BREEDING FORUM

Posted: **Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:49 pm**

I have never made it much of a secret just how little I am attracted to jump racing but I was very taken by the performance of The New One at Cheltenham.

It is rare to see a hurdler quicken so decisively and finish so strongly. Perhaps my interest was driven by the fact that he is by the late Kings Theatre, a horse that interests me a great deal. Of course everything we discover now is quite academic since he passed but this is one very ‘special’ horse.

On the face of it he had a beautiful pedigree, lets talk a bit more about that later.

He was sharp enough to win the Racing Post Trophy at 2yo and won the Craven Stakes (a major 2000 guineas trial) and one of the premiere all aged 12 furlong races The King George and QE2 stakes later that year. He was second in both the Derby and Irish Derby and third in the Juddmonte International.

His dam, Regal Beauty (Princely Native ex Dennis Belle) was the dam of High Estate a Group winning 2yo and multiple stakes winner.

He was a good looking son of stallion sensation Sadler’s Wells who retired to stud with impeccable stallion credentials, who ended his days covering (with more than a little success) National Hunt mares. What went wrong?

I really don’t know the definitive answer to that question but what I can reveal is that for some reason or other he showed a very unusual negative affinity to mares carrying Northern Dancer.

I have never found such a negative affinity for a horse that generally indicates high class and a very cosmopolitan outlook in the breeding shed. But lets look at some revealing data.

Of all of Kings Theatre’s stakes winning progeny only one features a mare with Northern Dancer in the first 5 generations of their pedigree.

Mathematically the only stakes winner represents 8% of his total progeny. Ironically this individual is arguably his best. Lets look at a few other stallion sons of Sadler’s Wells. Starting at the very top with Galileo. Of all his stakes winners 68% have Northern Dancer somewhere in the first 5 generations of their pedigree. Similarly with Montjeu the name Northern Dancer can be found in the pedigree of 58% of his stakes winning progeny.

High Chaparral’s stakes winners are similarly peppered with Northern Dancer on the distaff side of their pedigree, 63% of them.

The solution may revolve around Sadler’s Wells himself as he has not been a particularly strong conduit for inbreeding to Northern Dancer. Of his stakes winners 26% have Northern Dancer in the dam side.

Whatever the reasons we have to accept that inbreeding, even to the highest class individuals, is no guarantee. Perhaps if we had considered the mare options for Kings Theatre earlier, and I bet he would have had huge numbers of Northern Dancer line mares, he could have been as much of a success on the flat as was jumping.