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It's a small world
The globalisation of thoroughbred breeding is not a new thing, writes Ciaran Doran
AMONGST THE MANY ATTRACTIONS at the various Disney theme parks across the globe, one that shall forever be etched in my memory is “It’s A Small World!”.
The unforgettable titular earworm aside, the lasting message of the attraction is that for as many different cultures exist around the world, there are common threads which serve to unite seemingly unrelated peoples.
Such a point seems like a weird introduction to an article about racehorse breeding, but racing does not exist in a vacuum sealed away from the rest of society.
Indeed, much as societies and cultures evolve over time so, too, does racing. The drivers of societal change are numerous, but one factor which has driven cultural convergence to some extent over time has been economic globalisation.
International racing and breeding have not developed independently of this globalisation either; as economies across the globe have become increasingly intertwined, the world of horseracing has followed suit.
The inter-connected nature of the equine world has manifested itself in various ways over the years; one could point to owners having their horses trained in “foreign” countries for many years –the US industrialist Charles W. Engelhard Jr and his fellow countryman Paul Mellon were the proprietors of the 1970 and 1971 consecutive Derby winners, the Irish-trained Nijinsky and the British-trained Mill Reef.
The impact of Taylor’s Canadian homebreds on the pedigrees of today’s thoroughbreds is not solely confined to Northern Dancer
Of course, the globalisation of horseracing extends beyond the realm of just individuals, elite horses have also been the product of an increasingly integrated world.
For instance, take the new 2025 sire Auguste Rodin.
The Irish-bred winner of the 2023 Derby, he is a son of perhaps the greatest Japanesebred to ever grace the Turf in Deep Impact.
Though he was born and reared in the Land of the Rising Sun, Deep Impact bore no Japanese ancestry.
His Irish-bred dam Wind In Her Hair (1994 Oaks runner-up and 1995 Grade 1 Aral-Pokal champion) was transferred to Japan early on in her breeding career as was Deep Impact’s US-bred sire Sunday Silence who, in spite of his rags-to-riches journey from yearling pariah to Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Breeders’ Cup Classic hero, was deemed surplus to requirements by the US breeding industry.
Sunday Silence was the son of a fellow American-bred stallion Halo, and his sire, Hail To Reason was a son of an Irish-bred stallion in Turn-To.
Extending the sire-line further, Royal Charger was the British-bred sire of Turn- To, while the Italian-bred Nearco was the father of Royal Charger.
Nearco was himself the son and grandson of two British-bred stallions in Pharos and Phalaris.
Evidently, Auguste Rodin’s sire-line has taken a rather circuitous route over the last century, with the line wandering through five different jurisdictions with a pit-stop in Ireland before eventually returning to the Emerald Isle.
The international impact on elite thoroughbred pedigrees is not just confined to Europe, the US, and Japan, though.
One of racing’s great breeders, E.P. Taylor ensured that the CAN suffix is an almost universal presence in the pedigrees of modern-day Euro superstars.
As far as graduates of the Taylor breeding dynasty go, Northern Dancer stands out as his magnum opus, with the first-ever Canadian-bred winner of the Kentucky Derby generally regarded as one of racing’s all-time great stallions.
The son of another Canadian-bred Windfields Farm alumnus in Nearctic “the little horse who could” and Taylor combined the two to produce other Canadian breedshapers in Nijinsky, Storm Bird, and The Minstrel, ably assisted by the doyen of the Irish training ranks, Vincent O’Brien.
The impact of Taylor’s Canadian homebreds on the pedigrees of today’s thoroughbreds is not solely confined to Northern Dancer and his sons, however.
Raise The Standard, the Hoist The Flag half-sister to Northern Dancer, is perhaps most commonly remembered these days as the dam of Coup De Folie, the second dam of Machiavellian, Exit To Nowhere, Coup De Genie and Orpen.
