Keeneland September: How to Gauge the New Format

re: Keeneland September: How to Gauge the New Format

Pedigree Ann — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:24:20 GMT

Commercial breeding to create the highest-priced yearling has replaced breeding to create the best racehorse possible. The quick buck has swamped the long view. It hurts me to see the potentially good broodmares who have been wasted by being sent to the 'flavor-of-the-month' young stallions who do not suit them in the least. It seems the more data we have to make good decisions about matings, the less many breeders use actual data to shape their mating choices.

re: Keeneland September: How to Gauge the New Format

Alan Porter — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 12:51:30 GMT

Hi Sceptre,

Good point about the "compression effect" also leaving us with less well-defined dominant female families. More commercial breeding and the break-up the farms of the great owner breeders probably also results in less consistent development of female lines.

Interesting question as to whether we are truly at plateau, or whether it is possible to continue to improve. I'm a little guided by what has happened with humans in track events, where if we try and see through the impact of increased participation by emerging nations, and PEDs, we have something like the world-record for 800m where the best time has only moved 7/10ths of a second in 30 years, despite improvements in tracks, training modalities, etc., indicating that we're very near the human limit. Actually, if you correct for the tracks he ran on, we have probably not had much improvement in the mile since Jim Ryun about 50 years ago (and yet in 10 years from Bannister's first sub-4 minute mile to Ryun, the record dropped almost 10 seconds).

I guess in terms of "lost" positive genes, with the move towards speed, it's possible that some variants associated with performance over a distance of ground may have become rather rare in the U.S. commercial population - our program makes breeding for a true ten furlong horse a risky proposition, as there are so few opportunities below the very highest level.

re: Keeneland September: How to Gauge the New Format

sceptre — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 14:35:22 GMT

Alan,

I know you've touched upon this subject before, but your 3rd paragraph (which begins: "That potential downside apart...") is, as Hazel would say, "a real doozy"; it's chock full of thought provoking comments...One could speculate that another cause for perceived loss of family is but another consequence of compression...That paragraph, though, does raise some reasonably debatable points. For one, it could be argued that while expressed traits have reached a near plateau, the breeds' genetic potential to manifest far greater heights remains, albeit, perhaps, to a somewhat lesser degree than before- for these last words I'm referring to the idea of lost + genes. Said another way, top end thoroughbred performance may have reached a near (temporary?) plateau-due to our process of selection-, but, perhaps, this does not connote a lack of genetic potential for far greater "improvement" (albeit with less available + (as well as -) genes. While I would say that the breeds' elite of the 50s, 60s, or 70s were superior to the elite of today, yes, you could argue that this is misperception, caused by a relatively poorer population beneath them. But, those perceived super elite of days gone by could have been the result of a semi-segregated breed within a breed, later "diluted" with/by lesser quality genes and misguided selectivity.