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This is really in response to the latest posts on the Frankel thread, but didn’t want to hijack it with NH detail. Regarding the ruination of young horses, there was a very good interview with John Bowe recently (Limestone Lad/Solerina etc.) He said that he feels he ruined a good few of the ones he bred, by trying to match current commercial trends and make them into four year olds. They either got injured or showed nothing, and he ended up selling out of the Fair Ina line, which then produced Fayonagh (who he had bred). It’s a very honest interview, and he admits that he should have known better, since Solerina herself didn’t show much until she was 6. It’s great to hear respected and successful figures pointing out that it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation with horses. Imagine how many Solerinas and Montjeus could be lost.
Thinking about Annie’s retirement, I’m minded that Voleur asked a question about Camelot X Annie. A while back I did a fair bit of wading in the NH sales catalogues and 2×3 to Sadler’s Wells is actually quite common, especially in Irish NH breeding. 2×3 in-breeding is fairly common in many species. Although it’s ‘close’ it can be counter-balanced by what else is in the pedigree. In this instance though there is a large amount of ND in there. Camelot himself is bred on the SW-Mr P-Danehill combination that is very, very common in flat breeding, so he has 3 lines of ND (SW, Nureyev and Danzig). Annie has a further 2 ND lines (SW & The Minstrel). So that’s 5 lines of ND in the resultant foal, with the only parts of the pedigree free of ND being the bottom line on both sides.
Whilst 5 lines of ND is pretty common in flat race pedigrees, it’s less so in NH pedigrees. Interestingly though, a lot of the ‘flat-bred’ WPM horses do have this amount of ND duplication. In contrast, French-bred jumping stock has very little of it – food for thought I’d have thought, not just in relation to soundness/durability issues but in terms of future breeding, where the question of ‘where to go?’ with the next generation is a big one. I find myself wondering where the necessary outcrosses for future jumpers is going to come from.
A weird choice of stallion for Annie Power, I really can’t see what they’re trying to achieve.
The outcrosses will most likely come from French or German stallions, ones whose pedigrees aren’t saturated with SW, ND and Mr P. As you imply, close inbreeding isn’t a great strategy when you’re looking to produce big, strong athletic types, although of course there are always going to be exceptions.
When I first started following the sport, the big national hunt stallions were Vulgan and Fortina, both French-bred.
Yes, I think a huge problem is emerging. Breeders in some cases are just throwing the best with the best and not looking at potential difficulties that might arise from the duplications.
Line breeding carefully used has produced good traits, but the size, strength, soundness and stamina required for a jumper is less likely to be found this way. A good sound horse with some staying blood as sire I would consider very important (not that Camelot is not good looking, he’s a fine specimen), but there are too many ND crosses in most horses racing, five almost a norm. I did notice in a stud’s catalogue of potential jumping stallions, one with rather bad sickle hocks……Thanks for those responses Venusian & Crepello – I’m of exactly the same view that line breeding is not the way to produce the traits that are needed for a NH horse, and especially a steeplechaser. Too much of it in any species produces smaller and smaller animals, with less bone. It also depresses fertility. I’m with Crepello – there’s a very big problem emerging for NH racing if NH breeding goes the same way as the flat.
On the choice of Camelot. I too have puzzled over this and wondered about what they’re trying to achieve. His advertised fee is currently 7x the norm on the Coolmore NH roster, and he’s not on the NH roster (yet). Assuming they are looking to produce a NH horse from Annie, there is a much more obvious Montjeu son on the Coolmore NH roster, with a proven NH track record, a lot of it for the same owners (Walk in the Park). Why not use him? As a flat horse, Camelot x Annie would surely be a Cup horse – which is not what Camelot needs at this stage of his career. The only way in which I’ve been able to make any sense of it (other than ‘best to the best’) is to think breeding/sales not racing. A colt with Annie as his mum and Camelot as his dad is a pretty obvious NH stallion prospect (even unraced); a filly would probably head to the sales and realise a mint.
More broadly, the rise of high profile ‘super mares’ in NH racing seems to open up a rather different angle in NH breeding. As well as Quevega & Annie, a few years down the line will probably see Vroum Vroum, Limini, Let’s Dance & Apple’s Jade heading to the paddocks. They are the equivalents to Classic/G1 fillies/mares on the flat, and my guess is that, as with their flat counterparts, any of their progeny heading to the sales will be fiercely fought over.
