Competition Jumping Horses: Effects of Age, Sex and Breed on the Fei/Wbfsh World Ranking

Abstract

The breed, age and sex of the horses are all important factors in determining the future rank in international high-level show jumping competition and this is the reason why we choose to analyze these factors. The objective of this study was to analyze the differences between the top jumping horses in the world regarding breed, sex and age, and to investigate the impact of these factors on the average number of FEI points gained in the last year. For this research, we examine the first 103 jumping horses from FEI&WBFSH World Ranking List for Jumping Horses April 2014, divided in 6 groups for breed variable and 3 groups for sex and age variables. The results show that 82.5% of the horses have between 10 and 14 years, 10.7% have less than 10 years and only 6.8% have more than 14 years. For breed variable, the results show that 34% of the horses belong to warmblood breeds from Germany (34.3% HOLST, 20% OLDBG, 20% WESTF, 17.1% HANN, 5.7% BRAND and 2.9% Thuringer), 26.2% belong to warmblood breeds from Belgium (11.1% ZANG, 70.4% BWP and 18.5% SBS), 18.4% belong to warmblood breeds from The Nederland (94.7% KWPN and 5.3% NRPS), 9.7% belong to warmblood breeds from Great Britain (70% AES, 20% ISH and 10% SSH), 8.7% belong to warmblood breeds from France (100% SF) and 2.9% belong to warmblood breeds from Sweden (100% SWB). The average number of FEI points gain in the last year was evaluated as not being significantly different (p>0.05) for any of the variable considered for this study. In the present research work, we demonstrated that for performance in show jumping competition at the highest levels it is necessary a horse from a sport breed with a strict selection and not one from a traditional breed, and that between the principal warmblood breeds grown in Europe there are no significant differences.