Ilnytska T. Substantiation systems of breeding and selection for the improvement of sport horses

The dissertation is devoted to search for and development of methods for improvement of horses bred for use in sport. The expediency of introduction of the system for estimation of the selection criteria using the linear classification and demonstrated sports performance as an element of improvement of selection and breeding horses for sport has been theoretically substantiated and proved. The main characteristics of the horses participating in equestrian competitions have been studied. It is established that 76.86% of the sport horses are used in showjumping, 20.81% in dressage and 2.33% in eventing. The breeds of a total of 1199 sport horses had been determined, and it has been shown that the largest group (45.56%) are crossbred horses descending from the parents belonging to various sport studbooks. The assessment of the conformation of the horses shows that the representatives of the Ukrainian riding breed had outperformed the other groups by the mark for type by 0.3-0.52 points and by the mark for conformation by 0.44-0.69. The indices for massiveness and bone development indicate sufficient development of the key parts of the exterior. The proposed methodological approach for assessing sports abilities using separate scales for show jumping, dressage and eventing allows to accurately characterize the sport abilities of the horses, to rank the stallions by performance of the offspring, to identify the best breeders by the quality of their young horses and to make annual rankings of sport horses. The sports performance of horses that took part in show jumping, dressage and eventing competitions was assessed. It has been determined that the horses of West European Studbook significantly (P˂0,001) dominate (have the highest performance score) in all equestrian sports and namely: in show jumping (10.5±1.03), in dressage (4.3±0.26) and eventing (9.0±0.76). The relative variability of indicators of sports performance of horses among themselves is established. A statistically high correlation was found between the number of competitions and the sum of the earned points (r = 0.88-