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Breeders Congress at the 2025 KWPN stallion show
By Christopher Hector
It’s not just the success of the Dutch horses in dressage and jumping that is the magnet drawing spectators from all over the world to the KWPN stallion show in den Bosch, it’s the show itself, and the organizers are always looking for ways to improve their offering.
This year it was the first edition of a very special congress of breeders, from all over the world…
The day after the congress I sat down with the chief mover-and-shaker behind the Congress, Dirk Willem Rosie -that’s him in the far right of the photo.
I asked Dirk, what are your overall impressions of the evening?
“It was to be expected that we would hear lots of very interesting stories from famous and successful breeders and that obviously happened. The other thing is that we may have had a few too many of them which made the evening very long, heavy stuff so to speak, on the other hand it was a unique opportunity to have these successful breeders in the one spot, and they were more than willing to share their expertise.”
“I have had many reactions from people who were grateful that we took the initiative and invited all these people from various countries. Some of them told us things that we already knew, but I was really pleased that the personal story of each breeder came out, and also that famous breeders are normal human beings, and that sometimes luck was the reason they produced some of their top horses, and they were honest enough to share that with us.”
“For instance, the French breeder, Alexandra Lebon told us that her top mare Jubilée d’Ouilly was not the product of deep research but rather coincidence because the semen she wanted for her mare Gardinia (Graphit / Sermon I) didn’t come because there was trouble with the plane and then she had to choose Palestro (St Brendan xx / Sermon I) and Jubilee came out, and that is something that happens so often with breeders, that luck plays a part.”
“On the other hand, they were quite consistent in their view that the mare really makes the difference, that’s something we all know, and we all preach that, but these top breeders all had their successes with mares that stood out, and that is something in which coincidence does not play a role. All of them, with no exceptions, started with a super mare with super qualities, and really that’s the explanation for their success.”
Emerald – not from a star studded mare line…
I was thinking about that this morning, and called up a couple of pedigrees on your wonderful website,horsetelex.com, and found that Emerald, for instance, does not come from a star-studded mare line, the same with Vigo d’Arsouiles… Last night people were getting scared, oh we can’t breed if we can’t afford to buy a super mare, but sometimes great stallions have come out of ‘normal’ mare lines…
“That’s right, and that’s how mother nature works, sometimes it is a bit strange and unpredictable, and then a freak of nature comes out. The thing is to find that freak of nature and to use it, and don’t condemn horses on the basis of their pedigree. We can condemn horses on the basis of their ability, and how they perform, always take the pedigree into consideration, but the horse has to be a top performer, and that’s how sometimes new horses enter the scene because they are that freak of nature, because mother nature spreads her seeds and sometimes a single seed lands over there in the extreme part and something new comes out, and we have to detect that, and work with mother nature, and the freaks that pop out.”
Fragance – not a superstar in the ring…
And sometimes the fabulous performers are not the great producers. For instance, Joris had Butterfly Flip join his mare band, and yet the results from this mare are very modest, but when we look at his most famous mare, Fragance, she was 1.30m, 1.40m tops, not a superstar like Butterfly…
“I like what Joris said about this last night, that he likes this instance because it gives average breeders the idea that they too can play in this game. He mentioned Fragance as an example, who was not a top 1.60 horse, but still a special horse with a special mind. He found out because his wife was riding Fragance, that she had a 110% mentality, a will to perform.”
Joris also made the point that Fragance was still competing when she was 19 or 20, and that this was an indication of soundness, yet when the discussion came to the issue of using younger stallions or older stallions, there was a room full of people saying no, no, no let’s breed to the younger stallions, but if we look at dressage breeding, where they compulsively breed to younger stallions, and ignore the good established older stallions, they now have massive genetically based soundness problems. Shouldn’t we apply that to jumping breeding, if we go to a stallion like For Pleasure we know he was still jumping Grand Prix when he was nineteen, he’s not only brilliant but he’s very very sound…
For Pleasure – great sire, and oh so sound…
“That’s right. I was amazed at the feelings recorded last night, I thought that some of the public and some of the panelists would say, it’s dangerous to breed to young stallions because you run the risk of losing a generation, but they all tried to convince us that we should use young stallions.”
