Can you imagine paying out over £6,000,000 for a yearling
sired by an in fashion stallion, putting it into training, and then find out it
is so slow it can’t be put on a race course and to add insult to injury find
out it is also a dud when it comes to stud duties being sterile! His sire was
Northern Dancer.
No I can’t imagine either but it happened to the owner of
Snaafi Dancer. You just cannot tell what nature will do despite human
intervention to improve stock through breeding.
I decided to take an excursion into the subject of
breeding. Lots of good things to read about, nice winners from different
stallions and dams but I also came across the not so good as regards inbreeding.
Some of what I read does make one wonder.
I went over lists of stallions at various studs and chose
6 I remember from their racing days in the UK. I was somewhat taken aback at
the sirings? (Is that a permitted word?). All had either one or more lines that
went back Galileo, Sadlers Wells, and Northern Dancer. Northern Dancer
appearing more than once. I realised blood stock lines would need a lot of time
and research to figure it all out. A life time might not be enough!
 |
| Eclipse - one of the UK’s earliest sires |
I then meandered over to the USA. 400,000 race horses end
their careers every year. So where do they end up? Only a fraction got
re-trained; eventing, dressage, hunting.
I am going to take a look at both these factors another
time. Watch this space for what I find.
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