SPORTING NOTES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3771, 19 June 1936, Page 12

SPORTING NOTES

FROM NEAR AND FAR. PROGENY OF COLONIAL MARES. (By “ Backwood.”) For quite a number of years now the New Zealand breeder of thoroughbred horses has been influenced by popular clamour to concentrate almost exclusively on imported blood for breeding purposes. This may have been sound policy so far as imported sires was concerned, but their preeminence in siring first-class horses was assuredly in part due to the fact that colonial-bred sires were not given the same opportunities. The recently-defunct Acre was a striking example of what the colonial-bred sire can achieve, even though he was mated with very few highly-bred mares. Then there is the case of Heroic, top of the winning sires’ list in Australia again this season, not to mention Windbag, Spearfelt, and Others prominent in the list. It is interesting in this connection to note that a well-known Wanganui owner has taken up the cudgels in favour of colonial blood as applied to many of the thoroughbred mares. He maintains that, notwithstanding the success of a few imported mares, the best progeny of the following sires were out of the old local families: Martian (Sasanoff), Limond (Limerick), Nassau (Ballymena), Absurd (Thespian), All Black (Desert Gold), Quantock (Laughing Prince), Leighton (Cimabue), King John (Runnymede), Chief Ruler (Gold Rod), Night Raid (Phar Lap), Demosthenes (Amythas.l, Silverado (Silver Ring), Kilbroney (Kilboy), Hallowmas (Reremoana), Catmint (Prodice), Psychology (Cuddle), and Paladin (Chide). The writer contends that colonial sires also are leaving their mark, and their progeny have done remarkably well in handicaps this season. SPRINTERS AS SIRES. According to some opinions, breeding from sprinters must lead to the undermining of the constitution of the thoroughbred. “ Mankato,” the wellknown English breeding expert, recently wrote as follows in the London Sporting Life: “ In man and, to an • even greater degree in the racehorse, the sprinter is usually very robust in physique and sound in constitution. Running short distances does not make him less sound. In short, there is no correlation between speed and constitutional weakness. Many horses have won the Grand National which were sprinters on the flat, and not high-class ones at that. And horses which could not offer to stay a mile have sired the best steeplechasers in history. Again, scores and scores of thoroughbreds used as hunter sires and of half-breds generally have not been gifted with sufficient stamina to win any sort of a race, but there was nothing lacking in the constitution of their half-bred stock from the commonest of mares. It cannot be too widely known that various qualities and constitutional disabilities have independent transmission. Roaring, blood-vessel breaking, string-halt, shivering, defect in one or other of tl’.e important ductless glands are just as likely to appear in a stayer as in a sprinter. The Shire, Clydesdale, and Suffolk Punch are not furnished with the psychological traits which govern racing stamina. The fittest Shire’s muscle fibre becomes loaded with fatigue products after he has been made to gallop about a quarter of a mile at his best pace. But the same horse has a fine constitution, and will work daily for years in a coal cart or as a railway shunthorse.” PASTURAGE. It has been said that “ man is what he eats.” This applies still more to the thoroughbred horse. Many years ago it was recognised that one simply cannot raise good horses, sound in limb, wind, and constitution, on bad country. In discussing the vital importance of pasturage a London writer says: “ It is the stuff in the grass which matters, not the juggling with systems of breeding, which is ever a bit of a toss-up, and even something more if Lord Raglan is right. His lordship said that most pedigrees are fakes, but, fakes or not, where the thoroughbred horse is concerned it is the phosphates in the grass which count. The grazing in this country (England) and Ireland is superior to that in France or in other Continental countries, and the fact that we produce a finer stamp of animal than they do is traceable to this fact and most probably to no other.”