Andalusian mares gain popularity in dressage

Photo taken from chevauxiberiquesmagazine.com

Representatives of the Andalusian breed stand out from the rest of the horses and can be immediately recognized during tournaments. Many Andalusians have achieved great success in the international arena: Event, Flamenco, Distinguido, Surf и Invader showed outstanding results at the Olympic Games, the World Equestrian Games and the European Championships. Later, the list of the most famous representatives of the breed was added Cardenas Fire, Impatient II, G-Nidium и Grandiose III.

In the past, it was extremely rare to see purebred Spanish mares in prizes at the Grand Prix level. Everything changed intro FS Jewel, a mare who became the Absolute Champion Andalusian Horse Association Cup Final under the Grand Prize program.

Her result once again resumed the debate about who is better in sports: geldings, stallions or mares. There is still no answer to this question, but the very existence of such a discussion makes many pay attention to the gender of the horse when buying. It was thought that working with mares was much more difficult, and yet, more and more riders now choose mares.

One of the main purposes of mares is to give birth. However, when it comes to the sport of dressage, many breeders begin to show more interest in this discipline, seeing it as an opportunity to show the mares’ virtues in the sport.

The statistics of the Andalusian Horse Association show an extremely low percentage of dressage mares. This is due to the fact that a very small part of breeders give their mares to the big sport, but if this happens, the horse almost certainly achieves outstanding results. An example of this is the 10-year-old Joya FS, bred and owned by Yeguada Arroyomonte. In 2015, the mare became Andalusian Horse Association Cup Champion for 5-year-old horses and repeated her success in 2016. In 2019, she became the silver medalist in the Grand Circle, and in 2020 she won, receiving 73,695% from the judges for the free program.

And if earlier the winners of the tournaments established by the Association, as a rule, were stallions, then at the Andalusian Breed Festival-2020 the situation changed – out of 11 mares that took part in the competition, five won prizes.