The AWHA – boom and bust!
For a while, the AWHA was easily the number one studbook in Australia. It had the most members, the highest media profile and an active promotion program with well-attended Gala days right around Australia. The annual AWHA Breed Special in the September issue of THM, was a major event – especially since it revealed which stallions were (and were NOT) on the breeding list for that year.
By 1988, the AWHA was starting to look slick in their 4 page supplement and pages and pages of advertisements promoting the approved stallions. At that stage, President – Dirk Dijkstra, Secretary / Treasurer, Rob Hendry, Publicity – Alison Campbell and Registrar, Suzy Cougar formed a powerful team, but as a warning of things to come there is also an advertisement for The Hanoverian Society of New Zealand and Australia in the same issue.
The next year, the AWHA looked to be expanding. Their annual list of which stallions were granted breeding permits for the 1989 season, saw 48 stallions listed. Of these 28 were imported from Europe. Eleven described themselves as ‘Holsteiner’, eight called themselves ‘Trakehner’, ten described themselves as ‘Hanoverian’, eight were ‘Oldenburger’, four were ‘Danish’ while two were described as ‘Dutch’. (Although it should be noted that stallion owners in Australia have tended to be somewhat free in their breed descriptions.) A map of Australia, showed how widely the AWHA stallions were distributed with good representation in every state.
Some indication of the number of horses being bred is found in the Winter 1990 Newsletter of the Victorian Branch of the AWHA. Some 28 foals had been registered in the 1989/90 season, although the figure is slightly inflated in that two of them Hansel and Gretel, were twins, both by Valuta out of the Thoroughbred mare, Private Quarry. Valuta was the most popular sire with nine foals, while Moselfischer and Duellschütz had three each.
Still the AWHA did not have the field entirely to themselves. In 1993, Peter Powles has taken over AW&SHA and was now advertising a list of 88 stallions, including five Cleveland Bays and 11 imported European Warmbloods – some of these had been the subject of controversy in AWHA ranks and were no longer on the AWHA list. At least one had been repeatedly knocked back by the AWHA after failing the performance test.
The new rules were to be tougher: “The Australian Warmblood and Sport Horse Association has announced major organizational reforms to their Association. Mindful that their public image has been poor in some states, the reforms aim at revitalizing the Association and setting better standards in regard to breeding. They include a number of measures to improve the quality of stallions registered.”
“They have gone to some pains to make it clear to stallion owners that they are no longer that soft option they were once reputed to be. To get a licence now, stallions must pass a rigorous conformation assessment conducted by a qualified vet and that license is only a probationary one for twelve months. After that the stallion must complete a performance based breeding material assessment the following year. Stallions won’t fail these tests but they will be scored on a number of performance based activities which become a permanent part of the stallion’s records which will be made public. It is proposed that the activity will involve some compulsory EFA competition as well.”
“Other measures involve refusing to register any stallion that is failed by a recognized warmblood association and withdrawing stallion licenses from stallions who are already registered but fail a classification later. These measures have been designed to set higher standards for Australian breeding stock.” (THM October 1993)
However by1993, the AWHA has seventy living stallions in the Stallion Register, all of whom are approved or licensed (ie. passed colt selection or performance testing). The proportions of imported and Australian bred stallions are approximately equal… and they are quick to point out in the September Supplement, that at the 1993 Dressage Championships, Warmblood horses won every single championship:
Grand Prix – Mosaic (by Witzbold); Grand Prix Special – Neversfelde Kensington (by Kassiber); Intermediaire II – Neversfelde Kensington (by Kassiber); Intermediare I – Time After Time (by Domherr); Prix St Georges – Time After Time (by Domherr); Advanced – Northern Greta (by Granada); Medium – Apptrak Talisman (by Ludendorf) and Northern Charisma (by Northern Congress); Elementary – APH Spiegel (by Kassiber); Novice – Gullit (imp)
No account of Warmblood breeding in Australia would be complete without mention of Jane and Maurice Bruce – the breeders of Neversfelde Kensington, who was foaled in February 1984. I can think of no other breeder who bred, broke and trained their own horse and then went on to compete internationally with it, with the exception of current eventing star, Megan Jones and her home bred, Kirby Park Jester. Maurice beat her to it by a few years – and represented Australia with ‘Kenso’ at two World Cup finals in Göteborg in 1994 and Los Angeles in 1995. Maurice and Kensington also rode in the Australian dressage team at the WEG in The Hague in 1994.
Maurice and Jane were amongst the first to use frozen semen, and again, Maurice made history when Neversfelde Feuer – the second frozen foal (born December 1995) bred by the Bruces and by the Dutch sire, Flemmingh, competed at FEI dressage level. The gelding was later purchased by Kelly Layne and went with her to Europe. The Bruces’ first frozen foal was a full sister, who last year had a Sandro Hit foal.
