“Every horse story is a love story.” Jane Smiley

1.      Some time ago Shilofire initiated a quite interesting discussion on the simsport messageboard about line- and inbreeding. There he stated:

“Thoroughbreds, at least most thoroughbreds, are bred for one thing only… racing.”

I don’t know exactly why this phrase incited my attention, maybe it was the exclusivity of the word “only” that bothered me most in the above quote. But I’ll try to work some things  out in this little essay and finally I want to show you a different point of view. At the same time I am looking forward to offer you some interior views of my simlife in what will hopefully become a series of articles.

2.      At first I tried to research a bit the semantics of the matter. Since English is not my native language, I consulted my “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English” from old school days, edition 1982, and looked up some definitions.

Well, the first one sounded pretty obvious:

Racehorse- “horse specially bred for racing”

I seemed to be off the track, although the word “racehorse” didn’t appear in the quotation.  The next one:

Thoroughbred- “(animal especially a horse) of pure breed”

Slowly I felt like getting stuck in a dead end street and you had to wonder frankly how I would ever get out of there.

3.      Back to subject: bred for racing. Really, I still couldn’t believe, bred for racing?

Let me take a look at real life racing. Where I live there’s a law, a rule or standard for nearly everything, that’s notorious, here we are famous for it. So I searched the internet for thoroughbred and horseracing. Guess, what I found out? I ran directly into a homepage from our ministry(3) for food, farming and consumer care with lots of laws concerning the rights of breeding animals like for example cows, pigs and natural equines. There it was, a paragraph(4) concerning the purpose of horseracing mainly as an efficiency test to separate(5) the better horses(permitted for breeding) from the not so good ones(breeding forbidden!). Do you understand, what this really means? This means a horse like Funny Cide(6) never could have won the Derby here, staged on the first Sunday of July every year in Hamburg-Horn, because geldings aren’t allowed to run in the Derby here. Only for the reason that you can not breed with them. We are talking about a clash of cultures, what do you mean?

4.      What am I doing here? Temporal or conceptual reversion?

Bred for racing : race for breeding!?

In the sim my horses are racing mediocre, at best. My overall winning percentage is roughly 10%. So, as I breed me a new horse I have always the next generation already in my mind. I think breeding really is one of the most funny parts -in the sim. I probably  spend more time thinking about breedings, researching pedigrees, etc. than looking for races. In case the new horse doesn’t excel as a racehorse it can still turn out to be useful broad mare:

BIXO 9 Year Old Mare Historical Grade :     G(7)

Lineage   Sire SUMMER SQUALL Dam Sire MR. PROSPECTOR Dam’s Dam Sire BOLDWOOD

Races 15   Wins 2   ITM 2   $ Earned $26,696  

Progeny
Offspring Year Foaled Age Sex Status Snapshot
BINIARAIX(KY) 2008 2 F Active $157K, 5r, 4w – SW        (Corinthian)
KAHUKU(KY) 2007 3 M Active $92K, 15r, 3w             (Badge of Silver)
BARBUDA(IRE) 2006 4 F Active $50K, 18r, 2w             (Castledale)
PRASLIN 2005 5 F Active $206K, 33r, 7w – SW            (Tapit)
BANJOL 2004 6 F Retired $66K, 29r, 1w – SP         (Milwaukee Brew)

For next season I am planning to send her again to a son of Pulpit.

She also is already grandma, two times:

BANJOL 6 Year Old Mare Historical Grade :     F   
Progeny
Offspring Year Foaled Age Sex Status Snapshot
WALK UNAFRAID(AUS) 2008 2 M Active $0K, 3r, 0w      (Flying Pegasus)   
BUDDENBROOK(FL) 2007 3 M Active $112K, 16r, 6w – SP     (Congrats)

5.      What is it all about? What is my promised antithesis? Bred for breeding? No, there still must be some sportive character, otherwise I had to play simfarming and would not be a kind of addicted to derbyfever for more than 8 years. So my pompous final statement for  today is also the goal where I’ll have to work hard at it, to get there maybe in the future:

Some horse of course are famous for two things.(8)