BBC: Study favors Racehorse Nurture over Nature
 

Here's a short article of interest in the Dec. 19th BBC online.

** Racehorse winning secret revealed **
The offspring of expensive stallions owe their success more to nurture than nature, a study suggests.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7150251.stm

So they're saying better trainers get more winners......... wow

Do you think they have realised man has landed on the moon yet? :rolleyes:

Was literally about to post a similar link.. Fascinating study out of University of Edinburgh...

From the Science Editor in the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...cihorse119.xml

Very interesting. All you've got to work with is genetics, training, conditioning, and nutrition/health. The huge differences the skill of different trainers can make in a horse through the last three are readily apparent when you look at horses like SWLY and KNS. I think it's a matter of the skill of the trainer being able to optimize the genetic potential that's there.

And explains more "25 point moveups" than drugs in racing do.

An eternal ponderance in horse racing. How good is this young horse ? Personally, I recall a profound post by Round Pond, I believe. He's from Florida and he firmly believes turning a horse out as a weanling is decidedley in the best interest of the horse and his potential as a racer. I personally subscribe to that. My weanling is stabled and pastured to develop as a young horse should until he is a yearling. I am proud to afford him the opportunity to develop stress free in the rolling hills and expansive pastures of upstate NY.

Pastures of polytrack I presume?

This study is a joke. To think that someone actually wasted money on this rubbish is scary. So if Pletcher took his horses and changed stables with a guy at River Downs he would be 90% as sucessful because of the care given and his jockeys.

I read what the study said a little differently - simply that there is no direct correlation between cost of horse and performance. Which isn't earth-shattering news :) I agree with the "waste of money" part.

There most certainly is

I'm thinking cost in more of a Seattle Dancer-Green Monkey vs the other high end progeny kind of way. The "excessive" money, which the study didn't throw out in their calculations.

All they did was compare stud fees to progeny winnings. They found those horses with the highest stud fee didn't necessarily have the progeny with the most earnings. That's not a surprise!

That is also not true. There are so many factors that they did not consider. It is a bunch of junk.

The study used 4000 horses starting in 1922. What 4000 out of the hundreds of thousands bred in the UK since 1922 did they use?

I'm with Chuck.....the whole thing is laughable. Of course there are many factors ( except riders ) that can help lead to success. They didn't " discover " anything that common sense couldn't have.

They used the ones that would prove their theory

Common sense already knew it. There's no guarantee that paying a $50,000 stud fee gets you a foal guaranteed to be a 40% better race horse (40% better earnings) than the foal from the stud that costs $30,000. That's all the study said.

Not really an "eureka" moment in the history of genetic research.

I have to dismiss this notion as well. I've always maintained that the mare has more to do with how well a prodgeny will turn out than the stallion anyway. If you've got a broodmare that was successful at the track, any serviceable stallion will produce results. Especially if the mare has a record of throwing winners.. Just depends on how much you are willing to spend, and of course how well said stallion nicks to your mare. Just because they used a minute sample of costly stallions over 85 years means bupkis.
But I applaude the effort -it was a great read....you have to love the command of the language that the Brits still have :)