Adrian Wallace

‡ Gunite: Perhaps Something, if not Everything As regular readers know well, durability has been degraded in American Thoroughbred racehorses over the past several decades. There are multiple contributing factors, including, of course, genetics. In my most recent post, I discussed a filly named The Queens M G, which broke down recently in her ninth career start. Though no horse is destined to suffer a serious injury, or experience an abbreviated racing career, it is not difficult to identify at least some horses that are at higher risk of such outcomes, as I did with The Queens M G, based in part on her pedigree, seven months before her final start. Gunite, a young sire whose first foals are being born this year, has quite a different profile than horses like The Queens M G, so I decided to take a look into his pedigree, and the results are interesting. He raced 21 times, from ages two through four, and finished his career with a good second in the Breeders' Cup Sprint. His sire, Gun Runner, raced 22 times, from ages two through five, and recorded a victory in a Grade I race in his final start, suggesting strongly that he could have contested more races, had he been kept in training. It's a bit too early to judge his influence on durability as a sire, but I would say that he is showing promise. Gunite's dam, Simple Surprise, raced 15 times. His second-dam, Simplify, started 22 times, and his third-dam, Classic Olympio, raced 19 times. His dam-sire, Cowboy Cal, also started 19 times. While none of those individual numbers are extraordinarily impressive, especially given that 50 years ago the average American racehorse recorded ~30 career starts, the consistent display of durability relative to contemporary standards (i.e. an average of ~15 career starts), is notable. Even more meaningful is the contrast of such numbers to horses that are bred to be brittle, like the aforementioned The Queens M G. Broadly speaking, perhaps the four most important genetic influences of a given horse are its sire, dam, second-dam, and dam-sire. Here is a comparison between Gunite and The Queens M G, based on the aggregate number of starts made by those four influences: Gunite – 75 Queens M G – 19 So, what are arguably Gunite's four most important genetic influences, raced an average of 19 times, while those of The Queens M G averaged a tick less than 5 starts. Thats a 4x difference. Not one of those close ancestors of The Queens M G raced more than 9 times, while not one of Gunite's made less than 15 starts. This is an illustration of what I have been banging on about for many years, namely that when dubiously sound mares are bred to sires of a similar profile, elevated risks of injury, and truncated careers, are often the result. Steve Asmussen is quoted in the embedded advert as saying that Gunite "is everything horse racing needs right now". I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that his race record and pedigree suggest that he might be expected to infuse some badly needed durability into the breed, and that certainly is something.