When Horse Magazines Still Smelled Like Ink and Bloodlines Mattered
Before social media decided what mattered, a horse magazine did. And somehow, it managed to teach an entire generation how to think, argue, dream, and obsess, about horses.
When I was around 12-13 years old. My late father bought me a subscription to the biggest horse magazine in the country.
The kind of magazine that had like everything. Ads, articles, news, horse racing, horse breeding, and a page dedicated to letters to the editor. Oh, the joy to read those letters. One worse than the other, one more interesting than the other.
This is how we kept track of what really was happening in the world of horses.
I truly loved that magazine, and all those weekly issues quickly stacked up in my child hood room.
But the grand tamale that was delivered this time of year was the "year book". A yearly summary printed in a glossy A4 full colour magazine styled edition.
A magazine with in depth interviews, articles, ranking lists, in eventing, show jumping, dressage, horses and ponies, and then, the ads.
Those ranking lists and the ads for the breeding stallions and studfarms is what I was looking forward to every year.
Little did I know those yearly editions and the stallion ads would influence me for life. Cause truth of the matter, those ads are they very reason I started to show interest in pedigrees, and even considered to even dare to start breeding myself.
Bloodlines...
I love searching for bloodlines, pedigrees, golden mixes, and what thoroughbred lines really and truly influenced the modern sport horses.
But what hit me the past weekend doing just that, wasn’t nostalgia for paper or print, but for conversation. I miss talking to people about pedigrees. Really talking.
Not in a “this horse jumped clear in Aachen” way, but in the deep, nerdy, slightly unhinged way where you disappear down a bloodline rabbit hole, and resurface three hours later having rediscovered a forgotten Thoroughbred stallion from the 1950s.
I miss comparing notes. I miss disagreeing politely, or not so politely, about what actually made certain horses special. I miss that quiet joy of tracing lines, spotting patterns, and understanding why one cross worked and another didn’t.
There used to be places for that. The restaurant at the riding school. Online forums. Letters to editors. Long-winded debates that never once mentioned engagement metrics or reach.
A time when being interested in breeding didn’t require owning an elite horse, or even competing at all.
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Order NowThe magazine still exists. Technically. But somewhere along the way it stopped talking to people like me.
Now it mostly covers the elite, the finished product, the polished top layer of the sport, while the space in between, the grassroots, the breeders, the thinkers, the curious ones, quietly vanished.
And maybe that’s why I miss it so much. Not the magazine itself, but what it represented.
A world where loving horses didn’t mean chasing visibility.
A world where knowledge mattered.
A world where a printed stallion ad could change your path forever.
A world where it was perfectly acceptable to spend an entire evening digging into, and argue about pedigrees, just for the joy of it.
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Horzing Around
Horzing Around
