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Well, I will argue that inbreeding itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that breeders are inbreed to the wrong horses
Allow me to illustrate this with a related breed, the humble Standardbred of harness racing. To get horses that would preferentially trot or pace faster rather than gallop there was some tight inbreeding early on, with a relatively small number of lines compared to the Thoroughbred. Even when there isn’t inbreeding up close in a modern Standardbred, their pedigrees light up like a Christmas tree further back and there is a high % of ancestor loss. There is a very set type common to the breed: compact body, coarse “jughead” tending towards a convex profile, bay or brown with little to no white markings, and – most critically – good bone in the legs and hard hooves. See any farm’s stallion roster (e.g. https://www.seelsterfarms.com/) for illustrations.
You may be saying that this is apples to oranges because trotting/pacing are less concussive gaits than the gallop, and this is true to an extent, but the main difference to notice is that the Standardbred breed is improving. Each crop is faster than the previous. The average harness racehorse makes 20 to 40 starts a year and even the top stakes horses will routinely race in back-to-back weeks. Horses with 300+ career starts are not uncommon and every year a cohort of 14yos (the last year they are eligible to race) retires with much fanfare. Inbreeding hasn’t hurt the breed’s soundness because the inbreeding was to sound horses.Back to the Thoroughbred. Is there any hope left for finding tough racehorses? I would look to Japan first. Sunday Silence is their Galileo but they have not seen the same weaknesses when inbreeding to him. The Hail to Reason line overall is very sound, whether through Halo or Roberto, and produces horses that go on firm ground and can jump as well. The biggest culprit of unsoundness in the breed is Northern Dancer IMO. ND practically has a monopoly on bloodlines in Europe, with sounder outcrosses like Monsun and Indian Ridge falling to the wayside. One or two doses isn’t bad, but Galileo upon Nureyev upon Danehill upon Storm Cat etc. is a recipe for disaster. There are some American bloodlines that would be welcome in Europe for turf horses that can run on firmer ground – Tiznow, A.P. Indy (himself a fine example of line-breeding), Cozzene, More Than Ready, Dynaformer, all sorely underrepresented abroad. There is still hope for the breed, but it probably won’t come from Coolmore or Godolphin.
Something else which isn’t helpful to the longevity of the breed is mares, who don’t even make the racecourse due to injury / unsoundness, being used for breeding.
Very interesting insight about TB breeding in Germany. For reference, Germany are one of the world leaders in sports horse breeding. So they know what they’re doing.
Interesting views, IMO, Miss Woodford.
Maybe you could “get away with it” more inbreeding using robust Firm ground horses with good bone, but overt inbreeding can’t possibly be healthy IMO and I’d still like to see it limited to the fourth remove and a cap put on number of mares that can be covered in a season to ease the difficulties commercially of implementing such a policy in future years.
Maybe what Britain needs is an influx of robust Japanese and USA proper turf Firm ground bloodline influences.
There’s precious few such horses around in this country any more.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Thanks for that interesting post, Miss Woodford. I also follow French Trotting and a bit of Harness Racing from the US as well. The quality of the trotters (and pacers as well) as you’ve pointed out is becoming better and better every year. Can’t recall the last (fatal) breakdown during a race and I’m quite sure I watch hundreds of the every year.
You might argue that trotters aren’t ridden, but this isn’t true. In Europe, especially in France, there are so called Monté races where the driver becomes a jockey and sits on the horse. Once again no fatal injuries or falls I can recall in recent years.
Study confirms association between training on hard footing and musculoskeletal injuries.
For those who are interested in the German system, this article (quite old now), retrieved from Victor Sheahan’s excellent blog (Montjeu.com), makes clear just how stringent the requirements are for TB stallions in Germany. Breeding stock have to pass on performance and conformation but also must have a racing history free of artificial medication and also be free of inheritable disease:
https://www.thoroughbredracing.com/articles/2147/country-where-stallions-who-have-ever-had-lasix-are-disqualified-breeding/Try applying that to many of the stallions that command large books in GB and Ireland! How many of them would get to the minimum standard?! Why are they doing this? Because they are trying to breed racehorses which stay the classic distance of 1.5 miles, not hot-housed yearlings for the sales ring, or ‘fragile speed’, and they reward breeders for that through the prize money system. It’s the same approach as underpins continental European sports horse breeding programmes. By the by, there are some interesting lines in there about Northern Dancer line stallions …
On ‘fragility’: a memory from way back. This was one Henry Cecil being asked on I think C4 racing about how the TB had changed since the days when he started training – I think it was around the time when he had horses like Bosra Sham, so 1990s. ‘They’ve become more fragile; harder to train’. That was the first version of mixing Raise a Native lines with Northern Dancer (and Nasrullah). King’s Best (remember him breaking down in the Irish Derby … ) was around the same time. His dam was Allegretta (German bred – in turn the dam of Urban Sea).But the top line has Raise a Native with Nureyev. Now we’re in the disastrous situation outlined by Miss Woodford, where multiple lines of this kind of thing are repeated on both sides of the pedigree.
Personally I can’t see a way out of this without importing sounder stock (Japan is the obvious source), and then 1) an inbreeding policy which refuses to register stock that have pedigrees showing inbreeding to an individual closer than 4 generations. This would bring TBs into alignment with other breeds where there are similar concerns (dogs, cats, rare breed ponies etc); 2) the requirement for all breeding stock (mares as well as stallions) to pass criteria akin to the German level of testing (so no unraced fillies would qualify); and 3) a wholesale reduction in stallion book size. When I first got interested in horse racing/breeding, the book size was limited to 45pa. Now look at certain farms – 125 is low; 150-175 normal; then there are the farms where 200+ is normal. When one factors in the pedigrees of these stallions, the effects of that on the genetic diversity of the ‘herd’ (i.e. the TB population) are immense. Since offspring are 50:50 male/female, it results in large numbers of same way bred mares, who in turn are the future breeding stock. Is it any wonder we are where we are?
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