Ask Princess

A quick look at the Juddmonte website shows they own Frankel fillies out of the following mares:

African Rose
Arrive
Aspiring Diva
Clepsydra
Jibboom
Kalima
Kid Gloves
Midday
Midsummer
Nebraska Tornado
Quest to Peak
Revered
Take the Hint

Take your pick as to which ones you'd like!

 

Dubawi's purple patch continues with ARABIAN QUEEN becoming his 10th individual G1 winner this year. He now has 22 individual G1 winners to his name.

It also means that he pulls even further clear of Galileo at the top of the 2015 GB/IRE sires list. Before today's race there was just over £84,000 separating the two leviathans in the Win Prize Money catagory, but that now extends to just over £600,000 thanks to the Juddmonte International prize pot. The margin is slightly less when place prize money is also taken into account, with Dubawi now leading by just under £180,000.

On number of individual winners Galileo leads Dubawi by 83 to 76.

(The figures take into account RECORDER's win in the Acomb for Galileo too)

 

please log in to view this image

A rare black and white photograph of the great stallion Nearco being led out of his specially built underground bomb shelter at the Beech House Stud during the Second World War. Photo was taken by the famous equestrian photographer Anscomb. The image is known as THE ALL CLEAR, 1941.

 

It's a great photo! Sadly Beech House Stud is now no more than a satellite yard for Shadwell in Newmarket with no resident stallions.

 

PNkt, do you ever hear from anyone connected with my old pal Haafhd? I understand he is now standing at the Beechwood Grange Stud in North Yorkshire? Hope the old boy is doing well and enjoying life up there!

 

SwanHills, he's doing pretty well from what I hear. Since they sent him up to Beechwood Grange his books have increased from a low of 6 to high-20s/low 30s. Not massive I know, but he still keeps ticking away with the winners.

 

Thank you, PNkt, that is good news. Happy to hear one of my all-time favourite racehorses is doing well. Had they not run him on motorway ground in that last Summer of his career, his record would have looked even more impressive. What a good job Barry Hills scratched him from that last Ascot race in September, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes was it? Conditions at the Champion Stakes at Newmarket later that year were ideal for Haafhd. He was some miler, who stayed the extra quarter too.

 

Hi Princess,
as in any sport it keeps moving forwards in terms of performance be it due to the equipment, medicine and a few other things.
What I want to ask is if there is any noticeable difference in horses from say the 1970s to the 2010s in terms of average size, weight, physique etc?

 

Princess, can you tell me all you can about a mare called Lady Gloria. I am looking at getting involved in a two year old out of her by Royal Applause. Many thanks.

 

Mallafets I'm not aware of any studies that have been done into that particular area. I can say from experience that I doubt there have been changes in average size as there is still such a wide range of heights out there. Weight would be an interesting one, but I think it's a relatively modern phenomena to weigh horses as much as they do now.

Stick, this is what I've found for you, it's not much I'm afraid:

Lady Gloria (2004 Diktat/Tara Moon) Raced 20 times, won 6, including a brace of G3s, on ground ranging from good to very soft. Finished a creditable 5th in the Prix de l'Opera on her final start. She's by far the best progeny of her dam to date (dam unraced, produced 4 winners from 5 runners) and the further family includes Queen Mary winner NADWAH.

Progeny:
2011 - slipped foal by Dalakhani
2012 - slipped foal by Dalakhani
2013 - colt by Royal Applause (vendor buyback at 45,000gns as a foal & vendor buyback at 38,000gns as a yearling)
2014 - filly by Royal Applause
2015 - no recorded covering in 2014

 

In case it's of interest, this is the catalogue page for the two year old from his sale offering last year. It'll give you more pedigree information.

 

Thank you so much PN. You had a look at him, what do you think?

 

Sorry Stick, I haven't been on the site for a few days.

He looks a nice type. Has he just not been ready to run yet this year or has he had a setback?

 

Hi PN, he has been stuck at a pre-training yard as the owners had a fairly serious cash flow problem. As you can see he is not entirely unworked but neither is he ready to run. We think he will be ready to go in mid October. It's probably not the worst thing that could have happened to him as he wouldn't have been a 5/6f type.
Due to the owners issues we have got him on a free lease until the end of 2016 with the usual benefits and restrictions and are putting together a ten strong syndicate to race him for that period.
As we have not paid a purchase price, he was a vendor buyback at £46k, he is a very cheap horse to have some fun with. Not for the first time it feels we are getting a nice horse on the cheap although this time we won't actually own him.

Are you likely to be in attendance at the Cambridgeshire meeting?

 

Normally I would be but we're travelling back from our holiday that weekend unfortunately.

 

Great piece by Tony Morris on the Juddmonte website today:

HOW MUCH CREDIT TO THE DAM?
Article by Tony MorrisTony Morris will contribute quarterly features to www.juddmonte.com. If you have a query relating to historic events, horses or racing personalities, or want his view on any aspect of Flat racing and breeding, past or present (with the exception of advice on matings), write to [email protected] with your request.

