Selective breeding for equestrian sport performance has produced horses with exceptional athletic ability alongside welfare trade-offs. Understanding these genetics-welfare interactions guides better breeding decisions.
Sport horse breeding creates welfare risks when selection focuses exclusively on performance traits while ignoring soundness, temperament, and health. Exaggerated traits selected for competition success can compromise individual horse welfare across an entire career. The ethical responsibility of breed societies and breeders is to incorporate welfare trait selection alongside performance selection, ensuring that genetic progress in athletic ability is matched by maintained or improved health, soundness, and temperament. Genomic tools increasingly enable evidence-based selection that incorporates welfare traits at earlier stages in the breeding process.