First time starting a topic, so with the new format, who knows what will happen, but here goes.
Friend sent me this picture of filly that ran at Aqueduct today:
Pic of her as a foal:
IMG_0696|481x499
She is listed as a bay. Um, there is more to it than that.
Neat!
Her momma was colorful as well:
Pic of her as a foal did not upload for some reason. Trying again.
I think there is a special term for this coloring–not a color specialist, so don’t know.
She is a fancy filly for sure. 
I will confess I am no pedigree maven compared to some here but did see on sire’s side that 3 generations back, there is Rubiano who is shown as gr/ro (and was out of Ruby Slippers as ‘ro’) so maybe there is where the color came from…
Gorgeous! I follow a Facebook group for colored TB. My guess is she is genetically Sabino.
Apparently TB don’t actually carry the roan gene at all, but the TB registries have historically conflated roan and grey, and possibly here roan and other color patterns.
The color comes from Airdrie Apache, not Rubiano. Rubiano is just a plain gray. Airdrie Apache is what was originally referred to as a maximally expressed sabino. We now know the color comes from a mutation on the dominant white gene. Airdrie Apache has the W22 form of the gene. Inheriting it from him, as what happened in the case of the dam and this filly, will result in this type of sabino coloring.
Just for the fun of looking at horse pictures … Some links related to Airdrie Apache … his line is popular with breeders who like color in their TB’s.
Scroll down for the Airdrie Apache photo & reference
Photos of Airdrie Apache family members – the filly in the OP is not unusual in this group
Yep! The AA line is W22, and known for producing LOTS of color.
They are like the Puchilingui line which is W5. W (White, formerl Dominant White) is a frequent mutation with lots of TB lines, and several STB lines (among other breeds) spawning new mutations on a fairly regular basis it seems, which is pretty cool.
Really interesting! Some of them look similar to Frame Overo, which is apparently a mutation that occurred in North American Spanish horses.
Repeat after me… I will not open my mouth about color genetics again 
Very interesting to both ‘see’ and learn about.
I could see if I was looking for color to want to breed to a horse like Airdrie Apache but thinking if I wanted a horse to race maybe going in a different direction. I do like my horses with color but also know that color should be down on the list of must haves/wants 
This would make an awesome Breyer. The foal picture.
The thing about White is that various versions present differently. Some of them absolutely do resemble Frame, though usually, IME, you can tell the difference by how much leg white there is. For example:
Let’s say you’ve got a Frame with Sabino1, and the SB has put leg white on. Frame doesn’t put white on legs, at least not below hocks/knees. So let’s say you’ve got a kind of weird whiteness around the body, maybe Frame, maybe not, and you have 2 front white legs, 1 white hind, and the other hind has this really dark patch kind of in the middle of the white. Be highly suspicious of Frame, which does noootttt like white legs. I look at it as Frame trying to push white off the legs. I’ll see if I can find a pic of that, because it’s not what you see in that last picture, where that RF has dark color on the inside. That’s just a function of the splotchy spattered nature of this presentation (which is very, very common in the W22)
Many Frames can look like a White in the body, very splotchy and jagged, but if you see that much white on the body, and no white on the legs (or very little), think Frame instead of White.
There are some decent AA racehorses (not Grade 1, they aren’t that caliber, but IIRC a few have made some decent money at lower levels), and there are some other W lines that produce pretty good ones, especially over in Japan. That line though tends to make them all white, not the cool spattered patterns.
Aw, I didn’t mean to come across so abruptly. I just find color genetics in TBs interesting and get kind of single-minded when the topic comes up!
And yes, Airdrie Apache did not stand as a racing sire, though he did come out of Brereton Jones’ breeding program. He was dual registered as a paint (before the one paint parent rule) and used for primarily riding horses and outcrosses. A few offspring went on to race with very unimpressive results. Equineline reports:
114 registered TB foals, 13 starters, 6 winners, 0 BT winners, total earnings of $66,768
I wonder who is the horse galloping with her? That one looks to have some interesting color genetics going on, too. All that pink skin with the little bit of mottled spotting on the neck and ears indicates it may be another horse carrying a W gene mutation.
Near as I can find, that’s White Hot, a filly by AA
No, no… I knew I might have been wading in the wrong pool when I answered since color genetics are clearly beyond what I know anything about… your reply (which was just fine) just re-enforced to me that I should have kept my ‘fingers’ shut and let someone who might actually know something respond.
I just looked at a 5 gen pedigree.
Color genetics in horses are interested as are how the ‘same’ gene can end up being expressed differently. Genotype vs phenotype (if I remember correctly).
Actually the one paint parent rule was thrown out more than a few years back. Outcrops from AQHA and JC breeding are acceptable again. 
I was surprised to see this filly on the track. Not too many from AA make it there from what I’ve seen.
I might have missed it if someone replied to this, but the sabino gene (SB1) is not found in TBs. Some of the W (white spotting) genes found in TBs might resemble it though.
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