He’s gorgeous to my eye and has a very nice pedigree for jumping, although the French aren’t using him for that. He’s not a good racing sire that I can tell. Turf runner at distance. Why don’t we seem to have cheap stallions available like him in the US?
https://www.pedigreequery.com/scalo
http://www.france-sire.com/etalon-24438-scalo.php
What do you TB folks think of him?
Nice uphill build! Looks like he retired from racing after 14 starts with a sesamoid injury (according to pedigreequery). I like the Acatenango, but I would prefer something that had raced longer (Musketier). What do you think of this stallion: https://www.pedigreequery.com/grey+swallow His yearlings are selling cheap. He too though, only raced 15 times.
Scalo’s pedigree is much, much better for jumping; and he has a wonderful walk from the videos that were on the france-sire site. Scalo’s stud fee is 2000 euros, compared to Grey Swallow’s $5000. I very much like that Scalo was able to win at 2400 meters. I don’t know if it matters, but Grey Swallow is 17 years old and already swaybacked, and that would bother me quite a bit.
I found an old video of Grey Swallow, and if the line from stifle to elbow says anything about uphill/downhill, his canter shows a very downhill way of going. Scalo’s stifle remains below his elbow in the video showing his gallop.
I guess the fact that Scalo has three lines to Herod on his first page impresses me the most.
I tend to give the quality/soundness of a horse with sesamoid injuries the benefit of the doubt; sesamoid injuries are really are only sustained at high speed/high impact pursuits, and in my experience is more the “fault” of the trend to trim for best breakover + the job over a flaw in the horse’s durability.
That being said there really isn’t anything in his pedigree that suggests inherent unsoundness. If anything, it’s the opposite - his pedigree is full of long-standing, sound lines and he’s linebred to several stallions I consider “durable lines” (for sport) - Klairon, Herod, Alahmoud(Mahmoud) … seeing the Halo, Hoist The Flag, Hail To Reason definitely doesn’t hurt the sport-bank either…
Scalo looks nice Viney. We probably don’t have many stallions like him here because his sire + grandsire both never serviced in the US… and apparently Lando is dead. :no:
We do however, have plenty of Irish River horses in the US. Maybe not enough, but the damside has contributors seen often in US horses; even Luthier shows up with some reliability here.
We did miss out with Acatenango for sport in the US. I am not sure how many of his get are successful here - certainly not as many as across the pond.
BTW, I like Musketier a lot. I believe his stud fee has gone up a bit since he came to Calumet. IIRC He was lower a few years ago. He’s a nice looking horse. I’m certain he could be valuable to breeders of event horses.
I thought it was interesting that Grey Swallow’s paternal granddam is Daltawa, considered a blue hen. Grey Swallow won Irish Derby (1.5 miles or 2400 metres), his sire Daylami was champion turf male. Dawalan out of Daltawa was a champion steeplechaser. Doyoun/Mill Reef also have had successful steeplechase lines I believe. He is certainly not as uphill as Scalo. I don’t think Scalo has any get available in the US, alas.
I still would prefer a horse that has raced many times and retired sound to one that did not, as many of them have the same questionable trims. If they can stay sound racing, they should be sound for other pursuits as well, and soundness is probably the weakest link in many sporthorses. I keep finding many warmblood mares that are for sale as broodmares because they are no longer sound.
It depends. I’m generally with you that I want a horse that has raced consistently (the entire Private Account/Personal Flag family comes to mind)… but that doesn’t always guarantee soundness in offspring – and it definitely does not guarantee speed, which is really the name of the game over soundness.
It also is just not the current state of racing and isn’t an idealistic expectation to pose on stallion owners anymore, as many incredible race horses end up going to stud fairly quickly and well before their 5th year. It’s not ideal, but more and more stallions are retiring with less than 25 starts under their belt and that has been a consistent trend for a long time now. Off of the top of my head I think the average # of starts for race horses has been 15 or 16 for long. long time.
Look at stallions that have had more than 75 starts - can you name any that are super popular/commercial and consistently passing on that precocious speed to their offspring?
Meanwhile… how about looking at stallions that had less than 10 starts, but are known to contribute soundness (for sport)… Danzig had 4 starts… yet he is, to me, a lock for a hardy horse (look at Langhfur…). Malibu Moon had 2… Green Dancer had 8… Gilded Time had 6… Archarcharch had 7 and so did his sire Arch… Nureyev had 3. These are all stallions to me that are extremely desirable for eventing.
The list goes on… There are some incredibly sporty stallions that you would eliminate from the sport gene-pool if you only looked at the number of starts. A better indicator, IMHO, of the stallion’s propensity to pass on soundness is to look at the % of starters and the # of starts per starter… and to look at what kind of races + fields these horses are racing in. Even then that is not a reliable indicator of the horse in front of you and how sound he will be for sport.
And then you have stallions who have had over 75 starts that can barely even fill their book for the season… Say Florida Sandy for example had 100 starts and didn’t even produce a single stallion son to carry on his legacy…
I would love to have had a Say Florida Sandy offspring! Of course, race breeders are breeding for speed, but I would prefer durability as I have no need for speed for a sporthorse. It’s a shame that a stallion with 75 starts cannot fill its book. Interestingly, the article that Vineyridge posted said that selective breeding has not made racehorses faster over time…so maybe the breeders are missing something by not paying attention to durability. I would think that there would be higher inheritability for durability - like the Caro line, or the Herod line that Vineyridge just posted about. Definitely # of starts per starter would be an important statistic. Conversely, if you keep breeding horses because they are lame and can’t do anything else (which is what quite a few mare owners do), then you may perpetuate unsoundness. Danzig had knee problems…so this was not passed on to his offspring?
Danzig is not free of flaws but I don’t think passing on knee issues is one of his problems. I don’t see a disproportionate amount of his get (well, he’s pretty far back in most cases now) with knee problems. If there’s something to look out for when you have Danzig, it’s their back - for that reason I wouldn’t linebreed to him myself, but he is a good, solid stallion for eventers for reasons listed above.
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