Thoroughbred horse
Guilt by Association
We recently ran an article by Anne Hambleton titled “Thoroughbreds: Kings of the Hunting Field.” The article received many enthusiastic Comments and was posted by readers through the social media. Yet despite all the enthusiasm and warm feelings the article generated for this majestic breed, one Thoroughbred retirement organization may have lost the support of an important donor.
Anne wrote about some famous race horses—Steppenwolfer, McDynamo, Lonesome Glory, Private Attack, Buck Jakes—who found second homes in the hunting field. Those horses loved foxhunting, and their riders, sitting atop a fleet, supremely athletic, and bottomless horse that moves like a cloud would have it no other way. Anne made a case for the breed, and she also encouraged foxhunters to look at some of the wonderful candidates available at the many Thoroughbred rescue organizations.
One major retirement organization mentioned the Foxhunting Life article on their Facebook page and proudly told of some of the racetrack retirees they have successfully re-homed for second careers as field hunters. They received several positive responses, then heard from a long-time major donor who left a negative comment about foxhunting being a cruel sport and threatened to stop donating to the organization. Guilt by association.
Thoroughbred Market in Doldrums
The market for even well-bred Thoroughbreds has suffered substantially since the global market crash of 2008. “The old million-dollar horse is now a $500,000 horse,” said Geoffrey Russell, Director of Sales at Keeneland. In the first session of the September Yearling Sales this year, the two highest selling colts went off at $1.4 and $1.2 million. On the second night, a filly went for one million dollars and another for $750,000. After two days of sales, the gross and the median prices for 2011 compared to 2010 were substantially the same, but the third session ended better, showing a twenty percent increase over last year. For more details, click here. Posted September 14, 2011
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Why This Foxhunter Cares About Horseracing
Karen L. Myers photo
Over the past couple of months we have run a few News items about the Triple Crown season, kicked off just last Saturday by the Kentucky Derby. We wrote about Uncle Mo, who many in the Thoroughbred industry hoped would be a legitimate Triple Crown contender and breathe new life into the industry. We wrote about Rosie Napravnik who with nearly one thousand wins to her credit hoped to be the first woman to win the Kentucky Derby. True, this isn’t foxhunting, and the question arises whether or not I should be publishing these stories in Foxhunting Life. Why do I?
My answer is because that’s where our great horses come from. The Thoroughbred is the elite athlete of the equine world, and many of our field hunters are off-the-track Thoroughbreds, Thoroughbred crosses, or have Thoroughbred bloodlines in their foundation stock.
If when you take to the field you care at all about grace, generosity, and/or athleticism, you have to thank those bloodlines and those beautiful dreamers—the breeders, trainers, owners, and jocks—who commit their lives, their fortunes, and all their energies to the mostly unforgiving quest of producing a better racehorse. And except for one happy outcome last Saturday, weren’t the hopes of many of those beautiful dreamers cruelly dashed?
