Gorgeous stallion for the sporthorse enthusiasts

[skeenan]

This guy is drop-dead and can JUMP:

http://www.webelsgrund.de/english/betel.html

[helen in FL]

He has very good style for a thoroughbred jumper, they will always be lower in the leg since they generally have longer cannons than the warmbloods. But his knees are very sloppy and bloodlines not that impressive with producing jumper talent.

Also I am a little baised because I think my boy is the best. Aside from the fact he is in the US and available for thoroughbred mares where Betel is only through frozen semen. I don't see him making much with the US mare base for the registries he's approved for with better, local, options around.

[LB]

Well, if you're looking for a black stallion...he is one.

[skeenan]

In some shots he is hanging, but as it's the same rider every time, hard to say if it's him or her... not sure if she's preparing him for a tight turn upon landing, perhaps? Or could be it's his style... his knees are certainly not hunter-even, but he does have his legs tucked tight enough to give me the impression that he's careful or tries to be, anyway...

Helen, are you standing your own stallion in FL? What's his name? Do you have a website with some photos? Would love to see!

Do you also know Handsome Stranger? He's by Hand in Glove, but seems to be a new, unproved stallion. I also love French Buffet.

[spex4me]

When you guys say his knees are sloppy does that refer to the way they seem to bobble out from each other over the jump? Should they then be close and even ? I'm off to google images of grand prix jumpers now for an idea of leg set.

[Intrinsic Worth]

It looks like he is twisting in mid air off to the right. It becomes a habit and could be due to a physical condition (usually the back.)

I personally would only breed a TB mare to a warmblood stallion for jumping, not vice versa.

Knees are "supposed" to be even when we're talking hunters, where they judge form over fence. I'm not impressed with his style, but there are a lot of showjumpers with bad form who can still win big.

[helen in FL]

One things for sure is I would not want to be on him when he didn't come honest to a fence. With those knees it spells one thing: rails.

Actually a really notable thing is getting the blood on top. There are a few, read VERY few, thoroughbred sires they use in the warmblood books to add length of leg and shorten back. Lauries Crusador xx is one, LONG legs, and he just made stallion of the year for the Hanoverian Verbrand. Ladykiller xx is one, Sacramento Song xx who created the sire line for the stallion Sandro Hit, Lucky Boy xx for the dutch, Cottage Son xx for the Hanoverians again, Prince Thatch xx and many others. In the US we have Innkeeper xx, A Fine Romance xx, Coconut Grove xx and that really nice gray Aussie stallion who died the other year, can't remember his name, won the triple crown.

Then there's the multitude of stallions who go back to such sires as Nearco, Ribot, Hyperion and Gainsborough available in the US. One of them being my boy!

[skeenan]

Lauries Crusador is very nice, just looked at him last night online. My girl has a lot of sporthorse bloodlines (Buckpasser, Nearco, Hyperion, Best Turn, Damascus, Gainsboro, Bayardo, etc.) so it's always been an interesting thought to go that route...

French Buffet is a Buckpasser-line stallion. Very WB looking, has that "square" build...

Is your boy a breeding/competition stallion?

[helen in FL]

He was a small time breeder and seasoned compeditor up until a pulled groin muscle in 2000. Has about 28 babies on the ground, most of them AQHA and no runners. Too good of an eventer stallion to risk it also he is not what most breeders look for for racing.

You mare may have a lot of sport horse lines but it really depends on the crossing of them and how close they are. I've got a great six year old who has War Admiral, Round Table, Bold Ruler and Stage Door Johnny in the third generation, which is hard to do these days (well maybe not BR so much ). My older mare is a Best Turn grand daughter and a Whitesburg grand daughter who is Crimson Satan/Prince Bio. You've got to look at the "smart breeding" in the crosses in the bloodlines before you can start with anything.

[skeenan]

My problem with trying to follow any sort of rhyme or reason for TB sporthorse lines is that many of the good sporthorse stallions are too new—as in, off the track. They aren't, say, a fourth-generation jumper from a long line of proven TB sporthorses. So it's hard for me to reason if their talent is random or pedigree-based. I see common horses in many pedigrees but there doesn't seem to be any breeding patterns I can follow, other than those which are racing-based.

Good sporthorse TB stallions only seem, to me, to really influence other breeds (like Lucky Boy within WB pedigrees) but not consistently enough within TB sport pedigrees to start setting a precedence. I've only found one TB son of Hand in Glove at stud so far, and think of how talented he was. But again, his influence seemed to be more WB-related than TB sporthorse.

And I'll forever say that the no AI rule really hinders any kind of concentrated breeding efforts for sport TBs as the good stallions are very few and scattered around the globe. So their influence won't reach very far, unfortunately... and they probably won't get to cover enough TB mares to start establishing any type of breeding patterns. Even if they did, their talented sons probably won't go on to stud (or most likely they'll be gelded), so it's a dead-end cycle...

