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PostPosted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 1:29 pm 
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My take on conformation and bloodlines are that they really mean very little in the world of pure racing. As a trainer, I never paid terribly much concern over conformation or pedigree, once I got that horse in my shedrow. I have seen so many poorly put-together, ill-bred race horses defy common sense and been good honest race performers that one soon learns that a pretty horse really means little on the dirt or turf. I have seen scores of perfectly aligned horses with high auction prices that could not outrun a turtle or stay sound. I suppose there are so many complex facets to what makes a successful race horse that conformation and pedigree is never a really good "marker". One must be able to look inside of a horse and see his "heart" and I don't mean his real heart, but his being and the efficiency of his metabolism.

The bloodstock agents and two year old trainers would like to weave a mystic of how they can select a top race horse through conformation and pedigree analysis and other various tests, but IT CAN'T BE DONE. They are blowing hot air up our arses. A few years ago, I think it was the "Thoroughbred Times" that did a disgusting piece on Nick Zito as the master trainer with the EYE for selecting young horses at auction. Of course, this article was a promo for Zito in the disguise of an informative article. I shot a letter to the magazine's "Letters Column" basically saying that no one, and that particularly includes Zito ever knows for sure what he is buying at the yearling/two year old sales. It is all a big crap-shoot, a lottery. Needless to say, my letter did not get published, but it, nevertheless, is the stark truth in racing and it is the charm of racing. Anyone can go out there and buy the most unlikely horse, train it, and it could be a decent horse--if not a world beater. The inner essence of what makes a true race horse can never be gauged by simple outward observation or reading its ancestors.

In the same breath, I, like all of us, when we buy a prospective race horse will fall back on conformation and pedigree analysis, simply because there is not much else out there for us to latch upon. Does it mean that our selections will be more likely to be successful? Nope. It only allows us to buy a dream with some degree of confidence and, most certainly, that is what we are buying, dreams. I always said to myself, "This horse may not turn out to be a good race horse, but at least I will like the way he looks in my barn." There is much to be said for this. To my way of thinking, there is nothing worse than having a dog of a race horse in your shedrow that looks like a dog. So I say, go ahead and select and buy your prospective horses by conformation and/or pedigree, but know, deep down, it doesn't mean a rat's ass.

I will quote a passage from Joe Hirsch's book, "In the Winner's Circle" which illustrates the smart trainer's view. This is a book on Ben Jones racing career:

Quote:
"Money was still desperately short--purses were no more than $500--and a horseman didn't dare spend a cent he didn't have to. Captain Carr was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, at the time, and he phoned B.A. and began talking about his horse. "Ben", he said, "this horse is by so-and-so out of such-an-such by..." B.A. took two or three minutes of this, fidgeting all the while. Finally his face reddened, and he bellowed into the phone: "Damit, Frank! This call is costing you a hell of a lot of money. The only thing I want to know is CAN HE RUN?"


So true, in the final analysis, all any trainer cares about is "can he run". Certainly this has been my overriding view during my training career. I would go to my client's farms and look at their "dreams", but I could never tell them if their horses would pan out. Only hard work, some luck, and the inner blossoming of that horse-dream of theirs would tell us all in the end, if he was a good racehorse.


This is the opinion of the respected Brit, Tony Morris as he posted on a yahoo group on thoroughbred breeding and I agree completely:

Quote:
The horse has 64 chromosomes. Coincidentally it has (at most) 64 ancestors in the sixth generation, so we might say that each contributes one chromosome to the sixth-generation descendant. Of course, it doesn't work like that, but in those simplistic terms one can appreciate how nonsensical it is to assume that one such distant antecedent can be important. It's a pure crap-shoot, the genes that come through; a horse might easily be present three or four times in the sixth generation, having contributed zilch to the distant descendant.

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