TWO Irish Sport Horses - Dondante and Coolparks Sarco - are amongst the top-10 eventing horses in the first of the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH) rankings of 2022. There was good news too for the ISH studbook as it holds two top-10 places in both eventing (first) and show jumping (ninth) title races.

The pre-Badminton WBFSH rankings for April were released last week and also show four Irish Sport Horses - FTS Killossery Confusion, HHS Calais, ABC Quantum Cruise and BBS McGregor - in the top-100 show jumping horses.

Two Benelux studbooks, Belgium’s BWP and the Netherlands’ KWPN finished last year as the WBFSH leading show jumping and dressage studbooks and retain those same places in the April rankings.

Last year, the Irish Sport Horse eventing studbook finished in third place behind close rivals, the Selle Français and Holsteiner studbooks. Just 17 points then separated the French and German leading pair in the final order and there’s an even tighter margin in the current rankings where the ISH eventing studbook (648 points) has a slight eight-point advantage over the Selle Français (640), Hannoverian (628) and Holsteiner (626) pack.

Results from the Kentucky five-star event always prove influential in the April rankings and leading the top-six ISH eventers is the Monaghan-bred Dondante (Individual fifth. Pacino. Breeder: Francis Brennan) that placed seventh there this spring.

Top 10

Coolparks Sarco (10th. Shannondale Sarco. Michael Burke) is the second Irish Sport Horse in the top-10 and is followed by CHF Cooliser (Womanizer. Raymond Carroll) and the just-retired Kentucky maestro Cooley Master Class (Ramiro B. John Hagan) in equal 16th.

Creevagh Cooley (25th. Camiro de Haar Z. Sydney Cranston) and Off The Record (26th. VDL Arkansas. Peter G. Brady) complete the top half-dozen horses whose scores count towards the studbook results.

Last year, the ISH show jumping studbook secured its best result in recent years, finishing in 10th place and now starts the summer in ninth place, owed largely to consistent results on both sides of the Atlantic since last October when the WBFSH calendar year begins.

FTS Killossery Konfusion (Equal 41st. SIEC Livello. Frank & Laura Glynn) heads the top six ISH show jumpers, closely followed in the top 50 by HHS Calais (44th. Cavalier Royale. Ita Brennan). ABC Quantum Cruise (57th. OBOS Quality. Pat Kehoe), BBS McGregor (65th. Cardento. Marguerite Ryan), Sea Top Blue (109th. Chacco Blue. James & John Meade) and ESI Toulouse (113th. SIEC Livello. Cian O’Connor) complete this leading group.

Germany leads< in ins/B>

German studbooks lead the way in the individual horse rankings as Count Me In (HANN. Count Grannus), Quantum Leap (DSP. Quite Capitol) and TSF Dalera (TRAK. Easy Game) are the current top-three show jumping, eventing and dressage horses.

With the 2022 world championships and other point-scoring opportunities at five-star international level this summer, the leaderboard could well change before the final results are known in October, however this is an excellent start to the WBFSH rankings race by Irish Sport Horses.