The effect of the English Thoroughbred on the sport performance of horses in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the importance of the English Thoroughbred in sport horse breeding in the Czech Republic. Basic data were taken from the survey of sport horses in the Czech Republic in the years 2005–2008 which contains sport competition results of horses. The sport performance is expressed by the PPB value. We used the GLM method for statistical elaboration. Using the method of multiple comparisons by Tukey-B we defined the differences between the breeds, gender, age, sport seasons and the number of starts in competitions. Statistically highly significant effect was discovered of all the studied effects on the jumping sports performance of the horses. Basing on statistical evaluations we found out that the highest PPB value (3.356) was reached by group 5 (sport horses without a significant share of the English Thoroughbred). Group 5 was also the most numerous one. The best values according to the gender were reached by stallions (4168) and the most numerous group included mares (4766). We also discovered that the highest values were reached by the horses that compete at the age of 12 years (3.5414) and the highest average values were achieved in the 2008 season (3.999). The highest PPB value was achieved by horses with a high number of starts.