SWEDISH WARMBLOODS

"Swedish warmbloods are very goodnatured, big and strong," says Janet Starr who breeds the horses in upstate New York. In British Columbia Emily Robertson, who sells frozen sperm from Swedish Warmbloods, has helped to almost double the number of Swedish horses in Canada. More and more riders are discovering the Swedish horse and its unique traits and history.

The Swedish warmblood is a horse of the meso-dolichomorphic type, standing 16.217 hands at the withers. The coat is usually bay, brown, chestnut or gray. The head is nicely proportioned and well set-on, with a straight or convex profile, long ears and lively eyes. The neck is well-formed and long, the withers are prominent, the back long and straight, the croup broad, long and flat, the chest wide and deep, and the. shoulder nicely sloping and well-muscled. The legs are long and strong, well-muscled, with broad, clean joints, the tendons are also clean and well-defined, and the hoof is well-formed and solid. This is a quiet and intelligent horse.

The Swedish Warmblood is one of the oldest warmblood breeds in the world. For centuries the breed has been specifically developed for riding while most other warmblood breeds were bred primarily as agricultural draft horses.

Swedish horses have been medalists in virtually every Olympics since 1912, most often in dressage but also in combined training. The Swedish stallion Drabant had six sons participating in the 1960 Olympic games in Rome. Swiss rider Christina Stückelberger has won two World Cup finals and several Olympic medals with her "Swedish" Gaugin de Lully. Swedish warmbloods helped the U.S. win the team silver at the 1991 Pan American Games and the Canadians took bronze in the Olympic Games in Söul.

The Swedish Warmblood is the product of an efficient selection system that nowadays utilizes the most modern genetic principles.

Flyinge in the province of Skåne is one of the world's oldest national stud farms that is still in operation. Already in the 12th century the Danish archbishops held a heavily fortified stronghold with a mounted troop there. Following the peace treaty at Roskilde in 1658, the Swedish king Carl X Gustaf ordered a royal stud farm to be established at Flyinge that has been a stallion depot and breeding farm ever since 1661.

Military officers wanted stallions that would produce comfortable and rideable horses for the army. So carefully selected thoroughbreds and other warmblood stallions were picked for fresh blood and bred with mares owned by farmers. The army then bought a suitable offspring. A complete register of brood mares and their foals has thus been kept since 1894 and in 1928 the Swedish Warmblood Association was formed by the breeder to promote the development of uniform mares of a high standard. When the army stopped using horses in the 70s, the Association took over the breeding program and the national stud farm Flyinge is now a private foundation.

There are approximately 160 licenced Swedish Warmblood stallions in Sweden and 40 in North America. In the early 80s when the race first became popular in the USA, stallions were bought and transported across the Atlantic. Nowadays breeding is done mostly by artificial insemination at a cost of about 18 000 Swedish kronor for a guaranteed foal. The cost varies of course from horse to horse but this works out at about half the cost of shipping a horse over.

Flyinge keeps about forty approved stallions, twenty-five broodmares and seventy-five other horses of different ages. In Sweden heritability, based on the performance of a 45 year old progeny in "Quality Tests" that are similar to the performance ones rating stailions, is continuously calculated (with BLUP Best Linear Unbiased Prediction technology rating the performance of offspring, particularly in international classes) producing a breeding index. The last top ten contained the following horses: Amiral 764, Chapman 757, Napoleon 625, Good Future 741, Bernstein 761, Cavalotti 664, Chagall 455, Maraton 600, Ceylon 454, Hertigen 505.
Every year around 200 pre-selected 3year old stallions are tested in Sweden for soundness, gaits, jumping and rideability after which 10 to 20 are chosen.

Mares are introduced in the stud book after being judged with foal by an approved stallion at side. The stud book contains about 7 000 mares now.

In North American three Swedish experts travelled coast to coast this fall to do similar inspections. Over here as well as in Europe the confirmed horses are branded with a crown and an S. Branding is not allowed in Sweden The inspections in North America are held every second year, but with the increasing interest they might possibly become an annual affair.
To receive registration papers for foals that have been conceived through frozen or fresh-shipped semen, both the foal and the mother must be blood-typed. This is one of the precautions against false lines. One of the problems with artificial insemination is that there is a thriving black market for semen that unscrupulous breeders can use to boost the breeding of other horses. Staffan Hammarskjöld, President of the Swedish Warmblood Association feels that DAN testing will eventually have to be used to control blood lines. It has taken centuries of skillful management and competent work to create the Swedish Warmblood. The breeding program has been developed into perhaps the most sophisticated in the . world, so it is important to protect it from being misused.