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Looking for the new For Pleasure and Baloubet, an analysis of the year 2017

Jan 7, 2018

It is a fact of common knowledge that For Pleasure, Cornet Obolensky and Baloubet du Rouet produce top show jumpers. But only one of this famous trio is still alive. It’s about time to start looking out for the new For Pleasure. And it’s about time to show that not only the Big Names produce the best genes. Let’s strive for a broader view on performance breeding, let’s take a look at the ISV-IPV world rankings of 2017.

by Rick Helmink
In order to make honest comparisons, HorseTelex ranks the sires according to the age of their eldest offspring. There are 5 classes, from A (all ages, a minimum of 100 offspring) to E (maximum age 9 years, minimum 20 offspring). The reliability obviously drops, lowering the age of the oldest offspring. Nevertheless, the rankings of the younger sires are highly interesting. This is the breeding ground of the future For Pleasures and Baloubets.

Emerald beats Zento
Taking into account all international results of 2017, Emerald van ’t Ruytershof (Diamant de Semilly x Carthago) is the clear leader of the E-ranking. 36 of his offspring jumped at FEI-events, Igor (Jos Verlooy), Jaguar vd Berghoeve (Matthew Sampson) and Iluna (Ramiro Quintano) assembled a lot of points for their father. These are the first offspring by Emerald competing at 1.60 m, the level where horses win the most points.

Dobel’s Cento’s dam
At age three, Zento (Quasimodo Z x Caletto II) made a sensational appearance at the Team Nijhof stallion show. He covered quite a few mares that year, which enabled him to take the lead in the E-class for a large part of 2017. Zento also has his first offspring (3) in 1.60 m, in total 29 offspring of this NRPS-approved stallion, bred out of Dobel’s Cento’s dam, are competing in international sport. The larger part (18) originates from his first (and biggest) crop.

Average performance
Of all young sires at the E-ranking, Diarado (born in 2005) has by far the largest number of offspring active in international sport, no less than 198! Yet, the 2007 champion of the Holstein stallion show is not represented at the very top of the ranking. This is due to the system of calculating, developed by breeders, studbooks and trainers: HorseTelex takes the average of the performances of the offspring (the total amount of points divided by the number of starts), not just the total amount of points, like the WBFSH still does calculating their Sire Ranking.

Ukato
The D-class (oldest offspring 11, minimum offspring 40) is headed by Ukato (Stakkato x Literat), bred by Paul Schockemöhle. This KWPN-approved Hanoverian unfortunately died in 2014 at the young age of only 13. He doesn’t have an extreme number of offspring competing at international level (62), but a lot of them jumped clear rounds in 2017. Ukato already has three offspring competing at 1.60 m level: (Believe/Daniel Bluman, Alamo/Steve Guerdat and Delphi/Florence Seydoux), four at 1,55m-and nine at 1.50m.
Not many studbooks reveal the number of offspring produced by a sire. The KWPN does, so we know that the breeding performance of Ukato comes from 548 KWPN-registered offspring.
Marcus Ehnings top horse Cornado, winner of the 2016 Rolex GP of Hertogenbosch and the number 6 of the 2016 World Cup Final, takes second place at the D-ranking, followed by Nintender, Verdi and Vingino.

Berlin
The C-ranking (oldest offspring 13, minimum 60 offspring) has another German stallion in Dutch service as leader: Berlin. Born in 1994 the son of Cassini I is by far the oldest stallion at this ranking. It is not surprising that the 24 year old is amongst millennials, he only entered breeding as a 9 year old. Right from the start of the HorseTelex Results world rankings, Berlin is a remarkable stallion. He is climbing the ranks, year after year. Even at the B and A rankings, which don’t suit the age of his offspring, he takes 5th and 13th place respectively.
Berlin has 244 offspring jumping at international level, 31 of them at 1.60 m level. Take into account the total number of offspring registered with the KWPN (746) and it is clear that Berlin indeed is incredibly successful.

Leader of the world
For Pleasure is still in charge as leader of the world, heading the A-ranking. But it will not be very long before the 1986 born Hanoverian, who died in 2011, will be taken over by Cornet Obolensky. This phenomenal stallion, born in 1999 (which happens to be Casall’s and Balou du Rouet’s year of birth as well), climbed one step on the A-ranking (2), leaving behind the great Baloubet Du Rouet (3) who died last year.
Cornet is the clear leader of the B-ranking now for several years, having an IPV more than 100 points higher than Casall, ranked second before Chacco-Blue.
199 direct Cornet-offspring and 48 grandchildren were competing internationally in 2017. Unfortunately it is not known how many Cornet-offspring are registered with the various studbooks.

Casall on the way up
Cornet’s peer Casall, doing great at second place in class B, climbs the A-ranking considerably compared to 2016, taking 5th place. Casall has even more offspring in international sport than Cornet: 243 in 2017 (and 29 grandchildren).
We have to bear in mind that these lists only show top-progenitors. Having said that, Balou du Rouet lost a bit of ground, he’s just within the top 10 of the A-ranking (4th last year) and he takes 4th place (3rd last year) at the B-ranking.

Members only
Following all developments at the dynamic ISV- and IPV-world rankings is the privilege of TOP-members of HorseTelex and members of the studbooks who cooperate with HorseTelex.