Is the time-, energy-, and money-intensive profession of horse breeding worth the faff? The answer appears to be yes—though less so than breeders might like
The most common explanation was that, physiologically speaking, it was increasingly difficult to breed a horse that ran faster than existing horses already do. The modern thoroughbred racing horse dates back at least three centuries. Perhaps the years of selective breeding had already discovered and exploited almost all of the breed’s genetic potential.
The answer appears to be yes—though less so than breeders might like. By linking a large performance database, containing nearly 700,000 race times recorded in Britain between 1995 and 2014, to a family tree of more than 76,000 horses, they found that speed is heritable, albeit weakly, and that breeding is improving it, but slowly.
When it comes to longer-distance races, it is not clear that times are improving. One reason, says Dr Sharman, may be that the genes that are good for sprinting do not necessarily make for good endurance athletes. Breeders seem to be selecting for sprint performance because it offers quicker commercial returns. Sprinters tend to start running at around two years old, long-distance horses at three.
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