native dancer was the way of the future

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bloodstock history, charlie hatton, dark star, description of native dancer, john sparkman, native dancer, power horses, size and muscle in racehorses, stride horses

In a response to yesterday’s post about Dark Star, John Sparkman tipped my hand a bit by saying that the physical type of Dark Star — elegant, somewhat lightly made horses with excellent stride quality — was a type on the way out.

Indeed, the Teddy and Swynford lines that had dominated classic racing since the 1920s were finished. Only nobody knew it at the time.

In their place, a powerful animal has come to be the American classic type whose model is Native Dancer, big and heavy-topped and fast. Winner of the 1953 Preakness and Belmont Stakes, Native Dancer was a top-level classic horse. In that he wasn’t unparalleled. There have been at least a half-dozen in the decades before and after the 1950s who were approximately as good, even if not almost unbeaten. For instance, Citation had at least as good a record at 2 and 3, although he lost twice in that time.

But Native Dancer is the most excellent form of the new Thoroughbred that has come to dominate much of racing around the world.

To describe him, I will offer some notes from the Daily Racing Form columnist Charlie Hatton, who wrote: “Usually Native Dancer was the largest horse in any post parade in which he took part.” That is not solely about height, although the gray son of Polynesian stood 16.1 hands at 3, grew another inch or so.

Hatton further noted that Native Dancer “was possibly the widest horse in training across the loin and hips.” We can see the horse’s mass in some of the films of him racing more than half a century ago, and one of the wonders of technology is that we can access this historical information and view the horse, rather than rely solely on the written comments (which in this case are really helpful, Mr. Hatton).

At 2, Native Dancer’s muscular development through his shoulders and forearms was so great that Hatton recouted that “it is rather singular to find one horse having the development of a sprinter before the saddle and that of a router behind.” At 3, Native Dancer filled in his rangier hindquarters with more muscle.

His feet gave out on him, and Native Dancer ended his 3yo season in August 1953 and made only three starts as a 4yo the next year. It is possible that his mass had outgrown his frame, although the horse was essentially sound. He just kept having “little problems.”

The question of soundness would be one of the most serious breeders would have about the horse’s offspring in coming years. They had size, they had speed, and some of them were tough as nails. Doc Thomas, breeder of Our Native, once told me that the Native Dancer stock had the highest pain threshold of any animals he had ever encountered.

They need the pain tolerance because the Native Dancer physical type (great mass and great power) produces exceptional speed, but the faster anything goes, the more strain it puts on all the working parts.

The more classic version of Native Dancer morphed into Sea-Bird (a grandson by French Derby second Dan Cupid), the miniature version ruled the world through Northern Dancer (out of Native Dancer’s daughter Natalma), and the American dirt version of Native Dancer descends primarily through Raise a Native, whose best sons were Exclusive Native, Mr. Prospector, and Alydar.

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how dark star shone

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class in sires, dark star, Kentucky Derby, racing quality

It is an axiom in my thinking that bad horses do not win the Kentucky Derby. Some are much better than others, and a few quite a lot less … but they are all good horses.

So, in evaluating Dark Star’s contributions at stud, I first estimate him as a very good classic winner. In large part, that is the result of his outstanding effort in the Kentucky Derby to defeat Native Dancer.

It took a horse of exceptional talent to hold Native Dancer, and despite the traffic trouble the great gray had during the race, when Native Dancer ranged into second early in the Churchill Downs stretch, he made no impression on the flying leader for a furlong and a half. Only in the final sixteenth did Native Dancer made great strides to catch Dark Star, missing only by a head.

For racing class, I would give Dark Star an A. For pedigree, he seems worthy of a B. His sire, Royal Gem II, was winner of the Caulfield Guineas in Australia, and Dark Star’s dam is the Bull Dog mare Isolde.

In physical type, Dark Star was made much like a classic Bull Dog / Teddy type, elegant and scopy with some strength. This physical type, primarily through Bull Dog’s great stallion son Bull Lea, was the best or equal to the best in the world through the 1940s and 1950s.

That physical type also tells us quite a lot about the racehorse that Dark Star proved to be. His strong point was his stride, and reviewing the 1953 Kentucky Derby again on any of the widely available sites will confirm, I believe, that Dark Star was used to absolute maximum potential when allowed to stride along freely going a distance of ground.

He was not a sprinter; instead he was ideally a front-running middle-distance horse. Horses of this type must have a very good stride, and Dark Star is lovely to watch as he sweeps through the Churchill stretch for the first and the second passes in front of the grandstand.

Another trait of this elegant, classic type of racehorse is that it is relatively light weight. If not extremely light, this is a good thing. Trainers used to complain about getting a pound added to their handicappers. Imagine if your horse was naturally 50 pounds or 100 pounds lighter than his competitors. That’s an advantage so long as it doesn’t keep him from losing too much energy from lack of muscle.

A further consideration for this lighter-weight, classic horse with a great stride is how tricky it can be to mate them effectively. Even those of the best athletic ability are not as consistent as some other types.

Dark Star sired many of his best progeny early when he was at Claiborne Farm, where Bull Hancock was helping to select mares for the horse. After Guggenheim pulled his stock off Claiborne in a dispute with Hancock, Dark Star stood at Spendthrift with less success.

Moreover, Dark Star’s best racer was the French-bred Gazala, a tall and elegant mare who won the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches and Prix de Diane. At stud, she produced another tall and leggy and slab-sided but very high-class horse named Youth, who proved a desperate failure as a stallion when asked to do what he was unsuited for: sire horses for racing on dirt in America.

why some do and some don’t

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dark star, elements of the thoroughbred, Kentucky Derby, native dancer, pedigree in matings, racing class

Aside from the question of racing class, which is obvious and self-explanatory, why does one stallion have greater success than another?

Like most of those who have approached this question from the side of pedigree, I long ago saw that there are some lines that breed on and others that don’t. Most explanations for this are couched in terms of one theory or another, and there is enough truth in these approaches to keep people researching and working to find the “key” to bloodlines and breeding.

But after 20 years of treading that path with considerable industry, in the early 1990s, I came to a conclusion that seemed inescapable to me (and that has seemed so to other diligent researchers, as well). Partly, the limitation is that most pedigree theory is historical, taking its shape from things that have already occurred, but even more it is that pedigree — even at its most subtle and prescient — only represents a part of the magical sum that is the Thoroughbred.

It is similar to the relationship of the theory of diamond cutting to the radiant beauty of the diamond itself.

While an essential part of the whole process, pedigree is only one of many elements that contribute to a horse’s success. Others include the animal’s conformation, character, constitution, and response to training.

As an exercise in thinking through this great puzzle we call breeding the Thoroughbred, I have taken the time to study the race records and stud results of the first two finishers in the 1953 Kentucky Derby, one of the better results in terms of racing class and stallion success.

In the 1953 Derby, Dark Star led the entire race, won by a head, then was injured in the Preakness. He was at the peak of his racing class with the Derby victory, and Dark Star had to be a very good colt to defeat the champion of his crop, even under perfect circumstances.

Dark Star’s Derby was the only career loss for Native Dancer, who was a great racehorse capable of immense efforts to gain a victory.

The comparison of racing class between these two holds up well in an examination of their stud careers. Native Dancer was a great sire (304 foals, 44 stakes winners, 14 percent with an AEI of 3.15), and Dark Star was a pretty darned good one (301 foals, 25 stakes winners, 8 percent with an AEI of 1.65).

I believe that we can learn quite a bit by looking at this high-class pair, and I will be elaborating on that in tomorrow’s post.