The 2008 Assembly of the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses was held this year in Lyon, France. Jan Pedersen, president of the WBFSH, provided the following report from the event:
I can hardly understand that a year has passed since I presented the activity report 2007 in Apeldoorn. Time flies when you are busy, and it has been a busy year although many of the WBFSH activities have not all been visible. Current contact and communication with many member studbooks about this or that is time-consuming, especially for the secretariat, but hopefully also of some value for the studbooks. If it is this organisation has reason for existing and we are only glad to be of help.
Co-operation
In March I was invited to a COPA meeting in Brussels to make a presentation of our organisation. COPA is a European organisation and the letters “COPA” stand for “Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations”.
Our objectives and the objectives of COPA go well together. When I was there items like horse identification and welfare of animals in transport were discussed. The agenda reflected the relevance of a close cooperation and I am sure that both organisations would benefit.
I hope that my visit in Brussels was the beginning of a closer cooperation which will soon end in the foundation of a working group on EU legislation composed of representatives of FEI, COPA and WBFSH. Secretary General of FEI, Alexander McLin has already expressed the necessity of such a working group.
In order to improve our communication with other organisations, a so called WHIRDEC meeting will take place tomorrow here in Lyon; we have invited several other international organisations. The US horse council will be represented, as well as the US equestrian federation and Equine Canada.
The Championships
Dressage
The World Breeding Championships for Young Dressage Horses were again organised by the Verdener Turniergesellschaft. Once again breeders, riders and spectators witnessed a great show with extremely good horses, the quality of which has been going up if you look at the development over a period of just a few years. And it is gratifying that the quality of the riding and the judging has undergone the same positive development.
World Champion of the 5 year old horses 2008 is the Oldenburger Desperado by Dressage Royal, ridden by Nadine Plaster.
World Champion of the 6 year old horses is the Hannoverian Dramatic by Don Frederico, ridden by Jana Freund
Jumping
The Championships for young jumping horses at Zangersheide were as usual very spectacular and as breeders we can only be pleased with the Super Premium to the breeders of the winning horses in the finals provided by Studbook Zangersheide. This Premium is awarded to the breeders of the first three winning Horses of each age group with a total prize money of Euro 10.000,- per age group. The total sum of prizes and bonus amounts to over EUR 140.000. The only spot on these championships is the number of wild cards given by the organiser. The number of starters is in my opinion not a problem because the competitions are so very well organised. However, for a FEI / WBFSH world championship it is not acceptable that over 50% of the starters were wild cards as it was the case in the classes for both 5 year old horses and 6 year old horses and it is not in accordance with our agreement according to which the WBFSH studbooks have a total quota of 102 horses per age group. The championships 2008 had 219 starters in the class for 5 year old horses, 204 6 year old and 152 7 year old horses. We need to discuss this with FEI and the organiser before next year´s event.
The winning horses:
5 year old horses: Donna Fortuna, BWP mare by Nagano / Grandeur
6 year old horses: Vedor. KWPN gelding by Indoctro / Fedor
7 year old horses: Ubalia, a mare, also KWPN and also Inductro grandsire Sstarsky de Brix.
Eventing
The FEI World Breeding Eventing Championships for Young Horses 2008 were traditionally and again most successfully held in Lion d´Angers, France.
It is extremely important that we and FEI work together towards strengthening the link between breeding and sport. Thus, only horses which are identified at birth on the basis of a covering certificate and a birth declaration should be allowed to compete in FEI/WBFSH championships. This has not been the case in Lion d´Angers. Allowing horses without these documents to compete makes it mucch more difficult to verify the age of the horses competing. We have informed the FEI about our position on that subject.
The winning horses 2008 in Lion d´Angers:
6 year old horses: Oslo (Selle Francais) by Lando / Hadja AA
7 year old horses: Walter von der Vogelweide (Hann) by Waldstar XX / Landclassic.
