Pedigree of today's Hambletonian winner

vineyridge · Postby **vineyridge** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 7:26 am

I've been reading the American Racing Manual for 1963--actually reading it--and the changes in everything about TB racing since that time are pretty astounding--and not for the better.

At the end of the 2yo year, there were a few 1 1/16 mile races. Horses ran on both turf and dirt. The Washington International was a BIG turf race and Kelso ran it several times. A tremendous number of the best horses were homebreds of their owners. The Chenery stable was one of the best there was, and Virginia breeders and owners were generally pretty darned good. New York and California had the best racing in the country, with Florida and Illinois competitive. Kentucky was not considered top class where the races were concerned, except for the Derby. Horses, even top class ones, seemed to race every two weeks and often with even less time between races. There were a lot more races of 1 1/2 miles and over, and races of classic distance were the top of the heap.

Horses seemed to be just as fragile then as they are now.

When and why did the structure change so drastically? And what happened to the Washington International and Maryland racing in general?

ElPrado · Postby **ElPrado** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 8:32 am

What happened to Maryland racing? Football.
That's what happened to all American racing.
TV networks could make much more money with advertising during football games than with racing. College football. Pro football. Also baseball, but not as much as football.
That's the simplest answer.

xfactor fan · Postby **xfactor fan** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 10:05 am

Just like to point out that according to Louis, ALL Standardbreds should break down on their first start. All the sire lines that I've looked back trace to Hambletonian 10, 1849–1876. Peter the Great is another genetic bottleneck, with a huge number of sirelines coming from this stallion.

If breeding to one sireline is such a destructive thing, why don't Standardbreds break down on their first start?

ElPrado · Postby **ElPrado** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 10:57 am

Louis pays no attention to them?

xfactor fan · Postby **xfactor fan** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 12:29 pm

Horses are horses. What applies for one breed should apply with another, and given that the modern standardbred does have a genetic relationship with TB, theories should apply to both breeds.
If Quarter Horses are cousins, Standardbreds are second cousins.

Pan Zareta · Postby **Pan Zareta** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 1:17 pm

xfactor fan wrote:If Quarter Horses are cousins, Standardbreds are second cousins.

That's more or less what testing of the 50K SNP chip suggested. See Figure 5, this study.

xfactor fan · Postby **xfactor fan** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 11:31 am

Thanks for posting that link PZ.

However I've got a question. They refer to "Twilight" several times, as a possible genetic wild card . Is Twilight a particular horse, or a gene? Seems to be a horse from context.

Thanks.

Pan Zareta · Postby **Pan Zareta** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 3:06 pm

Twilight's the TB mare whose DNA was used for the whole genome sequencing.
See: http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Horsemap/hgphorses.html

vineyridge · Postby **vineyridge** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 4:11 pm

In the article that PZ just cited

In one of the tables, they have different colored circles for each one of the horses that they tested, color being determined by breed. Most of the breeds were very tightly clustered, which I guess indicates that they are closely related to each other.

Then they had their 7 "discovery" horses which are indicated by triangles of the same color as the circles for the breeds that had discovery horses. Those triangles are often quite a distance from the clusters of circles.

Twilight is very, very far away from the rest of the TBs and is indicated by a blue star. She's way off to the bottom right.

What are they trying to say with that?

Pan Zareta · Postby **Pan Zareta** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 8:43 pm

Twilight's indicated by a blue asterisk to distinguish her from the TB "discovery" whose blue triangle is obscured by blue circles unless you zoom in on Fig. 3. The fact that she's at a pair-wise extreme may reflect the fact that Twilight was extremely inbred, deliberately so. (They wanted to map the horse genome from a sample with a high rate of homozygosity.)

vineyridge · Postby **vineyridge** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 7:42 am

What is Twilight's pedigree? Is she in the database?

Pan Zareta · Postby **Pan Zareta** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 12:20 pm

vineyridge wrote:What is Twilight's pedigree? Is she in the database?

Pedigree unpublished/unknown. If she's actually registered, it's not as "Twilight".

Jeff · Postby **Jeff** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 8:30 pm

Anybody got a shetland pony they want to critique the pedigree? aren't they little trotters like standard breds?

Myself, I couldn't give a rip about anything but thoroughbred pedigrees, but looks like the allbreed site and thoroughbred site are amalgamating these days.

Jeff

Jeff · Postby **Jeff** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 8:44 pm

Maybe the moderators could move this thread over to the allbreed site, it doesn't belong here on the thoroughbred site.

Jeff

Postby **Roguelet** » Wed Aug 15, 2012 7:22 am

Jeff wrote:Maybe the moderators could move this thread over to the allbreed site, it doesn't belong here on the thoroughbred site.

Jeff

This thread contains plenty of TB discussion; leaving it here isn't a problem. Also, just FYI, this forum is in no way connected to the all-breed forum; it is not possible to move threads or posts back and forth between the two.