I just purchased a beautiful OTTB (she comes home in two weeks), and am interested in opinions on her bloodlines. I must admit I am not familiar with racing bloodlines, aside from really famous Thoroughbreds. I appreciate your help!
Post a picture of her!
I love her grandsire, Petionville. He makes some really compact, sporty individuals. Don’t see too much of them trickle into non-race homes here, though. I’m not familiar with his sire Two Step Salsa, haven’t handled any of his kids, but his damsire Seattle Slew needs no introduction. I like seeing SS paired with Storm Bird as I think SB improves a lot of things that SS lacks for sport, generally, more robust a frame and better movement. It’s only been done a few times that I’ve seen… SS was a mixed bag in terms of phenotype, sometimes offspring resembled the mare more… Oddly, SS sired one of the most consistent stampers in the TB world (to my eye, anyway) AP Indy.
Anyway Two Step Salsa has a nice enough pedigree. I don’t love SS for UL potential but I do think SS had some really nice attributes he passed along: sportiness, rideability, and some very honest jumpers. Some more sensitive than others, but I think by and large it depended on the mare - in my experience with SS, all of his get I worked with were good eggs, but not UL horses - most lacked the movement and the raw scope (we’re talking real jumping, not 3ft jumps) to be serious UL contenders. I like seeing all that Buckpasser, that’s a line you want if you are eventing. Lots of staying blood there, he’s a known interest to eventers.
Her damside is nice. Silver Ghost I don’t see often in a pedigree, but his phenotype is nice. His pedigree suggests he’d make a nice eventer. Halo, like Buckpasser, is a known event source - likely due to Hail To Reason, who is very valuable in terms of distance, jump, and movement talent. Nice to see the mare Grey Flight tucked a little far back - she’s not up close in any modern pedigrees anymore, but she was a very nice mare, doubled to Roi Herode, who is a horse you want to see as often as you can in a pedigree. Grey Flight produced What A Pleasure, another horse further back in most pedigrees, but a favorite among eventers and HJs back in the day.
Satin & Silver, Charanga’s mother, has a very good pedigree for eventing too. Clever Trick is the weakest line (I don’t love him for soundness/longevity, but he does seem to pass a very good temperament along), further back you have Spy Song, a very valuable line for movement and jump, and Quack, by TV Lark, who still shows up in pedigrees usually through the damside, but in my opinion is all but dead in sire lines. A real shame because TV Lark horses were incredible athletes.
A lot of these horses are further back, so their influence likely is negligible, but you asked.
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Typical racing pedigree with nothing special. Not filled with my personal favorite sport horse sires. I will say that Silver Ghost has an infamous reputation for temperament during his days as a sire. Some of the mares come from decent and well proved sport horse breeding. I like many of their lines–Vana Turns is quite nice on paper, and so are Misty Gallore and So Sophisticated. I dislike Clever Trick very much, and I’m not fond of Seattle Slew–at least in sport. That opinion derives from the lack of descendants that are found in FEI level competition. Mr. Prospector, given his ubiquity, is also a low probability sport line for FEI level competition.
I doubt if this mare would ever be an UL horse in any discipline from her paper, but paper doesn’t necessarily reflect the horse that is in front of you.
Viney, have you seen any Petionville horses in person? May change your opinion of whether or not he is a sport horse sire. He is gorgeous himself, and tends to stamp his offspring with soundness and very nice huntery movement.
Not every horse owner is aiming for FEI… so there is a lot of virtue in having bloodlines that consistently produce reliable and sound horses for LL (as in under 1* eventing) pursuits. This mare looks the part and has several sires/dams on her first page that have produced horses for these endeavors easily.
I have no aspirations for anything UL anytime soon. I am planning on LL dressage, maybe some show jumping (think small, I haven’t jumped in many years), and maybe training level eventing.
Petionville looks very downhill to my eye.
Petionville may look downhill, I haven’t looked him up yet, but this mare certainly is not, she is definitely uphill
Wow, that’s the first pedigree I’ve seen in a long time which is completely free of European blood. There are two Canadian horses way back there (Northern Dancer and Nearctic) but this is a USA-bred mare!
There is nothing “typical” about this pedigree from a racing standpoint.
Seeking the Gold was an incredible stallion whose sons were unfortunately not as successful in the breeding shed as himself. But what he left behind (besides his grandson Dubawi) was durability-- his two most prolific sons in this country, Mutakddim and Petionville, have been at the top of the Grayson Jockey Club’s lists on durability and soundness for the better part of the past decade:
You get the idea.
Two Step Salsa is the only accomplished son of the aging Petionville at stud. “Typical,” eh?
I’d be curious to see statistics on how many progeny of Silver Ghost are still active. As not uncommon for Mr. P sons, Silver Ghost was a virtual carbon copy of his broodmare sire, Halo, in almost every way… except color. My patience is short for most Halo offspring, but there’s no denying the sire had his useful traits. Like another dose of soundness and durability… not to mention jump…
OP-- your new mare is super cute! Many congratulations!
