"All these great horses are not descended from him because he's fragile," Vanderbilt said. "They're descended because he was a champion and he was durable."
I spoke with Alan Porter, a well-respected pedigree consultant who has been studying and writing about breeding for more than 30 years. He called any assertion about Native Dancer's line and a propensity for leg injuries "salacious" and lacking in historical perspective.
"It's a leap," he said, "devoid of logic.
"The first thing people have to understand is the difference between a catastrophic breakdown due to bad step and one due to unsoundness. They're not the same thing. This filly was not an unsound filly. For some reason, she took a bad step.
"To draw a line from a filly breaking down to saying the entire breed is less sound is really a flawed chain of logic. There's a whole bunch of assumptions that are involved there."
Porter takes issue with dragging Barbaro's name into the discussion. Though it's true the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner is a great-great-great-grandson of Native Dancer, the Gray Ghost is but one of 32 ancestors five generations ago - just 3 percent of Barbaro's gene pool.
Similarly, Porter has a hard time attributing Eight Belles' shortcomings to her great-great-great-grandfather. Sure, both of her parents, three grandparents and four great-grandparents stretch back to Native Dancer, but Big Brown, the Derby winner and likely Preakness favorite, was actually much more closely inbred. Big Brown happens to have the same great-grandpa on both sides - Northern Dancer, grandson of Native Dancer. Plus, his maternal granddaddy Damascus is also his paternal great-granddaddy. (Someone call Jerry Springer!)
Despite what you might have learned from a tired Jeff Foxworthy routine, Porter said, in racehorses, inbreeding increases the chances of passing along strong genes while decreasing the likelihood of negative ones. He pointed out that all thoroughbreds stemmed from just three stallions and many, many champions through the years have been closely inbred. Though there have been recurring discussions about possible dangers, evidence has been anecdotal at best.
"There were pages and pages written about Northern Dancer and inbreeding," said Porter, who has planned matings for more than 20 years and has authored three books on the topic. "Now it happens so frequently that nobody even mentions it. Within a period of probably 15 years, it's gone from being an emotive subject to it being so commonplace."
Like the Derby, every starter in this year's Preakness can trace his ancestry to Native Dancer. Vanderbilt finds that stunning and said it's a testament to the Gray Ghost as a champion and something that would have made his father very proud.
Just maybe, Vanderbilt said, "1,000 years from now, we say we saw every racer came from the great Gray Ghost."
rick.maese@baltsun.com
