THE National Hunt hobby-breeder (and I sometimes wonder is there any other sort) enjoys the great luxury of being able to put personal opinions into practice, and provided he\she produces a nice horse, they will be judged by the two great arbiters – the market and the racecourse.

There is often a surprising disconnect between the one and the other, and I suspect that success in the market means that the breeder has successfully anticipated that year’s fashion, whereas racecourse success remains the ultimate goal and the highway to longterm success.

Failure in both requires the breeder to find a new hobby.

One of the most discussed topics among breeders is the relative merits of Irish and French National Hunt bloodstock. The French have now reached the stage where their best stock is more sought after than the Irish equivalent, at the sales and off the track.

How can this be, when we certainly have the best National Hunt stallions and the best land?

Some thoughts on the topic here are open to correction by those more expert on the matter, but may give rise to some useful discussion.

French advantage in strength of the mare herd

THE great advantage the French have is their racing structure. Their horses are broken as yearlings, pre-trained as two-year-olds and raced as three-year-olds.

Accordingly, there is a very short generation which facilitates improving the stock, as they are selected and culled at a much earlier age. A filly can easily make €100,000 in prize money and be retired to stud in the spring of her five-year-old year. (By contrast, under the Irish system, the equivalent mare is probably aged eight or nine).

The French prize money and premium system makes it economic for breeders to retain their best fillies and put them in training, find out which they are quickly, and start breeding from them to produce more of the same.

Irish breeder

The financial burden on the Irish breeder who wishes to do the same is enormous. It costs at least €30,000 to train a filly for a season and a half. There is little or no chance of winning that back in prize money, and this makes it more or less impossible for the owner-breeder to select and retain their best fillies for stud.

The temptation is to retire unraced thoroughbred fillies to stud. This creates an immediate random factor and lack of selection in the breeding process. Proven Irish racemares are often past the age at which they can be expected to produce vigorous stock when they retire to stud, and are unlikely to have more than a few foals, and therefore the quality of the Irish mare herd is declining rather than improving.

This can be evidenced by a quick glance at a Derby or Land Rover Sale catalogues. Only about 20% of the dams are blacktype and perhaps more than 50% are unraced. We try to compensate by having better (or at least better-performed) stallions, but ultimately I fear it is an unequal struggle.

We see also with the French pedigrees that there is invariably much more speed on the dam side. Very often there is flat blacktype in the first or second generation. This may explain why they can use what we would perceive to be inferior stallions and still produce the goods.

The dangers for us is that sometimes these stallions are perceived as being suitable for the Irish market and are imported here, usually with thoroughly disappointing results. It is easy to think of stallions which have been really successful in France, produced sale-topping stock in Ireland and have failed to equal their French success on the Irish and English racecourse.

Stallion hype

Of course one advantage of being able to use these less exalted racehorses as stallions due to their superior mare speed is that greater reliance can be placed on conformation and soundness in selecting such sires.

Another advantage is that genetic diversity can be maintained. Because of the strength of their mare herd, the French breeders also have the luxury of being able to ignore stallion hype. It seems that any reasonably conformed and reasonably performed racehorse will satisfy the French National Hunt breeder, and, with few exceptions, stallion fees are very much lower.

Walk In The Park stood in France for €3,000 and that was after he had produced Douvan and Min!

An interesting related development is the increasing reliance in France on a line breeding policy. Historically, National Hunt horses were notionally cross-bred and sired by a relatively high-class flat racehorse out of a jumping dam. This approach relies on the somewhat random assumption that the resulting progeny will have an aptitude for the conditions of National Hunt racing. It was necessary to maintain speed and class in the product.

In France they are breeding chaser-to-chaser, which perhaps reduces the random nature of the process, but increases the emphasis on the quality of the mare herd.

Unless the mare is talented and well-bred, there is just not going to be enough class and speed in the finished product, and for this reason there are obvious dangers in trying such an approach here.

Longevity of racing stock

LOOKING at the French system raises the obvious question about longevity of stock. The perception is that the French horses have shorter careers. The reality may be that very few horses will perform beyond two or three seasons at the top level and the Irish system means that these golden years occur later in the horse’s career rather than actually last for a longer time.

Under both systems there will always be exceptions and a few great heroes of jump racing with wonderfully long and productive careers, but it is not the norm.

The traditional Irish and English view was that chasers were best left unbroken until three, or even four years old, and unraced until they were five. The perception was that they then went on to have long careers.

Research in England on racecourse fatalities, and a growing body of evidence from trainers, suggests that we were all wrong about this. Apparently the horse most likely to break down on the racecourse is one that has not run until it is five, and the one least likely to break down is the one that ran on the flat as a two-year-old.

Human athlete

This is contrary to everything we were taught, but is completely logical. Take a comparison with the human athlete. Given a choice of three 15-year-olds to make an athlete, would you select an abused child labourer, a fit and lean teenager who had fought fights, climbed trees and played GAA, or the sleek and well-rounded rich boy who had never taken any exercise?

The answer is obvious and, if applied to the racehorse population, suggests that the ideal candidate is one who has done reasonably strenuous (but not excessive) physical exercise from a young age. It could be said that the Irish store three-year-old produced in show condition is the equivalent of the rich boy and not the ideal candidate for a racing career.

It is worth remembering that George Ponsonby, who prepared a large proportion of Tom Dreaper’s chasers, had them ridden round his farm as two-year-olds by a 15-stone man. At the time this was derided as eccentricity, but modern science has proved him right.

I suspect therefore that it would be beneficial for National Hunt horses to spend their two-year-old years in gentle pre-training.

Looking to Germany for soundness

UNDER the Irish system, it is very difficult to enhance the quality of our own broodmare stock. The French system makes it profitable for breeders to hold on to their best mares, and nowadays a well-bred, well-conformed and well-performed young French broodmare is going to cost north of €50,000.

A better place to look is Germany. They no longer have jump racing in Germany, so, on looking at pedigrees, the nearest chasing performer is probably under the third dam. The old chasing families have now been switched to breeding for the flat and remarkably are producing blacktype runners on a regular basis.

Lasix

An enormous advantage of German blood is soundness, in that stallions which have raced on Lasix or have had wind surgery are not permitted to stand at stud, and they now have five or six generations of really sound stock.

It is easy to criticise the standard of the pattern races in Germany, yet when German horses travel they usually perform to a high level in France and England. So many of the very top pedigrees in flat racing have German blood very close-up. Urban Sea, Waldgeist and so many others, and it is perhaps the last reservoir of sound and durable staying bloodstock.

These are surely the attributes which we need in Ireland to produce National Hunt horses.