Aga Khan calls for rethink on stallions

Lydia Hislop13 April 2012

The Aga Khan hopes to avert a crisis caused by short-term commercialism in the racehorse breeding industry by targetting so-called 'unfashionable' stallions in future bloodstock policy.

Britain's leading owner on the Flat last season - due largely to Sinndar's Derby victory and Kalanisi's Dubai Champion Stakes success - urged his fellow breeders to make stallion selections "which may seem to many unwise or unconventional" in order to ensure the future survival of their bloodstock operations.

"While the market becomes more and more polarised towards big commercial operations, first-season sires and a handful of 'top' stallions, the breeder with long-term goals - other than commercial gain - will have to defy this trend," he said.

Speaking as guest of honour at last night's Thoroughbred Association annual awards dinner, the Aga Khan hit out at the "over-use of certain stallions" which he argued would "dilute beyond recognition" the role of female lines in thoroughbred pedigrees through sheer force of numbers.

If too many mares are bred to too few stallions, top-class lineages run the risk of inbreeding while others die out, thus magnifying any faults rather than strengthening the breed. This is becoming a worldwide problem as prolific stallions such as Danehill have been used in both the northern and southern hemispheres in the same year.

Last year, Europe's leading sire Sadler's Wells covered a massive book of 196 mares, while his son Saddlers' Hall - pitched as a dual-purpose sire for both Flat and National Hunt racing - was bred to an incredible 395 mares.

The Aga Khan condemned the trend for "limitless" books of mares as "unpredictable and undesirable".

He announced that over the next five years, an Aga Khan Studs database, to be updated daily, will be established in order that the problem of stallion over-use can be addressed within his operation.

The growing trend of flooding unproven, first-season sires with large numbers of mares was also highlighted.

Last year Orpen - who took the Group One Prix Morny as a two-year-old but failed to win a race at three - covered 160 mares whereas stallions such as the Aga Khan's 1988 2,000 Guineas winner Doyoun, sire of Breeders' Cup Turf heroes Daylami and Kalanisi, was sold to Turkey in 1999 due to lack of demand for his services.

Meanwhile, Unsinkable Boxer, touted as a likely dark horse to win the past two Cheltenham Gold Cups, will have his first run this weekend since pulling up in the 1999 renewal of the Festival's blue riband event.

The gelding left Martin Pipe's yard that season to join Francois Doumen in France but is now in the care of Point-to-Point trainer Louise Alner, daughter of 1998 Gold Cupwinning handler, Robert.

Unsinkable Boxer again has a Gold Cup entry this year, but his primary target is the Cheltenham Festival's Christie's Foxhunter Chase over the same trip.

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