sire lines
Who do you think you are? New genetic evidence proves that the recorded pedigrees of the influential leading sires Bend Or and St. Simon were incorrect, writes Alan Porter
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N 1981, the year in which his cornerstone book “The Classic Racehorse” was published, the late Peter Willett penned an article which we reprinted in the last issue of International Thoroughbred in which he pondered how a relative small number of sires have wielded a disproportionate influence on the development of the thoroughbred. The article delves into names from the progression of the thoroughbred, and the evolution of the sire lines One of these involves the long-disputed pedigree of Bend Or, the winner of the 1880 Epsom Derby and, via Bona Vista, Cyllene and Polymelus, the male-line ancestor of Phalaris, who in turn is now in the maleline of well over 95 per cent of the current thoroughbred population. Bred by the 1st Duke of Westminster, Bend Or was supposedly by the stallion Doncaster and out of Rouge Rose (Thormanby). Not long after the Derby, however, the owners of the runner-up Robert The Devil wrote to the stewards and to Weatherbys, objecting to the result on the grounds that Bend Or was not bred as he was registered. This was based on evidence from Richard Arnull, the stud groom at the Duke’s Eaton Stud, who claimed that the horse that raced as Bend Or was in fact Tadcaster, a son of Doncaster and out of Clemence (Newmister), and that the two had been accidentally swapped when sent from the stud to Barrow’s stable in Newmarket, before going into training with Robert Peck at Russley. The case was duly considered by the
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descending from the founding fathers. One thing that Willett could not have foreseen is the advent of DNA analysis and it’s revisory impact of older pedigrees. Using mitochondrial DNA, which is transmitted only in the tail-female line, a number of errors in female lines have been discovered. More surprisingly is that there is now firm genetic evidence to amend the published pedigrees of two of the most important stallions of the late 19th century.
Eclipse and Bend Or. (a) The skeleton of Eclipse at the Royal Veterinary College, London. (b) Bend Or at stud. (c) The 1880 Epsom Derby finish – Bend Or beats Robert the Devil ‘by a nose’ (Hulton Archive/Getty Images). (d) A painting of Eclipse by John Beer (by kind permission of the National Horseracing Museum, Newmarket)