Maurice’s wife, Jane is a successful competitor at Prix St Georges level with another home bred star – Kudu (by Kassiber) and this horse qualified the young rider, Alycia Targa to become the first Australian to compete in the World Cup for Young Riders Final in Frankfurt in 2007. One of the most exciting young horses in the Bruce stable right now is Weltsong, by Weltmeyer out of Kudu. Since Maurice is no longer riding after a very serious fall and injury, it looks as if the ride will go to the very lucky Alycia.
When they first arrived in Australia, Holger and Melanie Schmorl were actively involved in the AWHA with Holger, President of the Queensland branch for a number of years and a member of the AWHA classification commission. However in 1993, the German Hanoverian Verband pushed the overseas Hanoverian Associations to establish their own brands (so in Australia the letters, AU were added) and their own studbooks.
Thus, the March 1994 edition of THM records an ‘Historic Day for the Hanoverian’:
“It was a day of firsts: first brood mare show, the first time the Hanoverian Australian brand was used, and a contract signed between the German Verband and Australia.” Judges were Kalman de Jurenak representing the Verband, and Libby Sauer ‘the well-known rider and dressage judge and breeder.’ For a while the Hanoverian Society existed alongside the AWHA, until the AWHA, allegedly under the influence of a ‘Dutch mafia’ starting refusing to recognize Hanoverian mare papers – and the two societies grew increasingly antagonistic.
In March 1999, a letter to THM set the situation alight. Holger Schmorl writes seeking to ‘clarify the status of Hanoverian birth certificates issued in Australia’, accompanied by a letter from Dr Jochen Wilkens, the Executive Director of the German Hanoverian Verband, where he points out to AWHA registrar, Alison Campbell that “pedigree paper issued by the HHSA is fully equivalent to such being issued by the Verband hannoverscher Warmblutzüchter… We therefore apply for full recognition of the Hanoverian Horse Society of Australia and papers issued by our daughter society with your organization.”
The debate hotted up the next month with a letter from Dr Robyn J Holden:
“As a proud owner of five very beautiful Hanoverian fillies, I find it both disheartening and completely ludicrous that they are only eligible for registration in the Warmblood Foundation Mare (WFM) register of the AWHA… Given that Dr Wilkens has authoritatively asserted that there is no difference in standing between German and Australian Hanoverian Registration papers, the current AWHA attitude towards the registration of Australian bred Hanoverian horses amounts to nothing more than pure discrimination. One has to ask oneself why is this so?”
This issue seems trivial now, but one influential AWHA executive member was so outraged that THM should publish this letter, that he immediately withdrew his advertising in THM. Further, Dr Holden was suspended as a Federal Board member of the AWHA!!!
Increasingly the AWHA started to splinter . Another prominent AWHA breeder (and another German import) Walter Sauer left the AWHA to establish his own Australian Performance Horse studbook, a mixture of Trakehner and Holstein bloodlines. For a while APH stood the Holstein Licensing winner, Rocadero (Ronald / Freeman) before his return to Germany. APH currently stands six stallions, five of them Holsteiner bred, including sons of Coriander and Loutano.
Many members left the AWHA because of the delays in receiving birth certificates. In an editorial in the January 2000 THM, I set out my experiences:
“I must confess that I have a personal interest in this matter, just on three years ago, my AWHA head stud book registered mare, Frauenberg had a colt foal by Weltmeyer (frozen semen). I had done all the required AWHA paperwork, and a blood sample of both mare and foal was dispatched to the AJC testing lab, and according to Alison Campbell, the registrar of the AWHA, the result confirmed our colt’s parentage. After a long delay – like twelve months – we were faxed a copy of our horse’s papers, with the promise that the original was in the mail. We are still waiting for those papers to arrive!!! I have always believed that we needed one big Warmblood breeding association if performance horse breeding was to go ahead – the trend to smaller and smaller splinter groups, many of which eventually disappear altogether, is not a good one. As the longest standing organization, the AWHA was the logical one to fulfil this function. Sadly now, the AWHA’s chance of survival must be called into question. The dispute between the Federal body and the Victorian branch has now reached a stage where the Feds had sacked the Victorian branch and sought to disband it.”
In the February 2000 issue, WA Warmblood breeder, Dolly van Zaane was once again voicing the concerns of many, discussing the Federal AWHA decision to ban three Victorian committee members from any dealings with the AWHA, she remarks: “The AWHA Board and Office are again removing the people with vision and drive, just as they managed over the years to remove others. If the AWHA is so good then why have Kinnordy Stud, Belcam Stud, Northern Warmbloods, APH, Holstein Park, to name a few of the main players, gone elsewhere with their horses?”
