Maryland Breeders Yearling Show 2024

Happy Wednesday, y'all! Anybody wanna waste a little time ogling a whole bunch of pics and gifs of adorable bebe racehorses?? Yess?? YES!!

Last week I swung by the Maryland Horse Breeders Yearling Show at the Timonium Fairgrounds to hangout and watch some friends show off their program's latest crop of future prospective racehorses.

    

The show offers 4 main classes, all of which feature yearlings foaled in Maryland. One class each for colts/geldings and fillies, and one each those sired from Maryland stallions, or those sired from out of state stallions. There are cash awards offered, and winners are also eligible for additional purse money throughout their lifetimes. 

    

The format is essentially an in-hand halter class, with all entries in the ring together. This is a bit distinct from similar classes in the eventing world, like the Future Event Horse series, where one entry is presented for judging at a time.

    

First, the judge observes the class parading around the arena. Which, as might be expected, can often include a few fireworks haha --- whether bc omg tents! spectators!! holy mother of metro crossing!!! ahem haha....

   

Then everyone more or less lines up so that the judge can make their way through the class for individual inspections. 

    

Not gonna lie.... This seemed like a pretty big demand on these baby horses' limited patience haha. Tho, as entertaining as the few little blow-ups were to witness, I was extremely impressed by the professionalism and expert handling across the board. Clearly wasn't this handler's first rodeo!! Poor colt was not thrilled about being closest to the {horse-eating} tents, but calmed considerably when he relocated deeper into the crowd. 

    

This phase of the class definitely made it easier to study each individual entry, or at least those that were positioned closest to where I stood haha. Some of these yearlings were grown, omg!

     

It proved to be good practice too, because after watching the first two classes and taking note of the judging and results, spectators were invited to participate in the "Amateur Judging Contest" in the third class!! 

    

And I didn't do too terribly either!! Judge's final picks, in order, were: 51 ~ 47 ~ 40 ~ 6 ~ 45

     

Anyway. Onto the judging itself. The judge had each handler stand up their horse and inspected conformation. My understanding is that conformation is the primary basis of overall scoring. Angles, bone, straightness, correctness, etc. 

    

Next, the judge observed the horse walking directly away, and then directly back again, looking for quality of stride and straightness of the conformation in motion.

    

All of these yearlings would have had practice and preparation leading up to the event, including wearing their specialty show halters... But even so, the atmosphere definitely got to some of them!

    

A few competitors observed that the judge didn't give them a very long runway for showing off the walk, esp given the high likelihood for a few bouncy steps. And many were asked to walk a second time... But I'm sure it's a fine balance between giving the horses enough time and space to fully show off their gait, vs opening them up to further fireworks (or making the class take twice as long...)

    

Again, eventing classes are a bit different in that each horse is presented individually, and they do the "triangle" for assessing movement at walk and trot. Plus, those classes have two judges, complete with scribes. Personally, I thought it would have been cool to scribe for this thoroughbred show to hear exactly what the judge liked or didn't like.

     

But eh, it was also just fun to check out all the youngsters and base my own selections on whichever were the "prettiest," like this lovely rosy gray! Definitely a cool class to watch -- esp re: learning more about how horses are judged for sport, but obvi a slightly different sport than mine!