From Horses for the Army to Internet...
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The «Society for Encouraging the Breeding of Horses for the Army» started in 1920. It aims to encourage the breeding of horses destined mainly to the mounted Belgian Army.
The breeding of horses for the army had a difficult start as it had to compete with the French saddle horses strongly developed by the National Stud Farms.
Influenced by the trend of the market, the few breeders grouped in the Society continue breeding horses for leisure and army. As of 1930 army and transportation are motorised and this reduces the outlets. At the same time the Association changes name and becomes «the Belgian Half-Blood» which will promote the breeding of lighter saddle horses, more elegant, by using sires closer by blood.
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The second world war slows down and reduces the Societys activities which nevertheless continues to breed new products. Adapting to the new circumstances, the requirements of the invader and the needs of the Belgian customers the breeders move towards breeding team horses. The requisitions of the German army impoverish the number and the quality of half-blood Belgian horses and at the end of the second world war only a few mares and some trotter stallions are left: it is therefore necessary to rebuild the breeding farms and improve the remaining ones while stimulating the breeders to breed half-blood horses.
The craze for equestrian sports, both in Belgium and abroad, pushes the breeders to improve their breeding (or to create new ones) by importing mares and stallions of quality, often of prestigious origin (mainly French but also English, Irish, German ...) who will constitute the kernel of the modern sports horse breeding.
As a reward for the efforts accomplished and the results obtained during half a century of existence, our Association becomes, in 1967, the "Royal Society".
The "Royal Belgian Sports Horse Society", better known since 1991 under the name of «Stud-Book sBs», our Association launches an ambitious program both on the zootechnical and on the communication levels. The notion of performance becomes a priority and the choice of sires is very strict. The Stud-Book sBs puts at the disposal of the breeders a new passport fully agreed by the Ministry of Agriculture, the National and International Federations of Equestrian Sports, the World-Wide Federation of the Stud-Book and all the foreign breeding authorities: the famous Blue Book sBs is born and more than 12,000 copies are circulating today!
At the beginning of this third millennium, the sBs breaks through another daring step and offers to all net surfers all over the world its complete database, free of charge.
This new tool will allow everybody to follow step-by-step the elaboration of a breeding file of the sBs products, to navigate throughout the pedigree of more than 50,000 sports horses, to analyse the performances and to discover programs and results of races and competitions etc... and at the same time to strengthen the communication links.
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