In that same issue, I outlined an alternative: “I’d like to put forward my ideal solution, it goes like this. First we take out all the ‘advantages’ of exercising power in a breed society – like mare or colt classification. Instead we put in place a simple registry – preferably run by the EFA in association with a government body like the Federal Department of Agriculture or Overseas Trade. To register a horse all you would need is to produce blood typing or DNA proof of its parentage. For a stallion to be registered, it would only need a vet certificate warranting it free of congenital deformities. That’s it. Pay your money and get your bit of paper, and your horse gets a life time number which means that a proper performance data base can easily be created with every official result, the scores would be recorded next to that horse, its sire and its dam. A prospective purchaser could pay a fee, and get an absolutely accurate performance record of the horse.”
“Now sure, there would be all sorts of incredible pedigrees slipping into this system, there are a few wild ones in there right now, but this could be dealt with by a second level of voluntary control. Within this big breed umbrella, we could have the Friends of the Hanoverian, or the Dutch Horse, or the French or the Performance Thoroughbred – and these interest groups could maintain their own book within a book with their own regulations as to classification, documentation of pedigrees, etc etc. No doubt these smaller breeding associations within the umbrella will still have their share of brawls (it is a ‘breed’ characteristic of small voluntary associations) but the overall integrity of the registry will be maintained. If the EFA did this right, then they could actually make a profit. For the small breeder it would be a godsend: a nice one-stop place to register their stock. For the buyer it would provide clean, objective information about performance.”
But I wasn’t optimistic. The editorial concluded: “Dream on.”
In the March 2000 magazine, Terry Cubley, long a stalwart of the AWHA had come to the end of his tether:
“Many members of the AWHA has been asking for quite some time ‘what is going on? What am I getting for my money?’ The letters in your January issue are simply the tip of the iceberg which is sinking this Titanic of an association.”
“I have been on the committee of the AWHA (Vic) since the early 80’s and have been an active member of the Federal board at various times since its inception. After a few years gap, and feeling frustrated by the changing face of the company, I rejoined the board in late 1998, deciding to try and help fix the problem rather than just complain. I can now report that I completely failed in this attempt.”
“Major concerns were failure to issue certificates (some people have been waiting for two years and are still waiting), poor communication to members and an apparent lack of control of the finances.”
Cubley goes on to document how after raising questions with the Federal board, he and the other Victorian board member, Kees Wientjens were suspended from the board, and later expelled…
“I now find that after nearly 20 years of work to make the AWHA a strong force, I have been unceremoniously kicked out of the company.”
Cubley, with Wientjens and a couple of others, then formed the International Warmblood Studbook Australia (IWSA) which then became ISSA.
So volatile was the situation that the next month, the Queensland AWHA representative, Anton Webb submitted a long and very reasonable letter defending the AWHA and putting the delays down to the re-organization of the registry on the Federal basis and promising better things in the future… but just a few weeks later, Webb resigned from the AWHA stating he did not think the organization continued to exist in any meaningful sense.
Then the AWHA decided to close the Federal office, and the Registrar, Alison Campbell resigned, setting out her reasons in a long letter published in the August 2000 THM.
“I have followed the ‘AWHA debate’ and the publicity surrounding what I supposedly have and have not done as Executive Officer of the AWHA Ltd. I could be flattered that I am the subject of such great interest but I am getting tired of being used as the scapegoat for the problems of the AWHA. I have been accused of amongst other things, suing them for unfair dismissal, never issuing registration papers, losing papers if I did not like the ‘look’ of the registration and gross incompetence…”
“I can understand the frustration members have experienced with registrations. We have all heard of the supposed problems with the system when it was moved interstate during 1999. Although I was not responsible for the debacle, the Board have chosen not to share with the members what really went wrong. The issue deeply divided the Board and I believe they have never recovered. The system was subsequently sent to the National Office. Unfortunately, I was already working up to double the hours that I was being paid for and was not in a position to continue to increase the hours without remuneration. With thousands of dollars already paid out on the project, the Board was not in a position to pay me to address the backlog.”
Campbell was promised payment by a Board member to address the backlog, and processed 500 registrations before resigning – but she was not paid. Legal issues that arose from her employment led to a long and vicious legal battle that went on for many many years.
Her final words were prophetic:
“The AWHA appears to be in crisis with some of their member base deserting them, information still not relayed to members, a number of Board members recently resigning and their trademark THM September supplement not going ahead.”
And sure enough, there was no supplement in the September 2000 magazine, not that we were ever informed of the shift (in fact Webb was the only AWHA board member who ever spoke to us through this whole sorry affair). A supplement of about 4 pages (down from the traditional 20 to 30) appeared in Hoofs & Horns and then disappeared… a 24 page THM stallion directory replaced it, that directory has now grown to 40 pages with just on 80 stallions – perhaps reflecting a change in emphasis from Breed Society membership to just breeding to the best available stallion. The Annual AWHA supplement is now just a fading memory.
Since then there have been innumerable resignations and re-shuffles, it would seem that the AWHA continues to struggle along, no longer the pre-eminent Australian Warmblood Association, but just one of a group of little Stud Booklets…
Next month – yet another studbook – ACE arrives…