Dressage at Devon Announces 2003 North American Breeders Futurity Championship With Over $20,000 Prize Money

Devon, PA—April 30, 2003—Dressage at Devon 2003 will be the venue for the first ever North American Breeders Futurity Championship Finals for Five and Six Year Old Horses. The new classes are the result of a collaboration between the Dressage at Devon committee, the ISR Oldenburg Registry and the Federation of North American Sport Horse Registries (FNASHR). A warm-up class will be held on Thursday, September 25, offering a fitting bridge between the Breed Division of the show, which ends on Thursday, and the Performance Division of the show, which begins on Friday. The championship finals will be held midday on Friday, September 26.

The classes were developed to put more emphasis on the training of young horses in North America, where many feel young horses are not supported. “The horses bred in North America are now up to the quality of those in Europe,” says Ekkehard L. Brysch, President of the ISR Oldenburg Registry North America and one of the instigators of this program. “This raises the question of why these young horses are not as successful as they are in Europe. Why are we not making horses here instead of importing them from Europe?”

In the late 1990s a series of measures were developed to help encourage training and competing of young horses to help breeders sell their progeny. While there are more classes for young horses now than in the recent past, they are often not as well attended as they could be. The ISR Oldenburg N.A. and the FNASHR are making efforts to make these classes more attractive for trainers, riders and owners to compete in. One of the incentives being used is money.

The North American Breeders Futurity Championship Finals for Five and Six Year Old Horses will be open only to those horses bred in North America, and will include prize money in excess of $20,000, an unprecedented amount in dressage competition. The purse will be divided, with the top four horses in each class receiving a percentage of $5000 in prize money. In addition, there will be an additional $5000 purse for the top four horses in each class who fulfill the futurity criteria. This prize money will be divided between those who nominated the winning horses for the NABF and the breeders of these horses.

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