Thoroughbred breeders aren’t all devils

Is there a group more maligned in Australian thoroughbred racing than the breeders? Constant accusations of too much power and too little responsibility are the norm whenever the subject comes up.

Last week, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that an argument with the breeders and Racing Australia may be headed to the Supreme Court.

Of course, the means of regulating thoroughbred racing is complicated, and the details hard to understand, but one quote from Racing Australia chief executive Peter McGauran is worth investigating a little more deeply. According to The Herald, McGauran commented, “We can’t have large number of horses unaccounted for and we need some authority over a horse’s life cycle.”

I thought I’d look at how big a problem this is, and whether the difference in numbers of thoroughbreds born and registered is a legitimate cause for concern, let alone something to go to the Supreme Court over.

Thankfully, the numbers aren’t too hard to get a hold of, with the number of foals born and horses registered each year documented in the Australian Racing Factbook. I’ve taken the two datasets and graphed them between 2000 and 2014 with linear lines of best fit for foals born (black) and horses registered (red).

What emerges is a fairly clear trend where the decade or so has seen a decline in the number of thoroughbreds bred and a slower decline in the number of horses registered. All in all, the real story is that breeders have been contracting the number of horses they are breeding, while increasing the efficiency with which they are getting at least to the registration, if not the racing stage.

Now, the thing that frustrates me is that it’s easy to make the case that breeders intentionally ‘overbreed’, generating far more thoroughbreds than are required, hoping for lady luck to shine and get the next Winx. People seem to intuitively accept this model of the world.

But every time I look at the data, it tells a different story. It says that breeders are getting more and more judicious in their choices of mating, and possibly becoming aware that as a collective, it is in their interest to have a lower number of horses bred to increase the price per foal.

So while I understand the arguments that breeders have too much power, for instance by commonly taking the best horses from the racetrack and into the breeding barn too early, they’re not always the devils that they’re made out to be.

I would also point out that critics of racing are often only looking to have their prejudices confirmed, and authorities suggesting that there are large numbers of thoroughbreds unaccounted for when the numbers don’t suggest that is the case can lead to problems down the track. It’s hard to point to the data after you’ve been ignoring it for your own benefit.

Now, that’s not to say there aren’t good reasons to regulate breeders, or to register horses from the moment they’re born, but the authorities should have the courage of conviction to make those arguments. And to be fair, they may be making those arguments and not having them reproduced in the popular press.

However, if they’re not regulating for the right reasons, then the authorities may well end up spending their time chasing shadows, rather than proactively preventing problems before they arise.