Calculating the value of a stallion was once a simple exercise. Multiply the equation “X” x 40×5, the “X” factor the service fee, 40 the number of mares for the breeding year (this being the considered number of mares appropriate to keeping the stallion at his peak), and finally the years 5 giving three crops of racing age on the ground. Thus, Star Kingdom, at, say a service fee of $1000, would have been valued at $200,000.
Sadly, technology has dispelled past notions and unwritten rules, and has changed this equation which has served the racing and breeding industry so well over the 300 years of its development. Now, the successful and popular handful of fashionable stallions can, and do, serve mares numbering in the hundreds, and for each service over the optimum 40, is dissolved opportunity for the vast well of the stallions less prominent.
Personally, I deplore the “advance”, although I am not sure that in the position of an owner standing a desired stallion, that I would be able to resist the temptation to use, and use again, an animal in demand. But from the sidelines, when not deploring what is now a matter of fact, concerns dog me. The already narrow genetic pool is being tapered, becoming more concentrated. With a select few stallions covering a large proportion of the mare population, just what are we in danger of losing… Well… another Nearco. Nearco (by Pharos), whose name is resplendent in both the racing and breeding spheres of racing, would, had his breeder Federico Tesio achieved his objective, have been a son of Nogara, but by Fairway, the full brother of his actual sire, Pharos.
But in 1935, Fairway had his full book of 40 mares, and an exception, even for one of Tesio’s reputation was not countenanced; whilst Tesio, no doubt, would have had second thoughts if Nogara was to be Fairway’s 41st consort. Rather, in short, his thoughts turned him to Pharos.
Of course, it is arguable that Nearco or his like would still have walked the stage… except that Fairway and Pharos were unlike as chalk and cheese. Fairway was a horse of the highest class, in appearance, elongated and slightly hollow-backed, and temperamentally, an excitable individual; Pharos, on the other hand, hadn’t Fairway’s class (Sir Charles Leicester in “Bloodstock Breeding” noted: “I remember him as a high- class handicapper rather than a Classic horse”), was in appearance a more compact type, and whose nature was the antithesis of that of Fairway, being a gentle and amenable sort.
It is an interesting exercise speculating on Nearco, had he, in fact, been a son of Fairway. Certainly, he more resembled his “uncle” than his sire; certainly, he was more the “Classic” type of horse of his “uncle” than his sire; and certainly, he had more the excitable and nervy temperament of his “uncle” than the placid nature of his sire. And this last element in his make-up might just have been his undoing as a racehorse had he inherited a full dose of this nervous intolerance and irascibility absent in the make- up of Pharos. There are many instances in the history of the racehorse when ability has been negated… nay desolated, by temperament.
But, I digress. The point made is that, with today’s technology, Fairway would have covered Nogara. There would not have been Nearco… or certainly not the Nearco we know.
Technology… and transport, for not only are stallions covering the hundred mares in one hemisphere, but modern transport allows for there rapid movement to other parts of the world, thus doubling the output of the high profile and fashionable to the detriment of the genetic pool… and who can conceive the loss. These twin prongs have changed forever the direction of the thoroughbred, which, in the future, will stem from a smaller, more attenuated genetic pool.
Concerns have to be that sire line branches will be lost forever; and more, can horses cover the thousands of mares that will be offered those few without losing genetic potency?. It will be interesting if figures are ever produced which reports performance of produce of these chosen few stallions in relation to their date of birth, that is, the foals from cover of those first into the breeding shed as opposed to those mares that are the interim and later visitors.
Indisputably, fashion, and winning performance, especially of those races deemed benchmark, are the arbiters in mating plans, becoming deciding factors when abetted by technology and transport in this shuttle transfer age. But… a moment. Consider, one second… just one second… a moment in time not measurable in day-to-day living, a stammer gone in the time in which it can be said… but which, in a race, will put 15 lengths between horses. Then, a timeless one-tenth of a second (one-and-a half lengths) will separate the great from the unremembered. Yet stories of stallions who have entered the breeding shed without hope, and which have forced recognition by the exploits of their offspring, are legion. Is the gamble taken worth the risk. Really, breeding is in danger of putting too much importance on performance and fashion, and its twin evils, technology and transport.
Of certainty, the future will never repeat the fairy-tale story of Gallinule. An inconsequential racer, not in demand as a breeding prospect, and a bleeder to boot, he was sold to Ireland, where from humble beginnings, he rose to lead the list of Leading Sires in England in 1902 and 1904, and was the Leading Sire of Broodmares no less than five times, stamping his name more deeply on the turf than will the ilk that are the darlings of the media in what has become a fashion driven industry – and both racing and racing’s story is the loser.
Of course, this is written with many imponderables. We do not, for instance, know the depth of the genetic pool… ... and sadly, is not performance/technology/transport already a runaway train?
Footnote: It is interesting to conjure whether Northern Dancer (635), Sir Tristram (661+), Nijinsky (850) and Mr Prospector (952), four stallions and their collective 3098 plus foals will leave as lasting an impression on the Turf as the collective 2765 foals of The Tetrarch (130), Blandford (165), Alycidon (235), Nasrullah (425), Princequillo (481), Tom Fool (276), Native Dancer (304), Sea Bird (172) and Mill Reef (379)!
Copyright © 2002 Richard Ulbrich