VVM is the only one of those who has ever jumped a fence in public. Do you think the schedule of mares’ chases (and mares chasing in open company) will ever reach the profile of the mares’ hurdles? And if not, is it because the extra time it takes to produce a chaser is more profitably spent retiring to be put in foal; because the owners don’t want the extra risk to the necks of their future foal-producers; because the smaller frame of a mare goes against her more over fences and the 7lb is less able to compensate if she races against the boys; or some other reason? Will we ever see another Dawn Run?
Completely agree with all the above. The worrying thing is how quickly all the different lines have vanished in Ireland. Our mare has zero ND blood, yet at just 13 years old she must be amongst the last generation where nearly all mares were of that ilk. In an extremely short space of time we have lost the likes of [enter any names you wish here]. It simply doesn’t make sense what people are doing. Ted Walsh said once that nobody sets out to breed a staying hurdler. OK, he was putting down Big Buck’s, but he is correct. You could go further and say nobody sets out to breed a champion hurdler either, or at least they didn’t used to. As Titus says, Ricci appears to be have set out to breed one, which is setting the bar low – not really a potential chaser, not really a Flat horse, and I think the same is true of many NH horses being bred now in Ireland. One extremely good point raised also by Titus and Greenasgrass, is the preponderance of hurdlers as ‘supermares’. I am totally opposed to Grade 1 bumpers because you can have a situation where a NH black type mare has never (and perhaps could not) jump a fence, and the mares’ series could actually compound this, particularly with an owner/trainer combination such as Ricci and Mullins. If you aim to breed a chaser, you sometimes get a hurdler, but if you aim to breed hurdlers, what will we end up with in another 20 years? As a general point, I’m not sure how long this bubble in Ireland will last. Yes, there are horses making big money after winning a 4yo point, and the small clique who work in media and sales companies are doing all they can to promote it, but you hear snippets from people in the know that there is a lot of ‘trading’ going on (this horse not paid for until that one is sold sort of stuff). Scale that up and it’s a risky business. GB and France seem to be on a much more stable footing, where they concentrate on breeding racehorses, not sale horses.
Such an interesting thread this.
Greenasgrass – I’m pretty sure that the preponderance of hurdlers in the ‘super mare’ category is an unintended consequence of the mares’ programme and how that interfaces with risk. The addition of the G2 Mares’ Novice at Cheltenham means that (assuming she stays sound) a mare can progress from there to the G1 Mares’ race the next year – by which time she’d probably be 6/7. To switch to fences then would be to switch relatively late, as most novice chasers are 5/6, or 6/7 at the outside. Plus, there is no graded mares (novice) chase at The Festival – so, the financial (and black type) incentive isn’t there to make the switch, even if you were willing to take the risk on the future foal-producer jumping fences. Instead, it would be straight in at the deep end in the Arkle, JLT etc. When you think about the recent winners of the Arkle and JLT (Sprinter, Douvan, Altior, Vautour, Yorkhill … ) it’s hard to see even a strapping super mare being competitive against those ‘big boys’, even with the allowance. Far easier to keep her to jumping hurdles for one more year and then send her to the paddocks, reputation intact as a super mare. So, yes – much though I would love to see it, I doubt that we will ever see another Dawn Run.
As Louise says, all of this starts to matter an awful lot when it comes to NH breeding, where mostly the intent is, or at least has been, to breed chasers. I know that some folk on here are very anti the mares’ programme, but – to state the obvious – NH racing relies on the continued production of horses that can jump, and that can jump fences in particular. Since the racecourse continues to be the judge of that rather than, say, the kind of rigorous performance testing that is the norm for admission to sports horse breeding programmes (KWPN etc), is there a case to be made for a couple of championship races over fences that are restricted to mares, to parallel the two hurdle races at Cheltenham? This at least would allow for the ‘super mare’ category to be populated potentially by chasers as well as by hurdlers, and head off what I see as an all too possible future, in which sons of the current super mares (bred to ND-heavy flat sires) become the next generation of NH sires, even though their mums might not have been able to jump very well at all.
