News | Horse Racing Free Tips

Study: Did Thoroughbreds Really Descend From Arabians?

One of the hard and fast rules of the Thoroughbred breed is that a registered horse must have descended from one of three foundation sires: The Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian, or the Byerley Turk. A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests those stallions might not have been Arabians at all.

The study, led by Ben Shykind of Prevail Therapeutics and Elissa J. Cosgrove and Raheleh Sadeghi of Cornell University examined the genetic makeup of 378 Arabian horses from 12 different countries to see how Arabians related to other horse breeds and found “no significant genomic contribution of the Arabian breed to the Thoroughbred racehorse, including Y chromosome ancestry.”

However, the study did find “strong evidence” of Thoroughbred blood in recent generations for Arabians used in flat racing.

The three foundation stallions that are the basis of the modern Thoroughbred were imported to England from the Middle East in the early decades of the 1700s. However, analysis of Y chromosome haplotypes (genes inherited from a single parent) for the Darley Arabian found his lineage actually traces back to the extinct Turkoman horse, an ancient breed from the Middle East and Central Asia under the same grouping of “Oriental Horse” breeds as Arabians, but a different offshoot.

The study does not doubt the existence of Thomas Darley's stallion purchased from the Middle East who went on to shape the modern Thoroughbred, but it does suggest that “its breed was likely of yet unknown genetic origin,” and that the horse's nomenclature carried on the idea that the horse was indeed an Arabian, thus his descendants sprung from that breed. Doubts about the true genetic origin of the Thoroughbred breed, it is noted in the study, were brought up two decades ago in Alexander Mackay-Smith's book “Speed and the Thoroughbred: The Complete History.”

In plotting the 378 horses included in the study by their use – including endurance racing, flat racing, and showing – the 34 Arabians used for flat racing shared the most genetic makeup with Thoroughbreds, while those bred for show purposes traced back to the Egyptian branch of the Arabian breed, and endurance runners tracked with the Polish wing. The researchers found genomic segments in racing Arabians tracing back to Thoroughbreds ranging from two percent up to 62 percent, with some near-full length chromosomes coming from Thoroughbreds.

Five of the 10 male Arabian racehorses traced directly back to the Byerley Turk though their Y chomosomes. Another three shared Whalebone, a significant Thoroughbred sire in the early 1800s, as a common ancestor.

“The presence of Thoroughbred-specific Y chromosome haplogroups among Arabian racehorses indicates that the large chromosomal blocks of Thoroughbred origin detected in flat racing Arabian horses are likely derived, at least in part, from crosses with Thoroughbred stallions that occurred after the emergence of the “Whalebone” haplotype in the 1800s,” the study reads.

Read more about the study, Genome Diversity and the Origin of the Arabian Horse, here.

The post Study: Did Thoroughbreds Really Descend From Arabians? appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Diversity in Racing: Jason Wilson

As many people in the United States and around the world question their personal views on diversity and racial inclusion, we decided to look inwardly on our industry, and we found it wanting. So we asked a tough question to several industry members- How do we make racing at its highest level more diverse?

JASON WILSON, President and COO of Equibase

I am keenly aware that I am the only African-American in the executive ranks of horse racing. I used to joke that Equibase’s advertising meeting was the most diverse meeting in racing (only one of seven members is a white male). Sadly, any meeting I am in is probably the most diverse meeting in horse racing.

There is more to say on this topic than can be printed in one issue of the TDN. Diversity encompasses a broad range of activities. It includes hiring, employee development, corporate culture, and those with whom we do business (fans, owners, and vendors). I will focus my comments on hiring.

The starting point should be to ask why we want to encourage diversity. There are a whole host of reasons, but I will mention the one that should appeal to everyone: Diverse companies are more profitable. McKinsey & Company has studied the performance of diverse companies three times over the past five years, and each time reinforced the hypothesis that diverse companies greatly outperform non-diverse companies, and the greater the representation, the higher the likelihood of outperformance. Moreover, in each of the three studies, the likelihood of outperformance continues to be higher for diversity in ethnicity than in gender. The diversity winners are adopting systematic, business-led approaches to diversity and inclusion, and the results are 36% greater profitability for those that are ethnically diverse and 25% for those that are gender diverse. (Full results of the study here).

