FROM WHICH PARENT ?

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 18, 22 January 1937, Page 13

FROM WHICH PARENT ?

PONTY'S STAMINA

FALLACY GF SIRE THEORY

It is a fairly common assertion that stamina in a horse is 80 per cent, at least inherited from the sire. If the sire is not stoutly bred and one 01 nis offspring should stay, then those who adhere to the sire theory simply place the exception in the residue of 20 per cent, or less. It is probably quite a fallacious theory, apparent rather than real,'for the segregation and partial recombination of hereditary factors is roiighly a fifty-fifty affair in bisexual life, at least in the-makeup of the genotype. It is interesting to note the application of the theory in the case of the latest Wellington Cup winner. Ponty. e To win a mile-and-a-half race of couriie does not necessarily mean that a horse has stamina in the highest sense. of the term, that is, that he could run two iniles at weight-for-age in. 3min 25sec or better. But a horse I who- can win as Ponty did on Wednesday' in 2min 32£ sec for a mile and a half on a dead track at least has a modicum of stamina, and it is even possible that he has true stamina. He has not yet been tried beyond U miles, and in his only earlier attempt at that distance in the A.RC. Handicap on New Year's Day. he finished fourth after pulling hard. In the Weilington Cup he rim on as well as anything and he did not appear at all distressed after the racePONTY'S SIRE. One of the reasons why Ponty was not fancied in. a Wellington Cup connection, outside of his apparently poor gallops prior to the meeting, was the fact that he was by fee Grosvenor sire Rosenor. Generally one would not expect Rosenor to leave staying stock. Brilliance was the feature of his own racing, and his career was rather a disappointing one, -for -.ne never won again in three seasons after scoring over seven furlongs a maiden race, at-his second outing. Still, when his pedigree is inspected, one notes that his own slre was a son of Cicero and the great Sceptre and a horse who could stay a middle distance; and his dam (Rosey) was a stoutly-bred mare. In all there* are no less than six Derby winners in the first fourteen names tabulated' in Rosenor's pedigree. • - It is probable that Rosenor, like so many imported, horses, never properly settled down to serious training: after his arrival from England. Thtn on going to the stud eight or nine years ago he did not receive a great many real His few offspring were -mainly of the sprinting variety. An exception was Osculate who, how ever, descended maternally _ fr™ a very stout family introduced into New Zealand in the eighties by the importation of Lady Emma from New South Wales by Mr. H. Robinson, who won-a Dunedin Cup with the mare and then sold her to Mr. (later the Hon.) George McLean, who won the same race again before putting her t0 Ponty is another such case as Osculate, but he is undoubtedly an even better horse and the best representative yet of his sire, who is now at the stud in Southland. It isquite probable that part of the ability to stay a mile and a half that Ponty possesses is acquired from Rosenor. as evidently is also his penchant to pull in many of his races; but part, ana possibly the greater manifest part, and the gift of his maternal ancestry, as it was with Osculate. , MERMAID DESCENT. Ponty descends from one of the stputest families in the New Zealand. Stud Book, the Mermaid branch of the No. 14 family. The debt of the New Zealand Turf to Mermaid would be difficult to assess. The Mermaid and Flora Mclvor (No. 18). families have been, the most prolific of winners in the Dominion's racing story. Any ftorae who can trace back to Mermaid will command -a price if he is sound ui limb, for they are nearly all winners. Ponty's dam, Sporting Girl, was by the Kilcheran horse Kilrain (a winner himself of the Wellington Cup) from Sporting Lady Warn also of th? jumpers Dan Russell and Speakeasy), by All Red from Merry-go-iiound, bv Gipsy Grand; from Whirlpool (dam of Grand Rapids, winner of the New Zealand Cup, etc., and sister to Ranee Nuna, ancestress of Cherubini, Rossini, Tannhaiiser, etc., and to Neva, dam of Danube), by St. George from Watersprite, by Traducer from Water witch, by Camden ttom Mermaid (imporied), by. King Torn. Strong sub-branches came off at Whirlpool, but Merry-gt~ Round, though she had several daughters, did not keep her sub-branch much in prominence, and except for jumpers and a few highweight win ners, such- as Sporting Girl was herself, it has remained for Ponty to rc establish the Merry-go-Round line of Mermaid. WHOSE EXCELLENCE? The stoutness of Sporting Girl's pedigree is obvipus from the names already, enumerated in her pedigree. The sire theorists would give all the credit to her for the excellence, which must now be admitted, of Ponty. In one sens'e the theorists may be right, for one would certainly not expect a horse with a measure of staying ability from a mating of Rosenor with a sprinting-pedigreed mare. But that would simply be piling up the hereditary sprinting factors in the pedigree of the offspring, and on the law of averages the mating would in 80 or 90 per cent, of cases result in purely a sprinter. It is similar when a staying sire is mated with a mare with mainly staying .factors in her pedigree, for then the law of averages would give a stayer-at a similar expectancy percentage. It is here that the fallacy lies of reading the records to prove that a horse. gets, say,. 80 per cent, of its stamina from its sire. It would be more correct to make it a fifty-fifty bequest of the parents, and in Ponty's case to attribute his worth in all its aspects to an even segregation and combination of the heredity factors of his sire and. dam, Rosenor and Sporting Lady .respectively. .. There has been no further mating of Sporting Lady with Rosenor to discover what a further result might be. With two such different types of parents," as it is assumed Rosenor and Sporting Lady are, the offspring would without much doubt be as different in type itself as Phar Lap was from his full-relatives. It is in that that the great gamble of breeding, and particularly out-breeding, lies. ; Messrs. E. and N. Rutherford, the owners of Ponty and his dam, sent Sporting Girl the year she foaled Ponty to Paper Money, and the result was a bay colt who has been named Banker's Choice, but who, now three years old, has not yet been raced. The next season Sporting Girl was spelled, but the following season she was mated with Hoylake and a bay colt arrived fifteen months ago. Again the mare was spelled, and this season her mate has heen Nightmarch. As Ponty himself was not first raced till a very late three-year-old, the policy of his owners may also be to allow the other offspring of Sporting Girl plenty of time, and it will therefore be most interesting to follow their careers when they do appear on th§ race track.