But at times last night I thought it got a bit like Facebook, with people saying what they thought they were expected to say, but I suspect that if you go and look at the stallions those same people are actually using, you’d find they go to the famous established ones.
“That’s why I referred to the BWP stallion show where archeology was dominate…
Darco still influences breeding there, but he is also here at the 2025 KWPN stallion show…
“That’s why I made remarks last night, that while the breeders and the experts all said, you must use younger stallions, the market says something else, that’s something we can’t deny. If you want to sell your foal, and most breeders want to sell their foals, better not use a young stallion because you can’t sell the foal at a good price.”
“We need to deal with this situation, and you mentioned the example of dressage, it is an amazing phenomenon that dressage and showjumping breeders are at 180 degrees confrontation with each other.”
“I agree that in dressage breeding we have a problem with so many stallions that either never performed, or only performed for a short period of time.”
Or like Dynamic Dream, never even did a performance test, and breeds hundreds of mares…
Dynamic Dream – no performance test…
“That’s right and it’s logical that some of the health issues that are causing these stallions not to compete, will creep into the population and pop out when we don’t want them. It’s the other way round in showjumping where we see the tendency of using proven stallions, sound stallions. Chacco Blue, For Pleasure, Darco, Diamant de Sémilly… they were like 120% sound, and in that respect the two populations are saying goodbye to each other. That’s something that worries me. In showjumping it worries me, because in my personal opinion, you don’t progress with Darco and For Pleasure and stallions like that, you do have progression with the well-bred young stallions, six, seven years old that have shown potential for the big sport, that’s the kind of stallions we use for genetic progress.”
“In dressage I think we are losing it, because the younger stallions are so popular, and some of them are just not sound enough, and the idea, the objective for the commercial breeders is just so far away from the sport. In showjumping that is less, everybody knows how a horse should jump, but in dressage, breeders don’t breed for Grand Prix they breed for stallions. Some of these foals will grow up and become lovely horses, but that’s not on the basis of genetic progress, it’s on the basis of the hard labour that the riders put in.”
“We need to get our minds back on track and directed to the sport, to Grand Prix, to get some sense in dressage breeding.”
Another of the what I thought were ‘face book’ responses, was when you raised the very important question of the future of the breeding associations, they were going no no, we must keep our breeds separate, but I just did a survey of the stallion licensings of the past twelve months, and the stallions licensed were all a mix of different breeds and bloodlines, there was no sign of any loyalty to the traditional breed lines. Maybe when you look at the KWPN, there’s a Dutch identity, but if you look at the other breed societies’ new licensed stallions, you cannot tell looking at the pedigrees, which breed society you are looking at…
“No, you are right.”
Forget it, I liked the old days when the breeding station had a couple of stallions, and a hotel and was the centre of community life, that’s disappeared…
“This is another example of the fact that people don’t practice what they preach, there is a discrepancy between what people like to say, and what is actually happening. At the Congress there was a consensus that the studbooks should be doing more to protect the breeders from stallions that were not sound and healthy, stallions that were hard to train, in practice breeders don’t act that way, they use dressage stallions even before they are approved, they don’t want to be protected by any studbook. There’s a big difference between what people say when they are in groups and being monitored and what they do afterwards in their own stables.”
“I am very much in favor of that option where stud books should act to stop some stallions producing offspring, but in practice it is a matter of competition in the market. In Germany, for instance, if Oldenburg approves Secret, even though he has weak pasterns and one uneven front hoof, etc etc, then Hanover will follow and then Westfalia, other stud books follow up because breeders want to use the stallion.”
“The first thing that should have happened was for Oldenburg to say, no! You go and be a Grand Prix star, then maybe we can consider approving you.”
One second in a young horse class at Ermelo and a win at the Bundeschampionate, and he is the most popular stallion everywhere on the basis of one 30 second video!
Secret – breeding sensation but no real performance…
“The doors are open and that’s because one studbook was open, and that’s because they are all in competition, they all want registrations from foals by such a popular stallion. It’s a money question and money talks everywhere.”
“My opinion is that studbooks should fulfill their primary role, and that is to select for sound horses, good fundament and all those things, but it starts with the fundament, with correct legs. Of course x-rays, but it starts with the fundament.”