[bcassidy]

I don't know a lot about this sport but even if his knees are a little "sloppy" he sure looks like he covers a lot of height and ground in his jumps. He looks like a huge jumper and I am sure that counts for something--would I be correct in my last statement?

[skeenan]

Yes, it definitely counts—style isn't as important as ability with jumpers, as long as they're careful and rideable. The fact that he's approved for breeding with Holsteiners and Trakehners based on his performance record (as opposed to going through the 90-day stallion testing) says a lot about his abilities. He has the conformation of a good jumper—he's built like many Holsteiners are, very upright in his carriage. I watched one of the videos—he seems fairly quiet to the fences—she's sitting deep beforehand, but not checking him up hard. He seems bold, forward & attentive. I think he's pretty impressive...

The video link brings you to his site—here's the gallery of some of his foals. Granted, they're WBs, but very nice:

http://www.deckhengst.com/galerie/fohlen/?tx_gooffotoboek_pi1%5Bfid%5D=1&tx_gooffotoboek_pi1%5Bfunc%5D=thumb&cHash=8f34f3b336#77

[spex4me]

I may be wrong but he looks like he is enjoying jumping, and you can't beat that kind of desire with a stick!! My fat grumpy 15hh Walking horse has that...just too bad he is fat grumpy and only 15hh LMAO!!

[helen in FL]

He does not look like the holsteiners being bred today. The registries will let a stallion in if he has done the performance, but he was also presented at an age where the testing was no longer an option for him. Being approved based on show record is not that big of a thing. Salute the Truth had the HIGHEST performance score of any of the stallions presented to ISR/Old NA of well over 100 but did not get approved. Also the testing is not mandatory for any stallion to take, but many do because 99.9% of the time they have 40-60 foals already on the way and the owners really want to jump start their breeding careers. The Europeans love to jump on the next young stallion versus the US liking an established one.

If you would read a little bit of the literature done on the thoroughbred lines you will find there are stallions consistently popping up in the pedigrees. The most notable being Nearco, Ribot, Graustark, Sacramento Song, even Spectacular Bid is in the dam sire line of an approved Dutch stallion. Europeans are not stupid when it comes to Thoroughbred sires, they just snuff at the American Thoroughbreds because they can't afford to breed to them. Their best boys they "choose" have lines VERY accessable here in the US, many by US sires or dams themselves. Case in point 2007 HV Stallion of the Year Lauries Crusador who comes from the Tudor line. I find mares with this breeding all over in the US. Also the Hanoverian Verbrand has NEVER given the SotY honor to a thoroughbred before.

But in regards to this stallion, I think there are better options out there. He has not made a big enough impact to warrant consideration.

[skeenan]

He was only admitted back in 2002 (Holsteiner) and 2004 (Hannover), so that isn't nearly long enough to see what kind of impact he could make. Lauries Crusader's breeding career started in 1990. And he was first refused by the Holstein approval comittee—I don't know how you'd feel that it's easy to get approved in Germany, as their criteria is very stringent. Lauries Crusader has enough progeny out there to see that he's also becoming a successful broodmare sire. Betel's oldest offspring could only be 5-6 now. Lauries Crusader is spectacular, but he's also had time to prove himself.

I didn't mean that he looks like a Holsteiner, but that he's built similar, with very upright carriage for a TB. I love his movement, too—his sire is also the sire of Stavinsky, a successful dressage stallion:

http://www.sambertino.com/stravinsky_profile.shtml

I do do a lot of reading and research on bloodlines—the stallions that are mentioned in pedigrees, like Nearco & Hyperion, are for many horses, now back in the 4-5th generations. Sometimes further back, when you look at Bay Ronald, Dark Ronald and Bayardo. Many websites point them out in their horses' pedigrees—but many to most horses have these horses in their pedigrees. What's the magic combination that makes it work for each particular sporthorse stallion?

These are the questions that I have no answers to—how many lines of each seem to spell success? Which sons are the strongest carriers? Do some lines work better in the damside than sireside? If I look at the handful of great TB stallions (there's part of the problem, as there are only a handful), their pedigrees don't have a lot in common when you look at the placement of each of the lines, how many lines of each (and the sires they're all by)—there isn't an obvious breeding pattern to me.

Each stallion's pedigree works within itself, but what type of TB mare would they breed best with to carry on those sporthorse lines? Which lines should one linebreed to? Those are the patterns that I can't seem to decipher. It isn't like racing lines, where there are enough examples to know that Nearco/Hyperion worked well together. And as most successful TB sire's progeny are WB crosses, that adds a whole new dimension that doesn't apply to a TB/TB mating...

I'm not trying to be argumentative with you, Helen in FL, just hoping for some insight.