The Evaluation of the Value for Sports Purposes of Warm-Blooded Horse Breeds in Poland for the Show Jumping Discipline

The scientific objective of the paper was to compare the use value of native and some foreign horse breeds competing in Polish regional show jumping tournaments. A total of 156 horses were analysed including the native breeds Małopolski (m), Wielkopolski (wlkp), Polish Half Bred Horse (pksp), and the foreign breeds Oldenburger (old), Holsteiner (hol) and Dutch Warmblood (kwpn). The competition results with distribution of penalty points as well as pedigree databases of Polish Horse Breeders Association and Polish Equestrian Federation were used. The data obtained was subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA-GLM), and the differences between average values were determined with Tukey’s t-test. It was concluded that the native breeds obtained statistically worse results than foreign ones, proportionally to the level of competition difficulty. The proportion of native breeds among the participants of competitions decreased with increasing course difficulty and was statistically significant for the number of eliminations and clear rounds. The results allow a conclusion about the lower use value of native compared to foreign horse breeds for sports purposes.