Saving Five-Star — Part II

So here's what happened.

The young horse system in eventing actually worked brilliantly - when it was built around 'blood' ("the amount of thoroughbred influence") horses. The problem is that we quietly removed the blood to cheat the test. We stopped breeding horses naturally designed to gallop and replaced them with increasingly spectacular movers and jumpers instead.

La Biosthetique Sam was over 75% TB with 6 of his 8 great-grandparents full thoroughbreds. Lordships Graffalo's mother, Cornish Queen, was the same as Sam - 6/8 TBs and blood percentage of 84%. Grafalo himself is around 60% thoroughbred and generally the true five-star sport lives somewhere in that 60–85% 'blood' range.

Why did the test work?

Because the horse was bred to gallop first. That was the foundation of the whole thing. Then, if a horse moved pretty well and jumped pretty well and had a good brain, brilliant. You trained it for the dressage and showjumping phases.

That was the philosophy: Start with a cross-country horse and train the other bits into it. And because that was the philosophy, our young horse system actually worked pretty well.

You could assess movement. Assess jump. Assess rideability. Because underneath all of that sat one huge assumption:

The horse could probably gallop.

Not guaranteed, of course. Some wouldn't stay. Some would have limitations. Even full thoroughbreds can find Badminton hard work.

But probabilistically, the gallop was there. The athlete underneath the test was fundamentally designed for the job.

Then we changed the horse.

Why did we change?

We changed because people noticed something. If the test rewards movement and jumping… why not just breed more movement and more jumping?

Commercially, that made complete sense. And, as I outline in Part I, with no steeplechase we also no longer needed to gallop at the lower levels of international competition either. The new 'modern' commercial horse could make more money, and get better results at the foundation levels of the sport.

So we quietly discovered something. We could effectively cheat the test.

Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But structurally, we realised we no longer needed to start with a horse designed to gallop four miles.

We could just start with a really good mover and jumper instead. And for years, we sort of collectively pretended the gallop would still magically be there somewhere underneath it all.

Except increasingly, it wasn't. So now we've arrived at a strange place where our young horse system is still basically a dressage and jumping test… except it's no longer being applied to blood horses.

It's being applied to horses specifically bred to excel in dressage and jumping. And here's the trap - those horses can't handle Badminton and Burghley comfortably - even on good ground.

We have better movers. Better jumpers. More expressive horses. But not necessarily better event horses.

This is where I think the sport has to ask itself a very important question.

Are we now going to change five-star to suit the horse we created to beat the system?

Because that is effectively the direction we are drifting towards.

If you breed increasingly spectacular movers and jumpers, yes, you absolutely get more power and expression in those phases. But you usually lose something too. The ease of gallop. Natural efficiency across country. The ability to travel comfortably at those top-end speeds for eleven-and-a-half minutes over difficult terrain.

And when that disappears, the pictures change. The horses look less comfortable. The effort looks greater. The sport starts looking harder than it actually is. Ground juries start to plead for responsibility or else have to step-in.

Not because Badminton is unfair. Not because Burghley is outdated. But because we are increasingly putting the wrong athlete on the field. And that's the key point.

The issue may not be the sport. The issue may be the athlete we are now trying to force into it.

We can say that we're being 'more selective' - we're not, we just have less to select from. We can say that the world has changed - but in truth we just cheated a young horse test and now our shortcuts are going to bite us.

We could move from 4miles to 3miles (just under 10mins) but that will only be a temporary plaster. Because we won't stop - more dressage, more jumping - make it look like the cross-country course is the problem and not the horse - they'll eventually weaken and shorten it again.

At some point you have to ask yourself who you are, what are you about and how are you going to portray the best version of yourself to the world.

I still believe we have another option other than sitting back and watching true five-stars fade away. We can breed the athlete back.

That's where the TB50 solution comes in.

The TB50 solution

A simple incentivised young horse class with breeding eligibility criteria which should first and foremost be applied to the likes of the Burghley and Badminton future event horse classes.

Not every event horse has to fit that mould. They won't. And to be clear, this is not a blanket solution because good event horses can have less than 50% TB great-grandparentage:

Half of those horses qualify and half don't - including Graffalo - but Graffalo's mother would have qualified and that is also a crucial part of the long-term picture. We need to incentivise the foundations of future event horse breeding as well as the final product.

We've spent two decades breeding the blood out and putting the movement and jump in. Things move in cycles. But if we don't put the blood back in then we have a sport full of Izilots and JL Dublins - extremely talented, but will put Badminton and Burghley under real pressure.

If we put the blood back in, then our test works again. If we don't put TB% criteria on the test, then it's a very easy test to cheat. But who are we really fooling? The person who writes the cheque maybe, but longer term we all lose if the horse and the course don't align.

Phrases that fool a buyer won't fool Badminton and Burghley. They can 'look blood' and they can 'feel blood' all day long, but now is the time to reward the horses that actually are blood.

Now is the time to tell breeders and buyers that by 2028, the most prestigious young horse classes will have bonuses, incentives and, in time, eligibility requirements for horses with TB50 pedigrees.

We should embrace this opportunity

Young talent is a huge part of any sport. It turns heads, creates excitement and everyone wants to witness and remember the breakout moment of the next superstar.

Shorter feedback loops for breeders strengthen the breed so much faster. We have weakened our horse by providing false feedback. With one criteria we can make a huge difference.

Select competitions only. We are where we are and we can't deny entry to the majority of modern horses. But we also have to be honest that the majority of modern horses will need a ventilator by the time they leave the Vicarage ditch at Badminton. We need to work harder than ever to find the right horses who can, reward the breeders that stayed true to the mission and vision, and get the best horses into the best hands as soon as possible.

If we start now, and make promises to the shareholders of the sport, then change will begin in 2027. By 2040 the younger five-star population will be thriving again. But until then, we need to box clever.

We used to run from Lions and chase our food. Then we mass produced sugar. Now we run on treadmills and suppress our appetite. Cycles are fine and normal. We focused on movement and jump, we lost a lot of gallop, we went a bit too far, I think we'll enjoy cycling back a bit.