Why national hunt horses have got such funny names?

[Austin]

Maybe its a silly thread but its something that always makes me wonder why most jump horses have got some strange names?

Below are the few I can think of but surely list will be more:

Chacun Pour Soi
Defi Du Seuil
Un De Sceaux
Benie Des Dieux
Clan De Obeaux
Duc Des Genievrfes
Voix Du Reve
Duca De Thaix

[KevMc]

Because they’re French.

[apracing]

And those named above are almost all non thorougbred horses, what the French call AQPS – and those horses have a specific naming rule that all of them born in the same year, must use the same first letter for their name. Other parts of the name can relate to the breeder or his stud – see this for an example:

Why are Horses called De Sivola?

And look at this result of an AQPS restricted race run today in France, where you’ll see all the runners, because they are all current 4-y-olds, have names beginning with ‘G’.

http://www.france-galop.com/en/course/detail/2020/O/N1phbFZ3TmN1SlRlZ3hQaFR0MGR4Zz09

[moehat]

I didn’t know that [about the naming rules, I mean]. The first horse I can remember being AQPS was The Fellow. I also read an article many years ago that said French breeders were very strict about the soundness of the mares they used whereas over here if a mare wasn’t sound enough to race but was well bred she’d go to the paddocks. Of course, I don’t know how true that is.

[apracing]

Moe,

Back when The Fellow was racing, the breed was called Selle Francais – Selle as in Saddle. Mainly they were trotters, show jumpers, three day eventers, etc. But The Fellow was out of a thoroughbred mare, sent to an SF stallion.

Sometime around the middle of the last decade, the French authorities opted to come up with a designation that would distinguish those bred for racing, which led to the use of AQPS, which translates as ‘Other than thorougbred’. If you want to go into detail, they now define the % of non thorougbred blood in each AQPS horse when it’s foaled and that tells you that most of them are over 90% thoroughbred nowadays.

The classification was also expanded at the same time to cover all varieties of non thoroughbred. As an example, there’s a horse running here now called ‘Sully Doc AA’ – the ‘AA’ indicates Anglo Arabian blood.

The AQPS horses in France don’t just run over jumps, there’s a whole program of flat races restricted to that breed, which are misnamed French bumpers over here. In fact they are nothing like our NH flat races, as a horse can make an entire career over several years running only in such races, they are started from stalls at tracks that have that facility, the races can be run at flat meetings as well as jump meetings, and the horses can be ridden by professional flat jockeys and the distance is invariably less than two miles. An AQPS horse can also revert to flat races after running over hurdles or fences.

[moehat]

Thanks ap; very interesting.

[Cav]

There is already a recent thread on this interesting topic…

UK/IRE Horses with French names

In the interest of continuity, any possibility that they could be merged?

[Richard88]

And those named above are almost all non thorougbred horses, what the French call AQPS – and those horses have a specific naming rule that all of them born in the same year, must use the same first letter for their name.

That explains it! I had noticed this occasionally when I used to work in a shop. It was obviously not coincidence and the idea that a condition of the race would be restricting it to horses beginning with a certain letter is clearly absurd. Never actually thought to look it up, thanks.

[Venture to Cognac]

Cav, the merge function isn’t working just now or I would already have dealt with it.

Once it’s up and running I’ll pull them together.

[Cav]

Thanks Bobby.

[Kifill]

What was the explanation for the Roman numerals that used to be appended to the names of French non-thoroughbred racehorses? (Al Capone II, etc) Their use seems to have been discontinued at some point after the turn of the century – again, why?

[Author]

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