’Amour (ninth in the individual rankings).
Two Olympic gold medallist winners who have made the next step to being proven sires - For Pleasure and Baloubet Du Rouet – take fourth and fifth places. The consistent Grand Prix performers Barron and Chaman are their best respective offspring.
Baloubet Du Rouet is also making a name for himself as a sire of sires, with his son Balou Du Rouet climbing 16 places to eighth on the leaderboard.
The biggest leap (25 places) in the rankings was by Chacco-Blue who makes his top 10 debut mainly through Crazy Quick’s results.
For Pleasure, from the Hannoverian studbook, and the Oldenburger sire Balou Du Rouet also feature in the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) rankings, based on the American circuit, which sees the Holsteiner stallion Chellano Z in pole position.
Numero Uno (KWPN) and Indoctro, the second Holsteiner in the USEF top three, complete the Continental theme, however in fifth place is the Irish Sport Horse, Cruising. Ranked 65th in the WBFSH equivalent last year, the traditionally-bred Cruising fares better in the American rankings, mainly through the wonderful World Cup veteran star Flexible’s string of Grand Prix success last season and another of Rich Fellers’ team, Colgan Cruise.
Guidam is familiar to Irish breeders after spending his latter years based at Knightfield Stud, although it is his Dutch-foaled stock which contributed to his ninth place. Another continental arrival, Lux Z, also features in the top 20 and his main prizewinner was Special Lux, whose biggest payday was the mare’s second place with Jonathan McCrea in the Sunshine Grand Prix at Thermal CSI*****.
Show jumping breeders, like their eventing counterparts, can sift through the various rankings to evaluate which stallions have the potential to deliver performers, both commercial for young horse championships and the mass market or those relative few capable of siring 1.50m Grand Prix or four-star winners.
Another interesting find from the Horse Telex rankings, which helps compare the different markets aimed at by breeders, is both the prize money and number of competitions by each horse.
For example, Hello Santcos earned his six-figure winnings from 41 starts; Unee BB, by Gribaldi, collected €159,822 from 32 competitions in 2015, while the highest-earning event horse after his five starts was Land Rover Burghley CCI**** winner, La Biosthetique Sam FBW (€135, 977)
The average prize money per competition, however, still sees Hello Sanctos in the lead on €29,918 from 41 classes, closely followed by Sam (€27,195, five) and Unee BB’s take home pay drops to an average €4,994 from 32 competition.
Which perhaps shows that prize money may not be the biggest consideration in some of the major prices recorded for dressage prospects; plus the travel racked up and management programmes put into place to keep these equine athletes winning at that level.
The biggest consideration of all for breeders, even when considering well-ranked stallions, is the mare he is expected to produce performers from.
WBFSH 2015 JUMPING SIRES
1 Diamant De Semilly
2 Kannan
3 Cornet Obolensky
4 For Pleasure
5 Baloubet Du Rouet
6 Heartbreaker
7 Kashmir Van’t Schuttershof
8 Balou Du Rouet
9 Casall
10 Chacco-Blue
USEF 2015 JUMPING SIRES
1 Chellano Z
2 Numero Uno
3 Indoctro
4 For Pleasure
5 Cruising
6 Quite Easy I
7 Gentleman
8 Toulon
9 Guidam
10 Balou Du Rouet