ROMANIAN SPORT HORSES: EFFECTS OF COMPETITION LEVEL, SEX AND BREEDER ON THE NATIONAL SHOW JUMPING RANKING

Anca Roman-Popovici, I. Gîlcă

Abstract
    The study of the average performance regarding the results in national show jumping competitions for the horses from the Romanian Sport Breed (RSB) is particularly important because in this way we can form an idea about the performance level in show jumping for this population. The objective of this study was to analyze the differences between the horses from RSB regarding competition level, sex and breeder, and to investigate the impact of these factors on the average competition results for the last 3 years. For this research we examine all the horses legitimated FER from RSB participants in national show jumping competition, divided in 2 groups for breeder variable and 3 groups for sex variable and 5 groups for competition level variable. The results of the statistical analyze show that for the breeder variable the score for competition results present a statistically significant differences for the 0.01 significance level, and for the competition level variable the results from the statistical analysis shows that the score for competition results presents a statistically significant differences for the 0.001 significance level. Also, the results show that from the distribution of RSB legitimated FER participants in national show jumping competitions, 44.63% participate at FE level (the lower difficulty level) and only 8.26% at BA level (the highest difficulty level). In conclusion, we can say that private farms succede to obtain superior results to those from stud farms regarding to the performance level obtained in the national show jumping championship.

Key words: show jumping, ranking, sport horses, warmblood