Ancestry of the Thoroughbred:
This form of horse was formerly bred in England as a result of the English horsemens desire to own a fast race horse. There are three that founded this bloodline which are: Byerley Turk, Darley Arabian and Godolphin Arabian, named after their owners, Thomas Darley, Lord Godolphin and Captain Robert Byerley. All of these stallions were imported to the United Kingdom from the Mediterranean Middle Eastduring 1670 and 1710. The result was a breed that could bear weight with consistent speeds over comprehensive distances. Somewhere in the region of ninety percent of current thoroughbreds have come from Eclipse the grandsire of whom was Darley Arabian, who never lost in eighteen races. This prompted a very selective breeding practice which has been going on for nearly 250 years, breeding the greatest race horses, giving them superiority and brilliance on the race track.
About the turn of the 1700’s, breeding records for Thoroughbreds were meager and frequently partial, and on any occasions, they would not name a horse until the juvenile horse had proven themself commendable. A man called James Weatherby, through his own inquiries and hard work, and by the collection of his own privately owned pedigree reports published the earliest volume of the General Stud Book. He did this in 1791. The first publication listed 387 mares, every one of which could trace back to Eclipse. The General Studbook is still in print in England by Weatherby and Sons. Numerous years afterward, as thoroughbred racing proliferated in North America the need for a pedigree registry for American Bred Thoroughbreds, similar to the General Stud Book became evident.
In 1873, the first American Stud Book was printed by Colonel Sanders D. Bruce. This man spent almost a lifetime researching the pedigrees of American Thoroughbreds. He continued the example of the General Stud Book creating six volumes of the register until 1896 when the project was overtaken by The Jockey Club. The accuracy of the American Stud Book is the flagstone on which all Thoroughbred horse racing in North America is based. The initial edition of the American Stud Book released by The Jockey Club had a foal number of around 3,000. In 1986 in had developed to an astonishing 51,000. These days The Jockey Club runs a sophisticated new computer technology to counter the registration challenges posed by the gigantic quantity of yearly registrations. The Jockey Club owns and operates one of the most complicated computer systems in the world at present, with its record holding in excess of 1.8 million horses on a master pedigree store, with names that trace back to the 1800’s. As well as bloodlines, this database also handles daily racing results of all Thoroughbred race in North America, not including the power to handle electronically sent pedigree and racing information from England, Ireland, France and other leading Thoroughbred countries. An extra descendant of Darley Arabian is Diomed; he won the earliest running of the Kentucky Derby in 1780. At 21 years of age he was brought to the United States where he started the male line by way of his son, Sir Archie.
Thoroughbreds are the horse of choice for track racing. Most thoroughbreds are born somewhere between January and April, however their certified date of birth is January 1 of the present year. During their initial year of growth, they are increasing bulk and muscle with the youngster commencing his training as a yearling. Throughbred horses learn to take a bridle and a saddle and shortly after a rider on its back to break the horse in preparation for the starting gate and the run around the track.
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