PS – Louise, she is worth her weight in gold!
PS – Louise, she is worth her weight in gold!
Shall we have a whip round and send her to Frankel?
There is a piece in the Irish Field saying that they ‘understand’ that Annie Power will be offered at the November NH Sales. Ricci was ‘uncontactable’, so they spoke to her breeder instead. He (naturally) said a lot of nice things about her, but that he would have used a proven sire, and not Camelot. He thinks she will make a million. One should probably not expect any daring campaigning of these mares, if the eventual aim is to cash them in.
Seems to me that breeders over there might want to look at American bloodlines for offering outcrosses to ND blood. In particular sons and daughters of the late stallion Dynaformer, who was known as a tremendous sire of jumps horses. The A. P. Indy bloodline is also underrepresented in Europe even though it is known as a source of stamina.
Real shame to lose Presenting this week, and Kayf Tara now 23, could Authorized be the next star, what are you thoughts?
Not strictly (or not purely) NH breeding related, but since nobody has started a thread, I thought I’d put it here – great news that wind ops will be declared. Think it will be hard to police, and the big Flat boys will surely be less than forthcoming, but over time, in NH racing particularly, it will be easier to build a picture of what we already believe to be true about certain lines. Hopefully stallion owners will start to think it’s not worth their while investing in unsound horses (though obviously you can be unlucky and have a sound one throwing unsound stock). It’s a long term process, but I’m told that the Germans eliminated bleeding by adopting a similar approach to soundness. A pity it was forced on us to protect punters, rather than being the preferred option of responsible breeders, but we’ll take it any way it comes.
Couldn’t agree more Louise. Some trainer was whinging about the owners of mares not wanting the world to know they’d had wind ops. Tough. That is half the point of the thing (the main point as far as I’m concerned but yes- handy that punters’ views align).
He mentioned confidentiality but there is precedent here with dogs- a dog which is to be shown under Kennel Club rules must have any conformation-altering surgery declared and when you register a dog with the KC you sign to this effect I think. Not sure of the wording but I’m pretty sure it is some sort of confidentiality waiver. I don’t know if it has ever been tested in court.Well quite, Greenasgrass, and why don’t they want everyone to know? So they can make money from their unsound stock of course! It’s not that long ago that the ITBA stopped publishing their list of stallions holding wind soundness certificates, presumably because of pressure from those who stood unsound animals (and the fact that they could influence the ITBA gives an indication of who they might be).
One of the best things to happen via the BHA – and how good it is to see that transparency for punters can be a means to pushing towards responsible breeding practices.
The noises from some today (the RP names some of these trainers, which include NH and flat), show the degree to which the bloodstock industry still wants to brush this under the carpet (for obvious reasons). But, as greenasgrass says – ‘tough’. Whether it works (or not), and regardless of the procedure, this is performance-related surgery. I certainly wouldn’t be breeding from/to any individual that had had such intervention. An unintended consequence of the new policy may also address the wider welfare concerns around some of these forms of surgery, which are considerable, especially in relation to long term feeding. Having to declare these procedures may make some more cautious of what has become a routine practice of tinkering around in the (60:40 zone of) hopes that ‘getting their wind sorted’ will result in improved performance. Of course, there is the issue of how to ensure compliance. The most obvious one of which is that the policy only currently applies to Britain, and to horses racing in Britain. It would be good to see a parallel move in Ireland (and France).
I will be interested to see the long term picture that results. And Louise – whilst I think NH racing might have less to lose from these declarations than the flat, it may yet be – given the pedigrees that are becoming increasingly prevalent in NH – that NH tells the story that the flat has clearly wanted brushed under the carpet.
Looking at it from a National Hunt point of view,
This is were the whole thing could give the wrong information in my eyes, there is a hell of a difference in a horse having cauterisation of the soft palate via Lazer, and a horse having been Hobdayed but yet they come under the global banner of a horse having had a wind op, and I think this could lead to people coming to the wrong conclusion, it should be listed what surgery the horse has actually had ie:
Tie back (prosthetic laryngoplasty)
Hobday (ventriculectomy/cordectomy)
Epiglottic surgery
Tie forward (dorsal displacement soft palate surgery)
Soft palate cautery
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