I HAVE spoken before about the fact that the term dual-purpose is effectively redundant in breeding circles. In my youth it was a much-used phrase in advertisements for stallions, usually indicating that the stud master didn’t feel confident about attracting enough flat mares.

Now we have classic winners and champion racehorses retiring straight to National Hunt studs, while flat sires who fail to attract sufficient early support, or maybe fall just short of the mark with their early runners, are switched to the jumps code. Today, we have very few sires who could be categorised as dual-purpose.