There has been some discussion during the year if the championships should stay in Verden, Lanaken and Lion d´Angers. The argument has been put forward that a rotation of the championships would contribute to a more independent authority of the World Championships. This topic will be discussed further in the year to come - internally and with the FEI and countries which are interested in organizing a championship. www.ueln.net
After several years of discussion and after several drafts the EU on the 6th of June finally issued the new regulation concerning horse identification in Europe. The regulation makes the implementation and use of the life number mandatory and fortunately dictates the UELN concept. We draw your attention to the fact that each database is responsible for the UELN implementation in its own files, including horses born before 2009.
XML, the system for international exchange of horse data, is still progressing in a close cooperation between our department breeding, our French connection that is, and FEI. The UELN web-site contains information about the system. The Breeding Department has recently started making contact with various labs in order to also promote exchange of DNA of imported horses with this fantastic tool.
EVA
Last year in Apeldoorn we discussed the necessity of harmonizing EVA tests, in order to avoid that an exported “negative” horse becomes a positive horse. In July we organized at Vilhelmsborg in Denmark a presentation by the AFSSA laboratory, which in June 2008 was appointed European referent lab for 5 years for all horse diseases. Aymeric Hans from this lab gave a very clear presentation, asking all the members for help to get in contact with other labs in their countries. For this reason we invited him for a new presentation for the countries interested in this item. This presentation takes place tomorrow.
Rankings
It is our impression that both riders and breeders highly value the Rankings as the standard for comparing the strength of both competitors and horses. The activities of the department promotion in the year 2008 were mainly concentrated on the WBFSH breeding rankings.
As you probably know the FEI produces the world rankings for horses and studbooks. I regret having to say that the cooperation in that specific field has not been completely unproblematic in 2008 - too many errors and communication has been somewhat hard. It is planned to add sire statistics in the future too. These can not yet be produced by the FEI. Therefore - as an interim solution - Hank van Campen produces the sire rankings manually. This work cannot be started until the final horse rankings have been received in the beginning of October.
Of course, the WBFSH attach great importance to the completeness and correctness of the pedigree information that we deliver to FEI. Each individual studbook is responsible for the pedigree information of its own horses and the department promotion has given much attention to the production of correct pedigree information. Regretfully this is still a lot of manual work. Hopefully, in the near future XML tool for data exchange, will take over.
Studbook Rankings 2008
This year the Hannoveraner Verband topped the rankings for Dressage.
Jumping: KWPN
Eventing: Irish Sport Horse
Ranking horses
Dressage:
For the fourth time: The Hannoverian Salinero by Salinero. Salinero also topped the list in 2004, 2005 and 2006 – last year he was second to Satchmo
Jumping
Hickstead by Hamlet, KWPN horse ridden by Eric Lamaze
Eventing
Kirby Park Irish Jester by Irish Enough. Kirby Park Irish Jester.
Strategic Plan 2012
Concerning the Strategic Plan 2012 the Board and the Executive committee among other things have been discussing voting at the General Assembly. As it is, the voting system is not practically possible and if it should ever be necessary to have a voting, the system could collapse. Later today the Board will submit a motion to the General Assembly on that subject.
Regarding membership the Board and Executive Committee move that it is not possible for a studbook to be an associate member, if it fulfils the criteria for full membership.
This year our web-site has been redesigned and more actual news and news of individual members has made the site more attractive and the number of visitors has been going up. Hosting and updating of the new site is done by the Secretary’s Office of the WBFSH in Denmark in cooperation with membership magazine of Danish Warmblood, Ridehesten Hippologisk
The contract with Horse International as the official magazine of the WBFSH expires at the end of this year. The Board of the WBFSH decided not to prolong the contract but to focus more on the new website as the main communication tool
During 2008 the Executive Committee and the Board have had discussions about different studbooks which have applied for membership of this organisation. Regarding that I refer to item 11 and concerning the departments Finance items 4 and 5. I hope you have all studied the different reports from the departments as they go into details about some of the subjects on which I in my report have only touched lightly.
2009 Meeting
The WBFSH's Annual Meetings 2009 will be hosted in Scandinavia and are scheduled to take place on 2nd - 4th November. The general assembly will take place in the city of Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, and the seminars will be held at the Swedish national stud Flyinge. The Scandinavian warmblood studbooks look forward to welcoming all WBFSH member studbooks in 2009.
Related Links
2007 WBFSH Annual Meeting Report
Belgium To Host 2005 Convention of the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH)