For the past few years, it has felt almost impossible to discuss pony showjumping without hearing the same argument: horse-bred ponies are taking over.
The conversation intensified even further following the Pony Showjumper Final at Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) last week, where the majority of the class appeared to be made up of ponies with predominantly horse ancestry. To many people, this seemed like proof that traditional pony breeding is becoming obsolete. However, I wasn't convinced that the results of one national-level championship, with 27 British rider & pony combinations, accurately reflected the wider population of FEI jumping ponies across Europe.
In my Master's thesis, that I completed last month (click here to read in full), I examined all ponies competing at the European Pony Championships between 2015 and 2025. My results found that for showjumping ponies, 24.9% of the population consisted of fully horse-bred ponies. Given how often social media discussions focus on warmblood-derived ponies, this figure seemed somewhat low.
More recently, through Sport Ponies Worldwide, my Facebook group with over 40,000 members, I've noticed a substantial increase in demand for horse-bred ponies. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that this trend might be disproportionately British...So I decided to investigate this further.
Methodology
I analysed all unique 395 ponies competing in CSIP classes at 1.20m-1.35m level between 1st January 2026 and 31st July 2026, excluding classes with less than 10 entries.
For each pony & rider combination, the rider nationality, pony pedigree information, breed composition, country of origin and competition performance were recorded.
Breed groups were classified as follows:
Horse-Bred
Horse-Bred included ponies with 100% horse ancestry, such as KWPN, Selle Français, Hanoverian, Zangersheide, Irish Sport Horse, British Warmblood
Sport Pony
Sport Pony included recognised riding pony and sport pony populations, including: German and Dutch Riding Ponies, French Riding Ponies (Sometimes called French Saddle Ponies), British Sport Ponies
Importantly, first-generation horse x pony crosses were excluded from this category.
F1 Horse x Pony
This category included first-generation crosses between a horse breed and a pony breed, including: Hanoverian x Welsh Section B, Irish Sport Horse x Irish Connemara, Selle Français x French Riding Pony
These were analysed separately in order to evaluate the direct influence of sport horse bloodlines within FEI competition ponies.
Native Pony
Native Pony included closed-studbook breeds such as: Connemaras, New Forests and Welsh Ponies.
The defining feature was membership of a closed breeding population with no recent introduction of outside blood.
Other
This category included: Appaloosa and American Quarter Horse crosses, and other crossbreds with incomplete pedigrees that could not be reliably categorised
Unverified Pedigrees
A pedigree was considered fully unverified where the sire, sire's sire, dam and dam's sire could not be identified.
These ponies were excluded from pedigree and breed-composition analysis.
Breed Composition Results
Across the entire population of 395 FEI jumping ponies:
- Sport Ponies: 114 (28.9%)
- F1 Horse x Pony: 103 (26.1%)
- Horse-Breds: 64 (16.2%)
- Native Ponies: 50 (12.7%)
- Other: 18 (4.6%)
France Is Producing More Ponies, and more Riders than any Other Nation
Britain is Strikingly Different
When analysing horse-bred usage by rider nationality:
- United Kingdom: 51.3%
- Ireland: 26.5%
- Netherlands: 23.9%
- Sweden: 13.5%
- Belgium: 13.3%
- Germany: 10.3%
- Italy: 7.1%
- France: 5.4%
More than half of all British riders were competing horse-bred ponies.
Put another way:
A British rider was approximately 9.5 times more likely to ride a horse-bred pony than a French rider, 7.2 more likely than Italian riders, 5 times more likely than German riders, almost 4 times more likely than Dutch riders, and nearly twice more likely than Irish riders.
The most common breeds ridden by British riders were:
- British Warmblood (20.5%)
- Irish Sport Horse (10.3%)
- KWPN (10.3%)
French riders showed almost the exact opposite pattern, with the most common breeds for French riders being:
- French Riding Pony (39.6%)
- Selle Français x French Riding Pony (11.7%)
- French Connemara (9.0%)
Within the population analysed, Irish-bred ponies accounted for 22 out of the 30 ponies with fully unverified pedigrees, compared to just five from Belgium and three from Spain.
Interestingly, this was not an isolated finding. In my Master's thesis, Irish-bred ponies also recorded the highest proportion of unverified pedigrees in both the showjumping and eventing populations.
Connemaras held their own
Debunking yet another popular claim, Purebred Native pony breeds, in particular Connemaras, are able to succeed in the highest levels of pony showjumping.
Within the population analysed, there were 31 French-Bred Connemaras, and 29 Irish-Bred Connemaras. That's 15.2% of the entire population.
In other words, almost one in every six FEI jumping ponies in this study was a purebred Connemara Pony...far from becoming obsolete!
Where are the British Riding Ponies?
There was a complete absence of British Riding Ponies from the 395 FEI jumping ponies analysed.
By comparison, sport pony populations from mainland Europe were well represented:
- French Riding Pony: 63 ponies (16.0%)
- Dutch Riding Pony: 20 ponies (5.1%)
- German Riding Pony: 12 ponies (3.0%)
- Belgian Riding Pony: 11 ponies (2.8%)
- British Riding Pony: 0 ponies (0%)
This is particularly interesting given that populations such as the German Riding Pony were heavily influenced by British Riding Pony bloodlines during their development (click here to read more)
So, is the rest of Europe following this 'horse-bred' trend?
Based on this dataset, no.
Horse-bred ponies are certainly influential, but they are nowhere near as dominant as social media discussions often suggest. Perhaps a more accurate conclusion is that Britain has moved in a different direction to many of its European neighbours.
While France, Germany and the Netherlands continue to rely heavily on dedicated sport pony breeding programmes, Britain appears far more likely to source jumping ponies directly from warmblood and sport horse populations.
None of these findings are intended as a criticism of British jumping pony breeders - I am a a UK-based Sport Pony breeder myself! (Click here to view my stud page)However, it's difficult to ignore what the data shows. Historically, at least, Britain appears to have relied far more heavily on horse-bred ponies than many of its European neighbours. Given that most of the ponies in this study were likely bred somewhere between 9 and 16 years ago, these trends reflect breeding decisions made over a long period of time rather than current fashions alone.
This does not necessarily mean British breeders have been unsuccessful. It may simply mean that Britain has had relatively few specialist jumping pony breeders compared to countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands. Equally, it may be that British-bred jumping ponies have faced greater challenges in finding the right riders, owners and competitive pathways needed to progress to international level.
Whatever the reason, the statistics suggest Britain has taken a very different route to the rest of Europe. Why that happened, and whether it is now changing, is perhaps the most interesting question of all, and one that deserves further investigation... Watch this space!
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| Pictured: Two of my 2026 British-bred Sport Pony foals, Overflow Britannia (left) and Overflow Footloose (right) |
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