Companies need to have a commitment to diversity and meaningful accountability. Early in my career, I was in-house counsel at a growing tech company in Silicon Valley. I raised my hand to chair a diversity task force to increase diversity at the company. After several months of work, the consultant that we hired to help us sat me down and said, “Listen, everybody here means well, but I do not sense that there is an organizational commitment to diversity. Until this becomes the fabric of key performance indicators, performance reviews, and compensation structures, very little will change.” So it requires more than good intentions. It requires the same rigor that we bring to the rest of our business.

Next, we need to look at our hiring practices. I have often heard that we need to hire somebody with racing or horse experience for any given role. That reduces the available talent pool and is a built-in impediment to any diversity. I can point to a handful of people who I work with that came to the sport without any industry experience and have flourished. Rather than recruit primarily from our networks, look to establish alternative pipelines for talent: create scholarships and recruit at historically black colleges and universities and establish internships to give a range of younger people exposure to racing. Equibase and other companies affiliated with The Jockey Club are looking at these strategies.

Honest conversations about diversity are uncomfortable. An incredibly talented and successful college classmate of mine, Mellody Hobson, gave a TED talk on this topic. I encourage anyone interested in the future of the sport to watch it. I also encourage anyone who is interested in speaking about this topic to reach out to me at jwilson@equibase.com.

Do you have an idea that you would be willing to share for this series? Email the TDN’s Katie Ritz at katieritz@tdn.com.

The post Diversity in Racing: Jason Wilson appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

At Almost 20 Years Old, Exploding Star Returns Home

As a yearling, Exploding Star (Exploit) showed all the early potential to become a successful racehorse. Her dam Star Minister (Deputy Minister) won the 1992 GII Cotillion H. at Philadelphia Park and claimed six additional stakes races over her three-year career. Her half-brother, Concerned Minister (Concern), also won several black-type races.

Exploding Star was purchased as a yearling at the 2002 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Sale by the late F. Eugene Dixon Jr. for $450,000.

After three career starts where she ran in the money twice, Exploding Star retired under the same ownership, and began her broodmare career at Claiborne Farm. She spent nine years at Claiborne, and was then sold in 2014 at the Keeneland November Sale for $18,000.

Six years later, Claiborne found out that this mare, who had once called their farm home, had ended up in the wrong hands and was in a kill pen in Texas. They immediately sprang into action.

Claiborne’s Client Relations and Sales Manager Jill Gordon relayed the story.

“Our assistant broodmare manager Mary Ormsby was made aware that Exploding Star was in a kill pen,” she said. “She was instrumental in organizing and coordinating Exploding Star’s return back to the farm.”

After completing a period of quarantine in Texas, Exploding Star returned to Claiborne Farm this month.

“Although thin, she returned to the farm in good health,” Gordon said. “She is doing well and is putting weight on daily here at the farm.”

Exploding Star will live out the rest of her days in retirement at Claiborne, the farm where she has spent more of her life than any other one place, sharing bluegrass pasture with fellow broodmare retirees and, as Gordon said, “being spoiled by the farm’s staff.”

“At Claiborne, we strongly believe that if you take care of the horse, the horse will take care of you,” Gordon said. “We are dedicated to the horses that we breed and raise, and this mare had strong ties to the farm through the late Mr. Dixon. It made sense for us to jump into action, just as we believe the majority of other operations would have, had they been in our position.”

The post At Almost 20 Years Old, Exploding Star Returns Home appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Under-Tack Show Starts Wednesday

The three-day under-tack show ahead of next week’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale begins Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. The breeze show continues with sessions Thursday and Friday. The auction will be held next Monday and Tuesday. A total of 563 juveniles have been catalogued for the sale and bidding begins each day at 11 a.m.

Fasig-Tipton will debut its new online bidding platform for the auction and has also increased phone bidding capacity. To register for online bidding, visit http://bidonline.fasigtipton.com.

The sales company will also be utilizing a new repository system for the auction with a cloud-based system, the Asteris Keystone Repository, allowing attending veterinarians to review radiographs remotely, instead of having to do so on the sales grounds.

The Midlantic sale, originally scheduled for May, produced its most recent Grade I winner when 2019 graduate Gamine (Into Mischief) won the GI Acorn S. last Saturday. The filly topped last year’s sale when bringing a final bid of $1.8 million.

The post Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Under-Tack Show Starts Wednesday appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post