BH 100: Leading Sires: Part II
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Photo: BloodHorse Library
This feature originally appeared in the December 17, 2016 issue of BloodHorse.
As the calendar turns to December and breeders consider which stallions will best suit their mares and their financial plans for the coming year, BloodHorse’s 2017 Stallion Register, a staple of the industry for more than 80 years, is on its way from the printer.
In the Dec. 14, 1935, issue of The Blood-Horse, editor Joe Estes introduced the “New Stallion Register” with these words: “The Blood-Horse published last month a combination stallion register and mating book so unique in form and so practical in use that it has attracted a great deal of interest among breeders and students of breeding.
“The main body of the publication as it is now in the hands of subscribers, contains five cross pedigrees of an even hundred stallions…Each pedigree is printed on a loose leaf form five inches high and 8 1/2 inches wide…The sheets are arranged alphabetically in a 14-ring loose leaf book in such a manner that the top line of each sheet is visible affording an instantaneous key to the most important bloodlines available through each stallion.”
The reverse side of each sheet contained the stallion’s statistics such as height, tabulated racing record, tabulated stud record, etc.
Through the decades the Stallion Register transformed the style of delivery but the statistical information remained basically the same. The 14 rings became four and the 5x 8 1/2 sheets were arranged alphabetically on top and bottom rows.
By the late 1960s the Stallion Register had become a blue-covered bound volume of single pages that contained the statistics and pedigree of the stallion. This “blue-book” for Thoroughbreds lasted until 1984, when the present cover colors came into vogue.
In 1970 14-time leading stallion Lexington (from a painting by Edward Troye) became the cover boy and remains so to this day. The 1970s (1970-73) also saw the first use of picture pages that complemented the stallion’s stat page. That feature did not catch on until 1990, when they became a regular part of the Stallion Register.
One paragraph from Estes’ introduction regarded the sire lines of the day that were available: “Purchasers of the book will find that no fewer than 47 of the 100 stallions already included trace to Himyar, all through Domino; thirty-seven have strains of Ben Brush…17 from Hastings…Of the most prominent English lines, the Galopin-St. Simon strain is most widely distributed.”
How times have changed. Of the 436 stallions advertised in the 2017 Stallion Register, four (0.9%) trace to Himyar (a tail-male descendant of Eclipse), two through Domino and two through Plaudit—a far cry from the 47% of eight decades ago.
Of the three Thoroughbred foundation stallions—Matchem, Herod, and Eclipse—Eclipse is far and away the most dominant in North America. Of the stallions advertised in the 2017 Stallion Register, only 15 (3.4%) trace to Matchem and 0% to Herod, leaving Eclipse with 96.6%.
The Eclipse branches, too, have changed. Where the descendants of Teddy dominated the 1930s and 1940s, his descendants listed in the SR number only three, the St. Simon branch has one through Princequillo and two through Ribot.
Squeezing out these other lines has been the Phalaris branch of the Eclipse family tree through sons Pharos and Sickle. Pharos’ son Nearco sired Nasrullah (represented by 90 descendants, mostly through son Bold Ruler), Royal Charger (17), and Nearctic (166, mostly through son Northern Dancer). Sickle produced the Native Dancer branches (through Raise a Native) of Mr. Prospector (131 descendants), Majestic Prince (8), and Exclusive Native (1).