Beaten into second in the 2,000 Guineas having gone off favourite, Machiavellian’s 1990 Newmarket disappointment bore a passing resemblance to New Approach’s narrow defeat in the 2008 renewal of the mile Classic.
Somewhat coincidentally, New Approach was also the product of a Taylor family, as was his one-time stablemate and Dewhurst predecessor, Teofilo. New Approach’s trans-Atlantic origins can be traced to his Taylor-bred second dam Matcher via his Phoenix Champion Stakes-winning dam Park Express, while Teofilo’s third dam Victorian Queen was another to have graced Windfields Farm, herself by a stallion of Taylor’s in Victoria Park.
That said, there is more to Canadian breeding’s enduring legacy than just the remarkable E.P. Taylor.
Awesome Again, winner of the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Classic, was bred in Canada by Frank Stronach, while the horse’s sire Deputy Minister was also born and reared in the Great White North.
Mind you, Taylor’s reach is still inescapable – Vice Regent, another Taylor-bred son of Northern Dancer, was responsible for siring Deputy Minister, further showcasing just how profound Eddie Taylor’s influence on international breeding had become.
Of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention that the influence of the Americas on modern international pedigrees goes beyond just North America.
His dam was the racemare Nogara, who had won the Italian 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas and was Italian champion filly at ages two and three.
In 1934, breeder Tesio wished to breed Nogara to the leading English sire Fairway, but was unable to obtain a nomination.
Therefore, Tesio chose to breed Nogara to Fairway’s full-brother Pharos.
Lord At War, the multiple Grade 1-winning Argentinian-bred paternal grandson of Brigadier Gerard, was the damsire of the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby runner-up Pioneerof The Nile, the sire of the U S Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Perhaps the most significant stallion to emerge from the Argentinian breeding world though was Forli – the sire of the three-time
American Horse of the Year Forego. Forli was particularly admired by Vincent O’Brien, and his son Thatch was trained at Ballydoyle.
In 1973 the forays across the Irish Sea bore fruit for Thatch and connections with Group 1 wins in the St. James’s Palace Stakes, the July Cup, and the Sussex Stakes. Fordham, another son of Forli, claimed the 1979 Joe McGrath Memorial Stakes.
Argentina’s name itself is ultimately derived from the Latin for silver, but O’Brien struck gold when it came to the progeny of Forli, and these days the stallion is an integral part of many European pedigrees.
His daughter Special inspired a bidding war at the 1978 Keeneland Yearling Sale for her Northern Dancer colt, and it was a owner Stavros Niarchos who left Keeneland with a future elite stallion in Nureyev.
His dam was the racemare Nogara, who had won the Italian 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas and was Italian champion filly at ages two and three.
In 1934, breeder Tesio wished to breed Nogara to the leading English sire Fairway, but was unable to obtain a nomination.
Therefore, Tesio chose to breed Nogara to Fairway’s full-brother Pharos.
Argentina’s name itself is ultimately derived from the Latin for silver, but O’Brien struck gold when it came to the progeny of Forli, and these days the stallion is an integral part of many European pedigrees.
His daughter Special inspired a bidding war at the 1978 Keeneland Yearling Sale for her Northern Dancer colt, and it was a owner Stavros Niarchos who left Keeneland with a future elite stallion in Nureyev.
Of course, Forli’s biggest Irish fan would soon see his steadfast faith in the bloodlines of the Argentinian-bred stallion justified way beyond the scope of even his wildest imagination – Nureyev’s three-parts sister, Fairy Bridge would produce Fairy King, Perugino, Tate Gallery and, most famously of all, Sadler’s Wells.
The influence of Argentinian breeding on international pedigrees in the latter half of the 20th century is not just limited to Forli and Lord At War, however.
Montparnasse (ARG) was the damsire of Wishing Well (USA), the dam of the aforementioned American emigré Sunday Silence, while Endeavour (ARG) was the paternal grand-sire of Fall Aspen, the dam of Timber Country, Hamas, Fort Wood, Northern Aspen and Colorado Dancer and the second dam of Dubai Millennium, Elnadim, Mehthaaf and Medaaly amongst others.
