All-time Champion Stallions - Traits

Racetrack performance does not guarantee likewise success at stud Even the Champion racehorse, of both sexes, regularly fail to re produce high quality performers in the breeding barn. Yet it is also considered rarer for an un-raced, or a horse that showed little ability on the track, to make a success at Stud. Obviously this confirms racetrack performance is of paramount importance, and it may be a matter of assessing what traits the well preformed racehorse requires to replicate his/her his success at stud.

This can be considered even more important to the Stallion, who generally upgrades the mares he serves. So what makes a leading Stallion?

We seeked out the most successful stallions over the last 50 years the world over for analysis, in a bid to locate consistently corresponding characteristics, to develop a Theory regarding of the traits required when attempting to forecast which Champion racehorses have the best possibility of also making Champion stallions.

Several indicators appear to standout throughout.

• Small to average size. Mares are naturally usually smaller than stallions
• Full range of Power Gearing rations. Mares are more likely than outstanding racetrack performing stallions to have average power gearing
• Excellent overall conformation and balance. The Stallion that is well balanced is most likely to closely match most mares.
• Racetrack performance. Obviously a Stallion must have ability to have any chance of passing on fast genes.

With the top three indicators one factor stands out, Stallions with these traits are most likely to match the most mares based on like - type.

if you breed between extremes, it may be considered plausible your going to produce offspring somewhere between the two, Although with the large variation that between may hard to forecast accurately. Example being matching  a 15hh and 17hh horses, over consecutive years. Although your breeding from the two identical parents to produce number of foals the height variations can be expected to vary significantly between each foal. This may be explained by the fact that single genes are only capable of reproducing themselves, and don't possess the ability to compromise with a a similar gene from a mate for the same trait. It is the large pool of genes of the combined parents which the foal will draw its smaller number of genes from. This is what produces the variations in foals from the same parents.

It is commonly believed if the tow extremes are both considered true flaws by nature, then there is a good chance you going to obtain either one trait or the other. Thus as far as flaws go, the lack of compromising means its a black or white result. Meaning you have a mare with a weakness, and send it to a stallion with an opposing weakness, your giving the resultant foal every chance of also inheriting one of the flaws. As just like a foal that is likely to inherit its ability (or lack of) from its pedigrees weakest line, a foal is also likely to throw to any conformation flaw of its parents. Take a mare that is camped out and breed it with a sire that is camped under, and its likely this natural flaw will be repeated one way or the other, rather than the desired satisfactory compromise result.

With this in mind, it may be fair to suggest the Stallion with the most balanced conformation, has the best chance of producing a likewise foal over a number of mares. importantly for breeders, it is generally accepted that like-type horses have the best chance of throwing good off spring. Mixing types can lead to an unpredictable and ugly mix of unbalanced bone lengths & angles, and general unsoundness. If the breeder can initially begin with a well conformed mare, this makes the task of stallion matching via conformation so much easier.

It is interesting that although outstanding power gearing appears as essential to the great majority of all-time racetrack Champions, it comes across as being less frequent in Champion stallions. This may be explained by the above, OR, it may be that a performance trait which is more prepotent in the stallion is responsible for their success. Can it be that the top line racetrack performer that lacks power gearing, instead owes it success to an outstanding energy system, or heart ?.  It may be that the superior energy system is the trait that the success racehorse is most likely to pass down to its foals. Significantly many successful Broodmares are also known to pass on a heart trait that produces oversized and powerful hearts. This is thought to have been passed down through Eclipse, and is the gene that is thought to be responsible for Secretariats and Phar Laps massive hearts. As it is present in approx 1/3 of horses it is quite a dominant gene.

But only Broodmares can pass on this particular gene to its sons, thus a stallion with a large heart as a result of this gene from its Dam wont be able to pass it on to its sons, and only has half the chance of passing it on to its fillies or mares , meaning the superior energy system as a result of this gene is unlikely to be passed onto its foals and can only help it to a lesser extent at stud. Big hearted champion racetrack stallions have a reputation for disappointing at stud.  Failures of this type include Secretariat, , Citation and Whirlaway. Although their daughters in later years often do well in the breeding barn, such as Secretariat, who was Champion broodmare sire, which may be likely to be due to the heart gene being passed onto their daughters.

Possibly the stallion that does not inherit this heart gene, but has a superior energy system that enables it to be a top line racetrack performer regardless of this, and regardless of a lack of power gearing, has the best chance of success at stud,

In theory combining Stallions with strong energy systems without the heart gene, and matching them with mares with a likewise strong heart as a results of the heart gene, may be a strong indicator of success. it may also be argued that if this is a propotent trait, the stallion can also use this trait to upgrade mares without the heart gene.

But this is all theory and certainly more research is needed in this area, stay tuned.