About Us

A New Era begins right here…

Over the past 10 years, members of the New Zealand Warmblood Association noticed a large gap in the Industry for horses and ponies who did not qualify for NZ Warmblood registration and could not be placed in any other breed register or stud book.

These horses and ponies make up a significant section of our equine community here in New Zealand. With no way to register them or apply for a breed passport or papers, there is often no written record of these horses in the country. Sometimes they are sold with no record of birth, age or where they were bred. The NZWA wanted to help record and regulate the breeding of these sport horses and therefore decided to create a sister organisation to the NZWA - and thus SPHANZ was born…

With years of experience, knowledge and technical know how, along with many great contacts in the equine industry in both NZ and overseas, the NZWA was the ideal body to start off SPHANZ and get it on its feet. This will provide a much needed service to the NZ Sport Horse Industry, giving those horses who didn’t qualify as Warmbloods eligibility to be recognised and have a passport. With the ability to register these horses there is hope there will be more traceability and accountability of performance and sport horses within New Zealand. This in turn will improve the trust within the production, competing and sales of these horses.

Goals

SPHANZ has been created to enable owners and breeders of New Zealand Sport horses (which cannot be registered as Warmbloods) to access International passports that are approved by the FEI and recognised by the ESNZ.

In the future, SPHANZ aims to create a New Zealand based Studbook to help track and control the breeding of NZ Sporthorses. It is envisaged that this studbook system will eventually meet the criteria to become members of the World Breeders Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH).

The Purpose of SPHANZ is to:

(a) To encourage and improve the breeding, conformation, soundness, and quality of New Zealand bred sport horses whose bloodlines contain less than 25% warmblood breeding.

(b) To register eligible horses (in accordance with the rules of the Society).

(c) To assist its members in the development of their breeding programs

(d) To align with international standards and aim for eventual inclusion as members of the World Breeders Federation for Sport Horses.

(e) To promote the NZ Sport and Performance Horse across all equestrian disciplines.

(f) Do anything necessary or helpful to the above purpose.