Is the Euro-U.S. GAP Finally Closing?
By Patti Schofler W
hen two American-bred horses qualified for the 2013 Bundeschampionat in Warendorf, Germany, we began to investigate whether the tide was
turning and American breeders were finally getting a leg up in the sport horse marketplace. Certainly the economic downturn has forced changes in the business of sport horses on both the U.S. and European sides of the pond. But was the recession the great equalizer? Were there other factors that forecast a shift in the balance of sales from the east side to the west side of the Atlantic? To provide a unique and informed prospective, we
turned to six transplanted Europeans, born and raised in the mecca of sport horses but now living in the U.S. for many years. While dedicated to their businesses and sold on their lives in the U.S., these breeders and trainers have grown up in the traditions of Europe, still maintain strong contacts in their motherlands and have definite opinions about breed- ing and sales in the United States.
HOW AREWE DOING? For a country that does not benefit from a long history of sport horse breeding, the U.S. has made tremen- dous progress in improving its sport horse stock. Our transplants agree that American breeders are producing the same quality horses as European breeders. Transported semen has given Americans access to the best stallions in the world, and stallion owners have access to good mares imported from Europe or based on European breeding. Volker Brommann, raised in Germany, now living in Cali-
fornia, recalls a woman who recently approached him to say she had bred to Benvolio, a Hanoverian stallion Volker had competed. She lamented that the offspring did not have a good canter, and then revealed that the dam was a Stan- dardbred. For the most part, today good and appropriate mares have taken precedence over the mares that were bred either because they were unrideable or because they were already in the backyard. “Today, U.S. breeders understand that it doesn’t work
to expect a really good stallion to make up for a poor qual- ity mare and get a super foal,” adds Anke Magnussen, also
48 January/February 2014
originally from Germany and a Holsteiner breeder. “The mare accounts for 60 percent of the foal’s qualities.” While judges, European breed associations and breed-
ers are all saying that Americans are breeding top quality horses, they also agree that buyers are still flocking to Europe to shop. Our European transplants discussed sev- eral related problems that stand in the way of that quality turning into dollars over euros: quantity, geography, tradi- tions of organized young horse training and multiple sales mechanisms.
THE DENSITY FACTOR Compared to the major sport horse produc- ing countries of Germany and Holland, plus Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden and parts of France, the U.S. breeds fewer sport horses and they are spread out over the vast miles of our very spacious country. A prospective buyer can go to Germany and with a
five-euro tank of gas see 100 good or better quality horses at many different price points. On this side of the ocean, scouring the countryside from New York to Florida, from Washington to the Mexican border, or around the middle of the country, that buyer won’t see nearly as many good sport horses as the European shopper traveling over many fewer miles. “Here the distances are so great without the density of horses that Europe has. There are many horses in this country, but not many sport horses,” says Edgar Schutte, president of the American Hanoverian Society, owner of California’s Rainbow Equus Meadows and a native of Hol- land. “We have a lot more hobby breeders who breed one or two mares a year and they are spread across the coun- try. In Europe the breeders with one or two horses are all within easy driving distance of one another.”
THE COST FACTOR Geography may be a dramatic disadvantage for Ameri- can breeders, making horse shopping more difficult and
Transplant Perspective
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