Quote:
Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS
So - in theory - if they just took the 25 best stallions in the country and bred them among the 2,500 best and most qualified mares in the country ... breeding this pool of about maybe just 1,200 future horses to start in a race after careful culling and what not ... is going to lead to a stronger breed over time?
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On a simple basis without considering the long term inbreeding complications of only having 25 stallions, absolutely you would have a better and stronger breed.
And there would be a much higher % to race than 1200. You would be taking out of the population the mares that have trouble foaling or foal weaker babies or old mares which have trouble doing both.
I don't understand why you are having a hard time understanding that breeding flawed horses leads to more flawed horses.
During this time sure the top horses are still top horses but the better horses are now spread thin because there is so much more racing than there used to be. So the lesser horses are now mixing into the higher class tracks horse populations as the good ones are further spread out. It is similar to the average baseball pitchers becoming much lower in ability as the leagues expanded. When there was 16 teams and 4 man rotations were the norm you had approx. 64 major league starters. Now that there are 32 teams and because so many lesser pitchers are needed to fill out the rosters 5 man rotations are the norm. That means there are 160 pitchers who call themselves major league starters. Does that mean Roy Halladay is not as good as he should be? No. Does that mean we might have discovered a guy who may have never gotten a chance in prior years? Probably. But the average major league starter is absolutely not as good in 2010 as they were in 1960. The guy who would be considered ML avg is ranked 80th. In 1960 the average ML SP would be ranked 32. In other words the average guy now wouldnt have even been a starter in 1960.