There is a new method used to determine a breed organization's success in international competition. The WBFSH is the organization which ranks the different studbooks and keeps track of individual horses/stallion offspring in jumping and dressage. The new ranking comes from a Dutch magazine, Horse Genetics. A news release from the Danish Studbook explains how they've set up the criteria.
It's interesting that the Danish breed comes out on top. Of course, they've had some very successful horses, including Matine, and currently Mistral Horjis (ridden by Laura Bechtolsheimer of Great Britain.
Even more interesting, and this just got a brief mention in the release, is that the Holsteiners came in second - Holsteiners are generally considered to be bred primarily for jumping!
Hannoverians ended up way down in 7th place - they usually are at the top in the WFBSH rankings.
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"If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom." Byron
Justice - interesting question. I'd say that Hanoverians, Dutch Warmbloods, and Oldenburgs are considered to be bred for both dressage and show jumping with some lines more specialized in the different disciplines. But those studbooks also produce a large number of foals each year.
Holsteiners, Selle Francais, Belgian WBs, and Irish Sport horses are generally thought of more as jumping horses.
Trakehners have had some outstanding jumpers (Abdullah), but I usually associate them more with dressage. Westphalians are another small studbook, and I generally think of them also as more dressage types.
As far as eventing goes, in North America for so long we used Thoroughbreds - now more warmbloods are competitive - Irish horses have been well represented in eventing.
Danish, Swedish, and say Hungarian (of which we have quite a few here in the PacNW) WBs I think of being sort of generalists. Which I guess is just a way of saying that I hadn't noticed if they really specialized more in one discipline or another.
I thought the 'new method' discussed by the Danish studbook was a real eye-opener. I've seen video of Matine (unfortunately I didn't get to see her at the LV World Cup - when she hurt herself and couldn't compete), and also of Mistral Horjis but it just didn't dawn on me that, yeah, there are really some very nice Danish horses at the top of the sport!
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"If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom." Byron