Across the world, Fall Aspen’s family is one with few equals in terms of its depth but there does exist one family which could claim superiority, namely the forebears and descendants of Allegretta.
Allegretta was herself British-bred but she was the end product of decades upon decades of Teutonic breeding, with the Von Oppenheims, followed by the Von Ullmanns, assiduously cultivating her family over time at Gestüt Schlenderhan near Cologne.
From Anatevka to Almyra and then from Alameda down to Asterblute, Allegretta’s female family is entirely German.
What’s more, her sire, Lombard was also bred in Germany.
TRYING TO DO JUSTICE to the sheer quality of Allegretta’s family within the confines of this article is an exercise that is doomed to fail.
That said, anytime a horse powers his or her way to middle-distance Group 1 glory in Europe, Allegretta and by extension German breeding, almost assuredly follow when one looks at the winning pedigree.
Her daughter Urban Sea and grandsons Galileo and Sea The Stars need no introduction, but Allegretta’s legacy can also be found elsewhere – amongst her vast treasure trove of descendants are King’s Best, Anabaa Blue, Torquator Tasso, Masar, Black Sam Bellamy, Tamayuz, Santiago, Eshaada, Anzillero, and two 2024 European Group 1 winners in Los Angeles and Twain.
And one more thing unites Galileo, Sea The Stars, Anabaa Blue, Torquator Tasso, Masar, Black Sam Bellamy, Santiago, Eshaada and Los Angeles – all nine hail from the sire-line of Nearco (ITA).
Bred by one of racing’s great minds in Federico Tesio, Nearco would later sire Nasrullah, Dante, Nimbus, Mossborough, Masaka, Hafiz, and, of course, Nearctic.
And this neatly links us back to the influence of Canadian breeding on modern pedigrees as it was through Nearctic though that Nearco’s sire-line has not only survived but thrived into the modern era.
Nearco may have been Tesio’s most successful stallion, but his best racehorse was probably Ribot, winner in 1955 and 1956 of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Ribot was one of a select few to have won two renewals of France’s most prestigious race – the only colt to achieve the same feat since was Alleged, a great-grandson of Ribot’s via Tom Rolfe and Hoist The Flag.
The great tragedy of Ribot’s exploits though was that Tesio did not get the chance to see them as Ribot made his rcing debut as a juvenile shortly after Tesio’s death in 1954. That said, Ribot’s achievements added a poignant postscript to the legacy of one of the world’s greatest breeders.
Just as Italy’s lasting impact on breeding, the influence of other jurisdictions on international pedigrees cannot be dismissed.
Justify, one of the most progressive stallions at the moment, is by Scat Daddy a paternal grandson of Hennessy via Johannesburg; Hennessy’s damsire was the South African-bred Hawaii. Justify’s pedigree also retains a small but distinct Gallic hue – the French-bred Blushing Groom was the damsire of Deputy Minister, himself the paternal grand-sire of Justify’s damsire, Ghostzapper.
Antipodean breeding should hardly go unmentioned either, and the relationship between the pedigrees of European horses and those Down Under is perhaps best illustrated by the 2022 Prince of Wales’s victor State Of Rest who, while Irish-bred, is a son and grandson of Australian-breds in Starspangledbanner and Choisir, the latter a son of the Irish-bred Danehill Dancer.
No matter where you look, the crosspollination of pedigrees between different countries is ever-present, and has been for a long time. As the world becomes increasingly globalised, whether through social media or economic integration, the world of horseracing binds ever tighter.
In the wake of City Of Troy’s 2024 Derby win, MV Magnier spoke of Coolmore’s desire to make the breeding world a smaller, more inter-connected place. Irrespective of how successful this endeavour proves to be, one thing above all else remains true, top-class equine pedigrees around the world have to a degree converged at the same time as the world has grown ever closer and ever tighter. Disney was right: it really is a small, small world.
