- This topic has 7 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 11 months ago by
.
- Posts
The holy grail?
They claim to have the ability to identify which horses have the greatest genetic potential, but this [presumably accurate] knowledge definitely does not have the potential to take ‘the fun’ out of the game… At best, it’d make the divide even wider.
Can you imagine Godolphin or any other megabucks buyer ever turning down an impeccably bred horse on the strength of this? Ot the same connections investing in something with an inferior bloodline or looks to another animal for the same reason? It’ll be interesting to see how this goes…
- Total Posts 17716
Bit of a silly season feature, in my opinion.
Quote from scientist, fresh from a three year research program, Dr Emmeline Hill:
"We can identify the genes contributing to Elite performances amongst thoroughbreds"
.
Which prompts the question of what criteria they were using to identify this "Elite" quality. Well, according to the scientist’s account they worked from samples taken from "almost 400 horses, thoroughbreds" of which they categorised half as "Elite" on the grounds that they’d "won at the top level" (flat or jumps not specified, or definition of "top level"). The other half had never won a race.
They then collated which of the 21,000 possible genes those "Elite" horses had in common…
eh, voila!
A foolproof recipe for the super horse. I don’t know whether they also isolated the "crap" genes which were responsible for the slowboats and donkeys.
Any A-level Maths with Stats student could tell them that this sample could not be statistically significant, given the huge random possibilities of this gene pool, and that the criterion of "Elite" they’d chosen was random. They didn’t examine the physiognomy of the animals, and Mendelian "regression to the norm" doesn’t seem to have entered their calculations either.
This looks on the face of it like bad science, worse stats – and ultimately yet another piece of gravy train genetics done off the back of some skewed research. It is surely completely meaningless for a breeding industry based on years of practical experience of what might work and what probably won’t.
Good luck to these poor scientists in touting round their spin-off commercial venture: I’d guess that Coolmore and Godolphin won’t be signing up soon.
Yes indeed and I believe they work at that bastion of elitism Trinity College Dublin.They surely would recognise elitism.
- Total Posts 17716
They work in UCD, not Trinity. Jim Bolger is one of the directors.
Interesting, David – there was no mention of his commercial involvement with the consultancy venture, but that would make sense. Times are hard for trainers…
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.