Bend Or was Tadcaster?

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brogers
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Bend Or was Tadcaster?

Postby brogers » Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:46 pm

This would make a significant change to those pedigrees that were bred on the Bend Or (Tadcaster)/Macaroni nick...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... edMessage=

Our multidisciplinary study of historic Thoroughbred horses solves two long-running mysteries in racing history. Eclipse, the greatest racehorse ever known, never lost a race. His skeleton is housed in the Royal Veterinary College, London; however, there is controversy over its authenticity. The 1880 Epsom Derby was won by Bend Or. In one of the great controversies of Thoroughbred racing, the owners of Bend Or were accused of swapping him with another horse, Tadcaster, whose maternal pedigree was more prestigious. Bend Or's skeleton resides at the Natural History Museum, in London. Eclipse and Tadcaster were both extremely popular at stud, and the vast majority of racehorses today are descendents. We compared mitochondrial DNA haplotypes of living and historic Thoroughbred skeletons, including those of Eclipse and Bend Or. Additionally, we compared skeletal morphometrics of Eclipse's skeleton with measurements taken at autopsy. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of a range of skeletal elements were compared in order to establish that the Eclipse skeleton was that of a single horse. Our multidisciplinary data suggest that the putative skeleton is consistent with that of Eclipse. In contrast, mitochondrial DNA haplotype sharing indicated that the skeleton known as Bend Or is most probably that of Tadcaster.
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Postby xfactor fan » Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:04 pm

So someone swapped two chestnut half siblings--genetic siblings, as they were both by Doncaster. This opens up a whole can of worms. Was the swapping deliberate? Did two mares exchange chestnut foals? Did Bend Or run, and Tadcaster stand at stud? Or did Bend Or stand at stud, and Tadcaster ended up on display?

If this was known to the connections, lends a whole new interpertation to the name "Bend Or".


Any chance someone can figure out who Eclipse was sired by?

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Postby brogers » Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:56 pm

This is a link from the NY Times on July 8th, 1880. It explains a lot of the thinking then about Bend Or/Tadcaster....

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fr ... 5F448884F9
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Postby xfactor fan » Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:54 pm

So human error, and an attempt to foist a "ringer" off on the betting public. Was there any record of what the stewards decided?

It wouldn't surprise me to find that they left it alone, since given both colts were by Doncaster, the sire line was the same. And at that point the mares were not considered important.

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Postby ElPrado » Mon Apr 16, 2012 9:08 pm

So, now Louis is living in 1880. It doesn't surprise me a bit. :lol:

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Postby vineyridge » Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:20 am

This is fascinating, but leaves some serious questions open.

The NYTimes article says the Duke of Westminster was being very forthcoming about trying to resolve the question. He apparently put honor before victory. :) He actually went to the owners of Robert The Devil with this rumor so they could challenge the results. According to the article, the Duke was going home to check his studbook records, presumably for the correct markings of each foal.

But after that check, he didn't take down Bend Or, which it sounds as if he would have done if the identity, per his studbook records, wasn't correct.

I'd be more willing to bet on a mix up earlier in the mare family. We all know early records were spotty at best and often wrong.
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Postby brogers » Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:30 am

The Stewards proclaimed that Bend Or was by Doncaster o/o Rouge Rose not by Doncaster o/o Clemence which we now know is most likely to be wrong. The horse that won the Derby, and named Bend Or, was by Doncaster out of Clemence.

So what difference does this make? Very little in real terms, but one of interest to historians. Here is a link to the great Ormonde as the pedigree stands today.

http://www.equineline.com/Free-5X-Pedig ... gnes%20(GB)&foaling_year=1883&nicking_stats_indicator=Y

If you swap out Bend Or for Tadcaster, whom presumably is his sire now, while they are both by Doncaster one might feel that the pedigree becomes a little more interesting.

http://www.equineline.com/Free-5X-Pedig ... =&x=23&y=6
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Postby Patuxet » Tue Apr 17, 2012 10:54 am

Here's further elaboration on this interesting development written by Tony Morris.

http://www.ownerbreeder.co.uk/2011/05/t ... -may-2011/


The two dams in question don't share much.

http://www.equineline.com/Free-5X-Pedig ... Y&x=29&y=7
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Postby aethervox » Tue Apr 17, 2012 1:06 pm

vineyridge wrote:I'd be more willing to bet on a mix up earlier in the mare family. We all know early records were spotty at best and often wrong.


