Recently I was asked to give a mating recommendation for the good mare, Sulu Sea. I have to admit that she was a racehorse who I knew virtually nothing about. I had no idea how “good” she was. After completing some basic research, I concluded that If you’re capable of finishing within a length of the winner of the Wellington Cup, you’re a pretty handy racehorse.
I quickly discovered that Sulu Sea had two unusual qualities. Firstly, the further she went, the better she performed and, secondly, her pedigree could kindly be described as unremarkable.
Sweet Orange, Duelled, Desert Fox…it’s not until we get back to Sulu Sea’s third dam that we find a stallion one could describe as successful – the Sadler’s Wells horse, Scenic.
So where to from here? The first thing breeders need to do is to figure out what sort of distance aptitude they want their foal to have. When you have a good class staying mare, there’s not a lot of point sending her to a pure sprinter. You need to try to produce a stayer that is better than Mum. The best way of doing this is by trying to identify those aspects of the mare’s pedigree that led to her being who she is.
The challenge with Sulu Sea is that the influences she is predominately inbred to – Danzig and Mr Prospector – are anything but stamina influences. So what’s going here? Clearly, Danzig and Mr Prospector have had very little influence on the production of this mare, so is there a pedigree influence which is positively linked to producing high-class stamina?
The answer is a resounding “yes”. You’ve got to track a wee way back, but there are no fewer than eight Princequillo strains in this pedigree. The great Sir Tristram is inbred to Princequillo, a U.S bred stallion who has been hugely influential in the development of the thoroughbred.
So I’d recommend that the owners of this mare find a stallion strong in Princequillo. He’s a stallion you can inbreed to without undue conformational or temperamental risks.
Now it’s up to the owners. How much money do they want to spend? What conformational factors are relevant? And, of course, temperament is always crucial.
