As True in 2008
… as it was in 1984, when the Queen toured the Bluegrass looking for suitable studs for her broodmares:
Spendthrift Farms Owner Brownell Combs II explained the attraction of the area. “This is where the stallions are,” he said, “and the semen controls the industry.”
I came across the article linked above while searching for more information on Spendthrift, the subject of a new book by Mary Marshall, “Great Breeders and Their Methods: Leslie Combs II and Spendthrift Farm.” The book suffers from workmanlike prose but is redeemed by accidental timeliness, as Marshall recounts in painstaking detail both the history of the legendary farm and the biographies of its major horses such as Raise a Native and Mr. Prospector — names that have become part of the debate over breeding that’s erupted following Eight Belles’ fatal injury galloping out after the Kentucky Derby.
Incentivizing
To change the breed, change the tracks, writes Jay Hovdey in his latest column (DRF+):
Remodeling the breed will be a slow process, but first it will be necessary to increase the incentive to produce a different product; otherwise, the cruel realities of the unfettered free market will lead to racing’s own version of the subprime mortgage disaster.
The solution is already out there, waiting to be spread. Perfecting and adopting the technology of engineered surfaces — a combination of natural and synthetic material built to drain moisture and cushion impact — is the only way to prompt a change in the breed.
Makes sense. For breeders to produce horses with qualities other than precocious speed, there must be a market …
And Yet They Continue
To take just one example, the racehorses that descend from the popular sire Mr. Prospector make, on average, 30 percent fewer starts in their careers than do horses from other sire lines…. The progeny of that other supersire, Storm Cat, show similar, if not quite so extreme, fragility.
A committee is at work on a durability stats database for breeders, but disagreements hinder its development.
Related: Superfecta asks, “Who would you geld today?”
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Jessica Chapel is a writer, editor, and web producer living in Cambridge, MA. Railbird is a thoroughbred horse racing blog published continuously since June 2004. More ›
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