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When I Rant About Gelding
Original article written by The Steward posted 12 years 1 week ago"Sometimes, gelding is a good thing. But sometimes it makes me want to punch Rebecca Rose Hepburn in the face."
Rose herself offered that exceptional opening line to me when discussing what my next article should be on. I've had several ideas, and as gelding isn't that interesting to me I kind of brushed it off. But then I thought about it more and more and realized I had a lot to say on the subject of gelding. Which I will now say with likely typos, given that I'm typing with 9 fingers... long story.
There are pros and cons to gelding. Mostly there are pros - your horse stays "on his game" longer (indeed, there are tons of 9 year old geldings happily bopping around winning stakes), gelding does give an automatic boost to EVERY horse who is gelded, and you make a thousand dollars, which is wildly unrealistic but is an incentive program. The cons are minor - once in a while, a grand horse comes along who could have been a great sire and now will never be.
Obviously the most popular current example of this syndrome is Something Wild. The dark bay son of The Wilding was gelded AFTER he broke his maiden first out with a 72. Okay, a 72 isn't huge these days, but he won by 4 1/2 going a mile when he was bred for longer. All he has done since then is win $2 million and 10 of 14 starts.
Now, Ms. Hepburn had solid reasoning. Her horse's sire, The Wilding, had yet to produce a sire of note himself. The dam, Somethingsomething, had produced only one other decent runner. But as a broodmare sire, Sunday Silence produced 185 stakes winners, and some of them include the likes of Black Condor and Fumetsu on turf, and Persevere and Tot Ziens on dirt. Who knows if Something Wild might have jumped up and been a sire like that? The whole thing has me bitter because I would have loved to breed to him. Outcross pedigree, speed, stamina, etc. I love stuff like that!
But now, Hepburn gets to run this horse for another five seasons, will enjoy him staying sound and strong throughout, and will make plenty of money. In that instance that he did end up a terrible sire, she could make more on the track as a gelding than if all breeders had abandoned ship after 2 years. I respect her desires, I just would have preferred breeding to him!
This same scenario happened with a Regina Moore runner, Torpedo in Motion. I bred this son of Enforcer and thought he could be the next Sun Raider as a stallion. When Moore cut him I about had a heart attack. But unfortunately for me, that was exactly what this horse needed. He won a bunch more races post cutting, and is now closing in on a million in earnings, which he will surely reach in the next two seasons. He never would have reached that benchmark uncut, so as much as I wanted to breed to him, too bad for me, cutting was the right decision.
I know some people were bummed when good old $2 mil earner Marmaduke was running because he was a gelding. The son of Duke, however, would have been a terrible sire. If Duke isn't enough to convince you, how many have heard of his broodmare sire, Onetogivemhope? Or the fact that even further along in his pedigree was Zinfandel, a horse so hit or miss in the shed... anyway, this horse was not a loss at all to the breeding industry, and we all got to enjoy seeing him run.
This has happened with the likes of Artillery, Fishing the Keys, Havoli Makahikihou, Sky Ruler, and maybe even Trip. None of them needed to be sires, and got to be fun geldings instead.
Only three other times (other than Something Wild) has gelding resulted in the loss of a future sire. One is Whileaworldsleeps, a son of Midnightconfession and Riddle Me This, who we all know and love as that sleepy-faced turf sprinter who won $3.6 million while racing forever. He has a tremendous pedigree, but if he hadn't raced for so long he hardly would have been as interesting.
Legendofthepeople was already gelded when he became a steeplechaser, and the "father of chasing" had a random pedigree. But it would have been nice to see the first truly great chasing star get a shot in the shed. That said, how was anyone supposed to know what he would do over fences? So that one is also forgiven.
But then there is God Save Ireland. There is absolutely no doubt this guy would have been a great sire. He was gelded after breaking his maiden by almost five lengths first out (this sounds familiar), and has gone on to win 28 of 36 starts. That's lovely, but if he'd won say 11 of 20 or whatever, we'd all still enjoy breeding to him and he could have been awesome.
And just because she's not off the hook, Cleo Patra has to be brought up here. She is constantly either threatening to geld or gelding horses who probably don't deserve it. Multiple grade 1 winner Career Maker was threatened so many times... as a sire, he has produced the star juvenile runner Sand Castle Maker. It would be so sad if that had never happened! Others weren't so lucky; Creative License was gelded before breaking his maiden - he won $1.9 million. Royally-bred Lestrange, who should break his maiden next week and thrive over long distances in the next few years, was gelded because he didn't break his maiden fast enough, and I literally felt tears come to my eyes when she gelded Scotland, a router 2 year old, after finishing 5th at a mile first out. Scotland then broke his maiden with an 89, and bounced to be third behind Juvenile favorite Commander with an 84. This one really hurts - at least wait until the horse has failed at what he's good at before gelding!
So now my rant about gelding and why it's bad is over, let's get back to the good. I cannot stand bad sires. Really. And I don't mean like, Wow my horse won half a million but is struggling in the shed bad, I mean, my horse broke his maiden and was 5th in the claiming crown and now he's a sire bad. I used to do everything in my power to prevent that. I would geld horses before AJing them out. I would offer people as much as $50,000 to buy their bad sires back and axe them. I would love to do that kind of thing if it wouldn't help wreck SIMflation and all that (and encourage people to get money from me by standing bad stallions).
Why do I hate them so much? Where do I start! The easiest answer is that they clog up any page you're looking at, so Stud Book, searches, etc are harder to load. That's trivial. Let's say you have a horse who earned $200k and you think you just miiiight be able to get some runners from him. So you breed two mares to him, just to see. And they both turn out stinky, obviously. Well now you have to either pay to ship and race them, or pay to send them to AJ. You decide on the latter, because no one has time for stink. Now there's 40,000 horses in AJ that no one wants and I can't give them away because they are really bad. Don't worry, this is a problem in real life, too. But in real life it's far harder to go to everyone's door and say, Excuse me, but can you not breed bad babies on purpose? Here, it's easy. EXCUSE ME. CAN YOU NOT BREED BAD BABIES ON PURPOSE!?
Undoubtedly, you are either affronted at this (I don't breed badly on purpose!) or you are huffing, thinking that Well, in real life you can watch one-time stakes winner Awesome Gambler become the best sire in California! To the former, I say I'm not talking to you! And to the latter, I say: real life is different in this regard. In real life, you can't ship your mare across the world to breed to Australia's best one year, then to Europe's best the next. You are stuck breeding to a stallion in your own home state or maybe a few states over if you have extra cash. In the SIM, there is no need to breed to Awesome Gambler for $3,000 when you could breed to someone in Kentucky for $5,000 and the shipping is non existent. And if your mare isn't worth $5,000, why are you breeding it? Send her to AJ, rather than send her next 10 foals to AJ.
In conclusion, I would love to reduce the number of stallions currently standing by a hundred (just in time for double that to retire at the end of the year). If you go ahead and remove your bad stallions yourself, you will forever be held in higher esteem by me. But while you're at it, make sure you don't go gelding something I want to breed to, cause then, well, we're back at square one.