Thoroughbred Bloodlines Successful in the USA
By Dr Peter Birdsall
article from the book The Leading Competition Sires of Great Britain and Ireland 1996-1997
Published by Otterswick Marketing.
The Performance Horse Registry (PHR) has announced the high score winners for the 1995 show season in jumping, combined training, dressage and hunter competitions.
This is the first year the recently organised Performance Horse Registry has made the awards. To be eligible for the awards program the horses must be at least one-half Thoroughbred and must be recorded in the Registry. Awards were given at both national and regional levels of competition.
An overview of the horses receiving awards has provided some interesting date. It is the goal of the PHR, an organisation operated under the auspices of The Jocky Club, to make bloodline and performance information available to the performance horse industry, much like the information that is available on a large scale to those involved in Thoroughbred racing.
To examine the date derived from the 1995 show season, the award-winning horses were grouped by each of the four disciplines in which they competed. Their pedigrees were then evaluated to find which stallion lines were most prominent.
The Thoroughbred stallion Nasrullah was found to be the most common ancestor in all the horses receiving awards. In fact, Nasrullah was the most common ancestor in pedigrees of horses competing in each of the four disciplines. The leading sire lines for each discipline are listed below in their order of frequency.
Hunters:
Nasrullah, Man o’ War, Princequillo, Native Dancer.
Jumpers:
Nasrullah, Precipitation, Princequillo, Man o’ War.
Dressage:
Nasrullah, Native Dancer, Princequillo, Man o’ War
Eventing:
Nasrullah, Man o’ War, Princequillo.
When all four disciplines are grouped together, the frequency of occurrence of the leading sire lines is as follows: Nasrullah, Man o’ War, Princequillo, Native Dancer.
The order and distribution of these sire lines is probably not surprising for anyone familiar with sport horse bloodlines. In fact, the distribution is similar to that which was shown in the publication “The Bloodlines of Hunters and Jumpers in North America”. This publication was based on the bloodlines of AHSA champion hunters and jumpers over more than a decade and it is notable that the distribution of the sire lines in the pedigrees of leading sport horses is almost identical even today.
Although not present in high numbers of occurrences, a number of sires well known in sport horse pedigrees were found in the pedigrees of these award-winning sport horses. These lines include the stallions Bonne Nuit, Mystic II and Independence. Bonne Nuit’s current descendants include the wonderful American-bred jumper Gem Twist. Secretariat, whose pedigree combines the Nasrullah and Princequillo bloodlines, was also found in a number of the pedigrees of the winners.
The demographics of the horses receiving awards from the Performance Horse Registry are of interest.
As one would expect, a large number of the Thoroughbreds competing in sport horse disciplines were available for the show ring because of a mediocre or poor performance record on the race track. Many trained and were raced lightly, usually for one year, with very minimal winnings. Many of these horses were well enough bred to be full or half siblings to major stakes winners or stakes placed horses.
One hunter sold for $220,000 as a weanling, again for $215,000 as a yearling, but after a lack-lustre racing career, finally found his niche in the show ring.
A number of the horses successful in sport horse competition were not from high priced Thoroughbred
stock. Siblings of a number of the successful show horses were sold at Thoroughbred auctions as yearlings for prices from $1,500 to $3,000.
Other award winners were definitely bred for the show ring. They exhibit popular Thoroughbred show families on both sides of their pedigrees and a number of their sisters and brothers were, or still are, competing in sport horse events.
Two show horses receiving awards were sired by the Thoroughbred stallion Texas Fuel whose ancestral background includes many proven jumping lines including, Nasrullah, Mahmoud, and Roman. These PHR award winners were Timeless, who was 4th in the AHSA Green Conformation Hunter division for 1996 and the hunter Texas Tea. Texas Fuel is also the sire of the International Hunter Futurity, multiple winner Ace in the Hole as well as the IHF winners Deep Rock and Just in Texas.
Another interesting observation was that three of the hunters who received 1995 PHR awards were out of daughters of the Thoroughbred stallion Y-Busher. This stallion, from the two jumping lines Man o’ War and Bimelech, only sired 48 foals in his career.
In half-bred pedigrees, the most successful cross from the data available was that of warmblood stallions crossed with Thoroughbred mares. Sport horse stallions such as Abdullah, Banjo and Torrero, all from well established warmblood lines, were successful in siring award winners. It is not to imply from this data that the warmblood stallions crossed on Thoroughbred mares is the most successful cross for producing sport horses. Certainly Thoroughbred stallions bred to warmblood mares has been proven undoubtedly to be equally successful.
The year 1983 produced more PHR award winners of 1995, than any other foaling year. These show horses were 12 years old in 1995.
Many of the award winners for 1995 were from dams that were foaled in the 1960’s and the early to mid 1970’s. In some cases it may seem that the sire lines we are highlighting are from an earlier era, but when we consider the age of these dams, the sire line contribution can be quite current. This is unlike the racing industry where sires and dams may be proven at a younger age and are offspring of more current bloodlines. For a sport horse to reach the higher levels of competition, it will take many more years than the racing Thoroughbred who may be proven on the race track in his second or third year of life.
In the Regular Conformation Hunter the AHSA champion Idle Hour received PHR awards as did Viscount, the AHSA Reserve Champion Amateur-Owner Hunter 18 through 35 year old.
Fine Tuned, winner of the Automation Perpetual Trophy in the 1995 AHSA awards for Amateur-Owner Hunter over 35 years old was also an award winner. Fine Tuned was out of a daughter of Y-Busher, the stallion previously mentioned as the broodmare sire of three award winners for 1995. High Profile, the 3rd place horse in this AHSA division was also an award winner.
The most prominent combined training horse was Bruce Davidson’s Hey Day, a Gold Medal winner at the Pan American Games. Hey Day is a son of the sport horse sire Babamist. Babamist is by Mystic II a French bred stallion who descends from Man o’ War through Relic. Relic is a stallion who appears in sport horse pedigrees in many countries throughout the world. Mystic II was an outstanding sire of steeplechasers in North America. His get include Soothsayer, Champion Steeplechaser of 1972, Life’s Illusion, Champion Steeplechase Horse of 1975 and China Run, a stakes winning steeplechaser. All three of these offspring set course records on the track. Mystic II also sired the outstanding jumper Springer formerly ridden in the 1970’s by Barney Ward and Ian Millar.
National jumpers receiving PHR awards for 1995 included the French-bred Rhum IV ridden to the 4th place standing in the AHSA Open Jumper division by Michael Matz and the jumper Paul Harvey who placed third in the year end standings for the AHSA Amateur Open Jumper Division.
In this, the first year of Performance Horse Registry awards, some limited information about performances and pedigrees of the horses competing can be gathered. As more horses are entered into the Registry and the Performance Horse Registry programs are expanded, much more detailed and useful data will be available to breeders, trainers, owners and riders of sport horses in North America. Presently, this type of important information has not been retrievable in an accurate, unbiased form. This significant material is necessary for the successful breeding and selection of sport horses.
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24/Dec/2016
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