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Abstract

Equestrian sport has made tremendous development during recent decades, requiring athletic and specialized horses that can be competitive at the highest level in show jumping or dressage. Furthermore, horses need to be sound to withstand the physical strain and stay durable in sport. Today, orthopedic diseases are the most common health problem in sport horses, causing negative impact on performance, owners’ economy, and the welfare of the horse. This thesis aimed to investigate the specialization towards show jumping and dressage in the Swedish Warmblood (SWB) horse, and to examine assessed traits in young horses and their associations with performance and orthopedic diagnoses from insurance data. The results showed that the proportion of horses classified as ‘allround’ decreased markedly since 1980 in favor of jumping and dressage horses. The average relationship between jumping and dressage horses decreased over time, whereas it increased within these subpopulations during the past decade. Also, clear differences were seen between discipline-specific traits for jumping and dressage horses, indicating a clear specialization into disciplines in the SWB breed. Several linearly scored traits had a phenotypic association with performance in show jumping or dressage. Most associations were linear, indicating that stronger expression of these traits was in general associated with better performance. However, some traits showed intermediate optimal scores, suggesting that extreme expressions do not correspond to better performance in general for those traits. The prevalence of orthopedic diagnoses was higher in dressage than jumping horses. Also, later cohorts had higher risk of having an orthopedic diagnosis at a young age than earlier cohorts. Height at withers and the assessment score for ‘trot at hand’ had a significant association with the risk of having an orthopedic diagnosis for both jumping and dressage horses, whereas few linearly scored traits influenced the risk for such diagnosis. These findings highlight the importance of monitoring the orthopedic health status in sport horses, and to find measurements that can be useful for this purpose.

Keywords

dressage; insurance data; lameness; linearly scored traits; orthopedic diagnoses; show jumping; survival analysis; young horse test

Published in

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Sueciae
2026, number: 2026:2
Publisher: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Medical Bioscience

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.54612/a.597qsjb0a8
  • ISBN: 978-91-8124-199-0
  • eISBN: 978-91-8124-219-5

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/144520