Regarding the Bend Or/Tadcaster controversy: in the paper, the authors tested the DNA of 21 matrilineal relatives of Rouge Rose (family 1) and 18 of Clemence. All of the other horses matched the respective families.

Eclipse may be the one with a mix up earlier in the mare family. His mtDNA matched did not match the descendants of the Whiteshirt Mare, who was supposed to be a full sister to Eclipse's great-granddam, the Old Montague Mare (family 12). When descendants of Spiletta's dam, Mother Western, were tested, they had the same mtDNA sequence as Eclipse, which matches the mtDNA of Family 20. Their conclusion was:
As only 3% of horses fall into the Family 20 group (9/296), it seems unlikely that a different, random horse of the same size and coat colour as Eclipse would also be in the Royal Veterinary College collection. We therefore suggest that the putative skeleton of Eclipse is the authentic skeleton, and that a revision of the GSB pedigree record for Eclipse is required.


It's an interesting paper, to say the least!

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Postby vineyridge » Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:36 pm

So where do we get a copy of the paper?

Just because Clemence's daughters carried her MtDNA and Rouge Rose's carried hers still doesn't prove that Bend Or was Tadcaster or vice versa. If the work went back several generations prior to 1877 with descendants of Martha Lynn from other daughters and Ellen Horne and Prunella, also from other daughters, that would be more convincing.

I just checked and Ellen Horne had one other daughter, Paraffin; but Paraffin was the dam of quite a few daughters who are still present tail female. So if those checked as FF2 and Rouge Rose's daughters also checked as FF2, that says only that Rouge Rose was not the dam of Bend Or.

Clemence left a huge number of daughters all over the world. Not sure how many are still left breeding tail female. Martha Lynn also left a number of daughters as did Eulogy, whose female descendants went all over the world.

Did they say whose MtDNA they tested?

Clearly there were a LOT of mistakes in early studbooks.
Last edited by vineyridge on Tue Apr 17, 2012 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby ckaye » Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:49 pm

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract

Gotta pay for the whole thing, though :(

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Postby Pan Zareta » Tue Apr 17, 2012 4:18 pm

vineyridge wrote:Just because Clemence's daughters carried her MtDNA and Rouge Rose's carried hers still doesn't prove that Bend Or was Tadcaster or vice versa. If the work went back several generations prior to 1877 with descendants of Martha Lynn from other daughters and Ellen Horne and Prunella, also from other daughters, that would be more convincing.


You're correct in regard to what has and has not been proven beyond all doubt. But imho all available evidence strongly supports the conclusion that Bend Or was Tadcaster.

Did they say whose MtDNA they tested?


The identities of the living sources of mtDNA samples has not been made public.

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Postby xfactor fan » Tue Apr 17, 2012 4:27 pm

Vineyridge,

If I'm understanding your comment about the two mares. No, the fact that the two mares have femail descendents that match doesn't in itself tell anything.

However, when added to the fact that the historical record has questions about the two horses, and the mtDNA confirms that the skeleton of Bend Or did not come from the family that it was supposed to.
Adding to this that the mtDNA confirms that it did come from the family of the leading suspect instead of some random other family.
Gives a pretty good case for the two stallion being switched, instead of the two mares.

Is there a way of figuring out how many chestnut sons of Doncaster were foaled that year?

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Postby xfactor fan » Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:04 pm

http://www.sporthorse-data.com/d?i=10164130

This is supposed to be a photo of Sandiway Doncaster x Clemence, which would make her a full sister to Tadcaster aka Bend Or.

Does this look like a photo that could have been taken of a mare born in 1881? And do those look like Bend Or spots on her coat?


Bend Or

http://www.sporthorse-data.com/d?showpi ... 1312704888

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Postby cissiny » Sun Apr 29, 2012 7:59 am

Indeed a very interesting thread - but now I am confused about what to do with my own private database? I really want things to be correct, not sure what to do with the progeny of Bend Or in my database? Should I "correct" the pedigree of Bend Or? Or change his progeny to be sired by Tadcaster?

Surely it is interesting to know who won the Epsom Derby, but for me it's more important that the pedigrees I have in my database is correct? I have read this thread but not checked all the links, is it possible that Tadcaster (in the name of Bend Or so to say) won the Derby but the "real" Bend Or was the one used at stud? Or was the horses still swapped?

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