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Anyone intersted in a thoroughbred stallion prospect?

I don’t need to go to FB to look up pedigrees. I look them up every day. Now it seems you’re saying that mulitple stallions will show up multiple times in a pedigree? Sure, but that’s quite a bit different than 1 stallion 6 times in 5 generations which is what I previously understood you to say.

Again, how would track connections disclose something they don’t know? You’re complaining about something that simply isn’t possible. The fact that your friend was able to spend two years training and competing a TB with a previous limb correction to a “big sale” seems to support my assertion about soundness since the surgery was only discovered later when xrays were taken. Fwiw, if the correction (or the screw!) was seen on xray years later, it was done wrong.

Most people who flip OTTBs are looking for geldings. I shouldn’t have assumed.

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My last comment.
Most people looking for OTTBs to retrain want a horse that’s free or very inexpensive. To look at a population of cheap horses and generalize their faults across the entire TB breed doesn’t make sense to me. (I can only imagine what free warmbloods must look like.)

If you want a TB that’s good looking, correct, unblemished, has a pedigree that suits you, and comes with a full set of xrays and a scope, go to a yearling sale. By the end, there are always inexpensive horses to be found. They’re not yet able to be ridden, but they meet the rest of your criteria. Or buy an older horse for more money from a TB breeder.

To start with a long list of requirements that adds up to a nearly perfect horse, a buyer should be ready to pay a “nearly perfect horse price” rather than expecting to find that horse hanging out at a racetrack for free.

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Okay, I lied when I said the other comment was my last. (Sorry)

I was riding and showing hunters in those earlier times–and nothing was the same as it is now. Back then, the goal was to learn to ride. Now it’s to win ribbons. TBs take effort. They’re great horses, but not for beginners, or people who work in an office all week and can only ride on weekends. Everyone wants a shortcut to success now, and that’s not–and has never been–a Thoroughbred.

As for TBs in eventing, they were going strong when the long format prioritized a horse that could really gallop and jump. Now that dressage is uber-important, riders need the big movement they can get from warmbloods.

Both of those changes have a great deal to do with circumstance and people, and little to do with the Thoroughbred breed, which hasn’t changed as much as you may think.

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I’m going to push back on this a little.

The influx of the warmblood is what changed the game for thoroughbreds since the 90s.

If anything, the thoroughbreds of today are physically better suited for sport than those of the 70s-90s. The reliance on yearling sales has pushed the market to favor big, good looking and good moving horses (who can also get runners).

But when you are competing against horses purpose-bred for jumping and dressage, it’s not a fair fight. Thoroughbreds in sport didn’t have that kind of competition 30+ years ago.

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I think you misinterpreted my statement.

They aren’t “better represented” in sport because we now have a constant influx of purpose-bred warmbloods to fill those roles. A racing-bred TB can’t compete against a horse with 5 or more generations of jumping or dressage specific-breeding behind it.

But as far as physical type goes, the 1970-1990s were the pinnacle of little, ugly, racey TBs. Even then, people eschewed most of the popular bloodlines in favor of those “old” lines back from the day when horses did more than race.

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Amberly, which lines are missing in this pedigree that makes you find it appealing? Always wanting to learn and curious to know more!

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I could get behind what you were saying before about cautioning against a stallion showing up too many times in a pedigree from a long-term approach, but I have to comment on this post above because I found myself disagreeing with almost all of it.

I have nowhere near the depth of experience as @LaurieB but I see a lot of TBs too, and I agree with @Texarkana that the TBs today are an improvement over TBs even 20 years ago. As a whole, I don’t think that TBs are drastically different, but we have seen an emergence of some very popular sires in the last twenty years that share desirable characteristics for both racing and sport. AP Indy and Northern Dancer (through SW) are two that pop immediately to mind.

You are right about one thing: TBs as a breed cannot compete against WBs as a breed. But an individual TB sure can. Like LaurieB pointed out, the best quality TBs are never available to the average market, so it’s incredible (and statistically significant) that racings’ cast-offs are showing up in UL sport pursuits. If you want an example of a TB beating WBs in UL sport, look at eventers. Several of the world’s most competitive eventers were either by full TBs or full TBs themselves. Classic Moet, Nereo, La Biosthetique Sam, FischerRocana are examples of horses by or out of full TBs. If you want 100% TBs, there’s 5* horse Sea Of Clouds, AP Prime, Unmarked Bills, and Just Kidding - that is just off the top of my head.

