Andrea Branchini provides a light-hearted response to the suggestion that the Irish Derby should be shortened, featuring an imagined conversation between two classic scholars in somewhat different fields. Yet while Cicero's questions are indeed imagined, Tesio's responses are direct quotes from his bloodstock bible Breeding the Racehorse.
Marcus Tullius Cicero: Senator Tesio, what do you think of this recent querelle started by Patrick Cooper's letter in the TDN about shortening the distance of that famous Classic race in Hibernia?
Federico Tesio: It is difficult to mathematically establish where speed ends and endurance begins. In other words, there is no specific point – a measured number of metres – where speed ends and endurance begins. It is all relative.
Cicero: What do you mean? Do you think that there is no quality difference between speed and endurance? You must know that, deep down, the whole argument about the Hibernian race is in fact about breeding for speed and/or breeding for endurance.
Tesio: Neither speed nor endurance will ever be integrally inherited because they are not integral or uniform characteristics but rather combinations of many original characteristics based on the law of probabilities.
Cicero: Yes, Senator, I understand, you are referring to those Mendel theories that you liked so much. So, in your opinion, speed and endurance are not really equivalents to the green and yellow peas used by the German abbot to explain and predict inheritance?
Tesio: Endurance does not exist in itself. It is only a variation, a step or a facet, of speed.
Cicero: Senator, please give me an example I can relate to. Think of me as you would of a simple spectator at the Circus Maximus.
Tesio: I myself have bred and trained a good horse, by the name of Bellini, with which I won the St Leger (2,800 metres) and Braune Ban (2,400 metres) in Munich, Germany. Bellini was certainly not a horse with endurance, but he had a tremendous burst of speed. If the course was not too severe and the jockey waited to push it to its best effort in the last 50 metres, then Bellini was undefeated – such was his speed in the last 50 metres. However, one metre more and he was beaten.
Cicero: Senator, are you saying that endurance – or stamina, as they call it nowadays – is just the ability to manage speed over distance?
Tesio: To win a steeplechase a horse must have speed, rather than mere endurance.
Cicero: Senator, I think you are on to something. In fact, all this makes me think of the most talented human athletes of today. Could it be that they just operate in sport markets they have found themselves in? That is: Usain Bolt chose the sprints, while the “human locomotive” Emil Zatopek opted for long distance races – but they might have excelled elsewhere no matter what. Same for football. Legendary Italian left-back Giacinto Facchetti could (and did) play as centreforward at times, and I am sure Lionel Messi would be a terrific fullback if that position was assigned to him. Not to speak of the brilliantly speed-endowed Dutch runner Sifan Hassan, who has recently triumphed in races from the mile to the marathon. You see, I watch television quite a bit here in heaven.
Tesio: Distance is nothing more than a form of manifestation of time. Aptitudes are not inherited.
Cicero: So, my dear fellow senator, is it all a dream to breed for speed?
Tesio: Nothing is certain when dealing with speed and endurance. There are only probabilities.
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