Grafenstolz claims the 2020 WBFSH Sire Ranking

Last year’s runner up Grafenstolz claims the 2020 World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses stallion title for the year of 2020. He tops the list ahead of Diarado Holst. (Diamant de Semilly x Corrado I) and Jaguar Mail SF (Hand in Glove XX x Laudanum XX).

The 2020 WBFSH Top 10 Eventing Sire Ranking:

1 (2) Grafenstolz Trakh. (Polarion x Camelot) – 588
2 (6) Diarado Holst. (Diamant de Semilly x Corrado I) – 512
3 (3) Jaguar Mail SF (Hand in Glove XX x Laudanum XX) – 494
4 (1) Contendro I Holst. (Contender x Reichsgraf) – 474
5 (10) Obos Quality Old. (Quickstar x Domino) – 402
6 (11) Diamant de Semilly SF (Le Tot de Semilly x Elf III)  – 311
7 (-) Nouma d’Auzay SF (Carthago x Quidam de Revel) – 307
8 (-) Ars Vivendi Holst. (Acord II x Aloube) – 302
9 (21) Mighty Magic Holst. (Mytens XX x Heraldik XX) – 277
10 (22) Landos Holst. (Lord x Calypso I) – 262

Offspring below average gets credit.

However, the sire ranking is often up for a bit of a debate. Mostly for the fact it is based and calculated on the results of all offspring of a stallion with a valid MER in the FEI system.

Which means that stallions with a lot of offspring below average and stallions with a few top level offspring always will be credited.

Digging into the current Top 10 Sire Ranking we can i.e. see that leading sire Grafenstolz have 38 offspring with a top ranking score of 87 points for Lordships Graffalo and a bottom score of 1 point each for as many as nine horses. The average amount of ranking points for these 38 offspring is 15!

To put this number in perspective, 15 ranking points for a rider on the current version of the FEI World Ranking would make you the 1444 best rider in the world!

If we continue down the list and count the average world ranking placement for the offspring of the number 1 sire of 2020 it renders a disappointing average of 1204.

Does this make Grafenstolz a bad stallion? No, not really.

Cause if recalculating the sire ranking according to the same model of the stud book rankings using the top 6 offspring of each and every stallion things get much more interesting. Most likely it also gets somewhat more accurate.

Not enough offspring.

First of all, by recalculating the ranking and removing all stallions with less than six offspring from the list, no less than 17 stallions will drop out.

To mention a few of the drop outs. We would need to say goodbye to Heraldik XX. Currently ranked as the 37 best breeding stallion in the world. But Heraldik XX only have the three offspring making MERs during the period, and only one of these, FRH Butts Avedon ranked number three in the world, made good results.

Also not making it on to the list would be the sire of the world’s number one ranked eventing horse for 2020 which is Scuderia 1918 Don Quidam by. Quidam Holst. (Quinar x Landgraf I). Scuderia 1018 Don Quidam is the only offspring of Quidam on the sire ranking.

A full list of drop outs and their individual ranking and amount of offspring on the WBFSH ranking would look like this.

Contendro I should top the ranking.

When removing the seventeen stallions who don’t have enough offspring on the world ranking to make their results feel reliable. And by keeping just the top 6 offspring of the remaining stallions, we will get a new number one.

This would be Contendro I. Followed by Jaguar Mail and the current WBFSH number one that is Grafenstolz. Jaguar Mail is the only stallion of this top trio who has three offspring placed on the Top 100 list of the World Ranking.

Biggest change of the top 10 will be Mighty Magic dropping out from his number nine spot to number twelve. While Balou du Rouet takes over the number nine spot.

A new list based on the top six offspring from each stallion would look like this.