Re: discussion in WB circles about TBs being the root of their genetic issues… Remember, WB registries/breeders have good financial imperative to find blame outside of their registry. Look how Westfalen handled the “WFFS problem” for example. WFFS concerns took social media by storm. Westfalen hastily "crunched’ some pedigrees together, isolated one alleged shared ancestor, and announced that Dark Ronald xx was the source of all of this WFFS hullabo through descendant Furioso xx It was shared like wildfire across several big registries and major Celle/Stud stations.

Nevermind that WFFS is nowhere near as represented in TBs where Dark Ronald xx is just as influential, and that in most WB registries there are incomplete or N/A contributors once you go back 100 years. There is no way to isolate who the shared ancestor is, because the sample record is and will always be incomplete.

Westfalen’s announcement that Dark Ronald xx was the source of WFFS was fully disproved. Dark Ronald xx’s skin is still on display in Martin Luther University Halle‐Wittenberg and was tested. Testing identified that Dark Ronald was not a carrier of WFFS. Westfalen deleted their publication and never followed up with any sort of announcement to correct the rampant misinformation they were culpable in creating. I am so disappointed in myself that I never screen-shotted or saved the publication. Years after this publication was deleted, I still see good breeders referencing it in FB breeder groups. They are only repeating what they thought they knew was true, but the damage was done.

So far, there is no scientific evidence that TBs are the progenitor of these neurological disorders. What is more likely is TBs, STBs, and WBs – who all have these neuro diseases – have shared ancestry hundreds of years before these registries or stud books were established and that the gene[s] are quite old.

WB registries only have themselves to blame for allowing ESPA/DSLD, EDM, ECVM, etc to proliferate their studbooks. Unlike the JC, they are breeding for a type and can control the type of product they breed. Instead, they play hot potato with the blame whilst simultaneously approaching these issues with their heads in the sand. It won’t improve with finger pointing. It will only improve with more transparency among registries, better communication to their member-base (including when they are WRONG), and more rigorous screening of x-rays/rads at licensings or inspections.

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P.S - While Westfalen removed their publication, here is one from Eurodressage that is still up referencing it. Remember, this publication is wrong and has been thoroughly disproved:

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Yes - I too think that this article is stupid. Not just because of the DNA testing that was done but because Bay Ronald is too prevalent in TB lines not to have WFFS show up in TB’s. And I don’t think that TB breeders have been hiding evidence that it is more prevalent in TB’s than disclosed because TB race breeding is a very expensive endeavor and if had reared its ugly head they would be all over it like **** on ****. I think some very very uninfluential TB or maybe Arab ( since they have found a small percentage in Arabs) had the mutation and it has slowly been filtering up the food chain for hundreds of years. There are a few TB’s that have been tested to have WFFS and they have very obscure lines - nothing prevalent in racing today. Adding to the confusion is that in years past there was no DNA testing and sometimes parentage wasn’t what it was supposed to be. I don’t think people will ever know who patient zero was and it isn’t that important at this point. What is important is testing ALL breeding stock so people can make responsible decisions going forward.

Which lines are those out of curiosity?

Back before my old computer died and I could access my old FB account (which I am now locked out of due to two part authentication), I was a part of a WFFS FB group. I looked at the pedigree of one of the TB’s - maybe two. There were no TB names I recognized. Most had German names. I don’t think any of the horses in the pedigree were US or GB or even France. Because I didn’t recognize any of the names I never looked to see if any of the horses ever raced.

There is a global spreadsheet on WFFS horses on the main WFFS FB page. It is not mine to share, but of the over two thousand entries, there are only 3 TBs that have carrier status. The sheet was last edited January 2022, so it is an active sheet.

I can corroborate that what @SusanO is accurate. Two are non-commercial and the parents did not have any profound impact on the breed and/or were genetic dead ends. One is a bit more commercial - by Tactical Cat out of a Mt Livermore mare.

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Apologies for resurrecting this thread with a bit of a related tangent…

Locally there is a stallion Hyper (Victory Gallop o/o Nureyev mare), who is currently being advertised for sale as his racing offspring are really lighting the world on fire…

I’ve seen this horse in person when he first came to Ontario, and he struck me as a stallion that would appeal to sporthorse breeders. He’s tall (I think about 16.3) and a number of his foals (particularly his chestnut kids) are quite flashy, and move reasonably well.

He could race a little as well :wink:

Would love to hear collective thoughts…

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I remember him running at Kentucky Downs when I did work there. I probably have racing pictures of him…