One of the breeders whose opinion I respect, said that he had been to licensings, and there were young stallions that were obvious shiverers, yet they were approved, and shivering is a big problem right now…
“Yeah, or a premium stallion! That’s what happens.”
So if the studbooks are not doing this, why not forget it, and just have one big registry, save money and let the market decide…
“That would be an option, but my position is, especially with the KWPN, I’m Dutch and I used to work with the KWPN, so I have a certain bond with the stud book. The KWPN has a history of strict selection, and is surrounded by stud books that lower their thresholds, like Westfalia, like AES, and the reaction to these competitors and the drive for registrations, should be to raise the bar, especially at this show for three-year-old stallions.”
But I think the KWPN is a little different because, it does not depend on the stallion auctions to get enough money to keep going, and while there is another Dutch book, it is basically the national book, whereas in Germany they have lost the revenue from their stallion auctions and there is a multiplicity of books, ‘ oh you don’t like my stallion in Oldenburg, I’ll take him down the road to Westfalia’. Sooner or later, I suspect these stud books will disappear and I think it will be more sooner than later.
“You mean a united German stud book, DSP or something like that?”
Something like that, or PSI…
“In my opinion in this evolution of the growing number of approved stallions, which means a growing number of stallions that should not be approved is a problem, because these young stallions should be the means of genetic progress. Then the first stud book to raise the bar, especially for the first line, the three-year-old stallions, creates a brand, a brand of true quality that the breeders will recognize when they see it.”
They might recognize it on facebook, but when it comes to paying a higher fee, and having the chance of their horse being rejected, perhaps they’ll look for a cheaper easier option. We used to look at books like AES and say, that’s not a studbook, it’s just a registry, and yet when I look at the results the AES has produced quite a large number of very successful horses, perhaps because they had such a wide-open book, then there was a chance of new blood coming, and they are not the worst stud book when it comes to results…
“That doesn’t guarantee the quality of an AES approved stallion. What I am arguing for is not a strategy that is achieved in a year but a long-term strategy where you use an approved stallion from a book with a high bar, then you know that stallion is sound, you know that stallion has been trained and has proven to be nicely rideable, doesn’t have something like a breathing problem or anything like that. I’ve been breeding to stallions in Germany and I didn’t know about their soundness, and I was surprised to have foals with hereditary problems that are not in my mare, and you find this out when the offspring is two-and-a-half years old, and by that time, you’ve spent a lot of money.”
You say this is a long-term strategy, but my question is, do the stud books have a long time? I hear of books that are losing millions of euros, the number of registrations going down…
“Lower your costs, and the judges there do not cost a lot of money, it’s the way they do their job that makes a difference. Use very knowledgeable judges who can explain why they have taken their decisions, have a high bar, and stick to that strategy, and tell the world that is what you are doing. Market that brand. I only believe in long lasting solutions, and everything you do must be seen and be transparent. Also with riders and trainers, hang cameras everywhere so everybody can look. That’s how you deal with the situation, you must be strict for yourself, have high standards for yourself, and show the rest of the world that you have these standards.”
To finish where we started, I thought the Breeders Congress last night, was a brilliant concept, the panel and the topics you picked, were fabulous. I thought the problem was trying to squash it into such a small amount of time. You were doing a good job asking probing questions, but in the end, time was defeating us.
“Yes.”
When I started coming to this stallion show in den Bosch, fifteen years ago, one of the reasons I came was because on the Sunday when nothing else is happening, there was a special tour for foreign visitors, all done in English like the Congress last night, and we went to some great studs and training stables. Do you think that one day the Congress might be held on the Sunday and give us all day to discuss important issues and maybe visit a couple of nearby farms?
“We’ve decided to continue this initiative next year. We’ll make two Congresses, one for dressage, one for jumping, and that’s a very good idea to combine it with tours. We are open for any good idea to make this first initiative a long-lasting attraction as part of the KWPN stallion show.”
A couple of days after the Congress, a press release detailed the series of topics put before the audience and their response, which was done by clicking on the bar-code and using an app…
Here is the press release with the audience responses:
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