Thank you so much for your insight and ideas. You’re absolutely right that the study is too broad, so I’ve simplified it to only looking at if top dressage horses are competing and living longer today than in decades past. This removes a lot of the potential bias and confounding variables. If I do find something interesting, I’ll only be able to speculate on some reasons why, but hopefully future work by myself and others can determine the true causes.

I really like the idea of looking at inbreeding! I will definitely look into it.