I have received messages from three correspondents who all want to know where I stand on the issue of the relative influence of sire and dam in any given mating. One in particular, Tom Walton from Cheshire, wonders whether we are inclined to over-emphasise the part played by the sire, while failing to credit the dam for a contribution that may appear to be equally important, or even more significant.

My other correspondents make essentially the same point, suggesting that no stallion succeeds without the support of quality mares, the inference being that it’s the contribution from the female of the species that enables the male to become successful.

It would not be difficult to cite examples that appear to back up such claims, but there are also plenty that appear to refute them. There is no applicable general principle, and it would be folly to ignore the fundamental fact that at every mating male and female have equal potential to influence their offspring. In the case of multiple Group 1-winning champion Australia, are we to give the major share of credit to his multiple Group 1-winning champion sire Galileo or to his multiple Group 1-winning champion dam Ouija Board? I would be reluctant to credit one parent above the other, and merely note the coincidence that the pair, both bays, each transmitted a chesnut gene to their son.

Of course, Australia is rather more than a rarity, enjoying unique status as product of a dual Derby winner and a dual Oaks winner, a wholly remarkable one-off who may illustrate a point, but rates as a notable exception in having established racing merit (Timeform 132) so close to that of both his sire (Timeform 134) and dam (Timeform 125). Galileo is used to covering high-quality mares, but has had few with such outstanding racecourse form, able also to prove equally distinguished as a broodmare.

I would find it hard to argue the idea that it is the mares who generally make stallions successful, but I would feel comfortable with the thought that better mares tend to make most stallions more successful. Since the early days of the Thoroughbred we have known that the male athlete is usually superior to the female athlete, and once we had adopted the notion that like tended to beget like, it was natural to hold the stallion in higher regard and for mare owners to accept that they should pay to use the services of a horse who might improve their stock. That has always been the basis of the business, and it is right that it should be so.

It is no doubt true that we quickly developed an obsession with male lines, very much on the Old Testament lines of A begetting B, B begetting C, etc, with no reference to the female contribution, but for two centuries there was no science of genetics to provide real knowledge about how heredity worked. Once Mendelism became understood, we have had less excuse to maintain our blind faith in male lines, but it has become accentuated again, almost inevitably, in an era dominated by commercial activity.

Generally speaking, mares do not make stallions successful. Most newcomers to the stallion ranks have to make the best of less than first-class opportunities to earn better chances. Think High Line, Sharpen Up, Night Shift, Ahonoora, Efisio, Alzao, Fairy King, Indian Ridge, Pivotal and a dozen others in recent times, who made good from humble beginnings, earning the trust of breeders who could, and did, provide them with higher-quality mares, in some cases helping them to become staple ingredients of the breed. It would be easy to name a few who are currently in the throes of making the transition from obscure to obvious.

Success breeds success, and in this ever-more commercial world stallion promotion plays a huge part. While we inevitably choose to trace the development of the breed through pedigrees, its progress is more realistically all about the behaviour of breeders. What they do, what they are persuaded to do, determines the direction of the breed; in my time we have lost numerous lines that flourished famously for generations, while focusing so overwhelmingly on Northern Dancer and Mr Prospector.

If I ever did anything worthwhile in half a century of scribbling about the Thoroughbred, it was to draw attention to the potential of Monsun when his first three-year-olds appeared, and to risk driving my readers to distraction by continually promoting him over a long period in my columns. Fifteen years ago it was unthinkable that a son of Königsstuhl might achieve a reputation outside his native Germany; now the tally of his progeny’s European Pattern wins is exceeded only by Sadler’s Wells, Danehill and Galileo. There have been successes at the Breeders’ Cup and in the Melbourne Cup as well.

That was my effort to address the narrowing of the gene pool in Europe, but I’m inclined to feel that breeders did not cotton on to the possibilities early enough for it to have a really enduring impact. Monsun never had huge crops and deserved better support from international breeders.

Tony Morris has been writing about racing and breeding for over 50 years, contributing to numerous publications at home and abroad. He is the author or co-author of several books, was named Racing Journalist of the Year in 1990, and in 2010 received the TBA's highest award, the Devonshire Bronze, for his 'outstanding contribution to the British breeding industry. He has travelled widely, attending race meetings and bloodstock sales in various countries, and has been privileged to see many of the best horses and meet many of the most prominent personalities in the industry over the last half-century.

Date: 8 September 2015

 

Doesn't really say much though does it Princess?

 

I suppose if you really want to look into breeding, you might like to have a little wrestle with a bit of science.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/90782?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

That's more like it Cyc

 

I guess the problem is it's all a bit subjective! Some people will tell you that it's all about the sire, others that the dam is more important. The science is massively complex, I've got this book on Thoroughbred genetics at home which states that even full-siblings only have something like a 1 in 14,000 chance of being 100% genetically identical. The odds may be even larger, I'm quoting from memory!