Mission Statement

The Morgan Sport Resource (MSR) is an online compendium dedicated to the improvement and promotion of the Morgan horse for sport. The MSR is unique within the Morgan community, both in its mission to highlight and improve Morgans as sport horses, as well as its focus on sport performance records. Its databases are a freely available to breeders, competitors and anyone else seeking information about Morgan horses competing in sport disciplines.

A root assumption of the MSR is that effective promotion and overall improvement of the Morgan breed for sport requires, above all else, that sport accomplishments of Morgans become more widely known inside and outside of the breed. Sports performance records identify sources of athletic excellence—essential information to those producing Morgans for sport and valuable to those in the market for a sport performance horse. In addition, reporting performance records rewards those who compete in sport and encourages others to do likewise.

The MSR covers a diverse array of disciplines—a reflection of versatility of the Morgan breed. This selection includes international sports (dressage, eventing, combined driving and working equitation), western dressage, western working sports (reining, cutting, etc.), endurance, and competitive trail. For the purposes of the MSR, sport disciplines are those that meet the following criteria:

• They are capable of providing a meaningful test of a horse’s athletic skills. In other words, they can be used to identify athletic excellence based on the documented performance in open competition.
• This aforementioned performance is rated objectively using criteria such as time minus faults or by scoring of individual elements of a standardized test by discipline-credentialed judges.
• The competition is conducted under rules established by a nationally or internationally recognized organization.

We believe that breeding and promoting Morgans for sport is vital to the long-term health and quality of the breed. These efforts are also necessary for Morgans to have a serious presence in the sport marketplace where the ability of an individual is measure on a more objective basis than is usually seen in traditional show ring venues. Additionally, breeding for sport will temper the loss of genetic diversity associated with the selection for the Morgan show ring. Finally, and most importantly, it is through breeding for the sport disciplines that the versatility of the Morgan horse, one of its defining characteristics, will best be preserved.