[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by Danzig

i'd imagine that unbridled song gets labelled as producing unsoundness because he was an early retiree, and many of his best are as well-but that may be a result of demand for his sons at stud, moreso than any facts about unsoundness. as soon as they show any real promise (rockport harbor) the talk starts. as soon as there is a setback, more often then not, the decision is made to retire the horse rather than risk more injury, or more losses.
however, he had a couple horses on the the derby trail this year-old fashioned didn't make it into the gate, and now dunkirk is said to be injured. dunkirk also has very few lifetime starts-which i feel makes it laughable to say that the rigors of racing are to blame for his injury-he hasn't exactly done a lot of racing.


but i do find it funny in an ironic sort of way that people talk about breeding unsoundness...but when a good horse who has also exhibited fragility is retired, there are many who say well, just breed the right mare to him, it'll be ok. ghostzapper is a good case in point-when he went to stud, and i questioned why anyone would want to send a mare to a horse that could only manage three/four starts a year, my sanity was questioned. he was a fast horse, so unsoundness be damned was the gist of it.

I think what happens is a lot of Unbridled's Song's need time to grow into their frame but they are so fast so quick that few can resist the temptation to run them early. So they rack up early wins but were on the track before they were fully ready and as a result get injured. The ones that don't get to the track until later are actually relatively sound. If the breeding fascination was on horses that run well at 4 and 5 instead of 2 and 3 then I think Unbridled's Song would have a very different reputation as there wouldn't be the incentive to rush the talented ones to the track.