Some thoughts about the Native Dancer bs being the reason

for the unsoundness in the breed and the reason the Eight Belles and Barbaro's breakdown.

Here is a note from a friend in KY who is a leading pedigree expert and has made a good
living planning matings that have been wildly successful such as Kona Gold, and a few
graded stakes winners we trained in our barn.

"It takes 68 billion - 68 billion- ancestors to fill a 35 generation pedigree. Some occur
hundreds of thousands of time. Thirty five generations is about where we are forward of
recorded pedigrees. To say that one out of many is the source of any attribute is probably
anecdotal at best.

Certainly horses are less sound today in general - hell, the water table is poisoned and the
air will kill you. It nets smaller fields "supported" by drug therapy which only masks
underlying conditions while causing higher attrition and anybody using steroids should
be ruled off for life.

The gd media is compelled to fan any flame. And PETA must require no traceable IQ, or at
least a year of therapy, for membership. Between the media and any such willing outfit as
peta, they can convince the "normal" masses that any situation is so terrible, they should
never leave home again."

I will add his name to this post if I receive permission from him today.

He's the best, in my opinion, in what he does. And he cares deeply about what is happening
to the breed.

He is saying that the idea that Native Dancer genes were responsible for these breakdowns
is uninformed BS.

it is a fairly meaningless one given the current population of horses. Since all thouroughbreds can be traced back to four sires three hundred years ago there must have been an awful lot of inbreeding to make up for the 68 billion missing horses, no?

out of so many is not accurate.

Native Dancer is also present in most of the sound horses that never break down also.

with Eight Belles is: was she an unsound horse? We need to put the pedigree chart down and just look at the horse. She didn't look unsound to me. She was a better physical specimen than any other horse in the Derby in my opinion. Nice big strong filly. Raced at 2 and 3 with no problems.

Was her breakdown caused by some genetic charicteristic she inherited from some stallion 5 and 6 generations back? Or was some enviromental factor the cause? Or did she just take a bad step? A theory about some mysteriouly prepotent stallion in the far reaches of a horse's pedigree is garbage. The dam and the sire determine the physical characteritcs of a horse not the "blood" of some ancestor that, by the way, was not unsound himself and got a lot of sound horses.

I know you want to talk about inbreeding. I'm really an amateur geneticist so I can only go by the what the real experts tell us. And from all I know from the literature inbreeding is really not germane to the discussion. Think of this: if it was Native Dancer, why didn't most of his horses break down? His sons and daughters were made up of 50% Native Dancer genes. We know that for sure. And of his horses that broke down how many of them broke down because of genes they inherited from the dam?

It's not as simple as the press is trying to make this sound. Nor is what they are saying true.

:thumbsup:

Its all part of a flawed mindset that the general population has that if something bad happens it cannot be an accident..There must be a reason--ie a conspiracy. Part of that Right Stuff idea.
Its surprising how many people cannot understand that sometimes..to put it simply--shit happens.

From The Blood Horse:
In the wake of two highly publicized catastrophic racetrack injuries since May 2006, questions and opinions regarding the safety of Thoroughbred racehorses have been generated and propagated by fans, the media, and animal rights groups.

“The entire equine industry is saddened over the loss of Eight Belles and Barbaro, but we are not idly standing by," emphasized Dr. C. Wayne McIlwraith, director of orthopaedic research at Colorado State University. "For years we have been aggressively seeking methods to improving racing conditions to decrease the incidence of racetrack injuries.

“We have had two Welfare and Safety Summits in the past two years; however, we need to put many of our resolutions into effect to minimize the rate of both catastrophic and non-catastrophic injuries," McIlwraith continued.

http://news.bloodhorse.com/article/45152.htm

From The Handicapper's Edge:
I thought by the time I wrote this column I would have calmed down some regarding Saturday's events. But, alas, more steam than ever is coming from out of my ears.

BIG BROWN (Boundary) won the Kentucky Derby (G1) in a dominant performance and that should be what we are all talking about. Instead, he goes to the back burner. The tragic breakdown of runner-up Eight Belles (Unbridled's Song) is not only the headline in the racing industry but fodder for the talking heads on the all-news cable television stations.

Eight Belles did not have to break down, but all the ingredients for a recipe for disaster that we have seen far too many times were present and it was no surprise. Here's why and a little history lesson for those of you not old enough to have been around.

Ruffian ran her fatal match race on July 6, 1975. Two days earlier, a freak thunderstorm hit Belmont Park and the last race had to be canceled. The next day, Forego won the Brooklyn H. (G1) in track record time for 1 1/4 miles on a very hard racetrack. The next day, Ruffian battled Foolish Pleasure for three furlongs before shattering a leg.

http://www.brisnet.com/cgi-bin/editorial/article.cgi?id=11478