IANA horsey person, but I’ve always wondered about this. Why would the owner of a racehorse with even a modicum of promise have it gelded… and why make the necessary investment to race a gelding? (I’m assuming that the great earnings potential of a champion horse is in its lengthy career as a stud/brood mare; please correct me if that’s incorrect.)
If I was the owner of Funny Cide I’d be gratified that he’s now only one Belmont victory from a Triple Crown, but I think I’d also be kicking myself for having neutered him!
There are two main reasons why a horse is gelded. The first is if the horse is too aggressive and won’t let anyone ride him, then he gets gelded. The other reason is medical reason.
The latter was in the case of Funny Cide. He had one undescended teste, which made it difficult for him to run, so they got rid of both.
Plus, it’s not necessarily a money loser to race a gelding. Unless it’s a top stud, then it’s possible to make more money by racing him long term than by breeding him. Funny Cide just turned out to be a possible Triple Crown winner. Some people believe that gelding a horse makes him a better racer anyway. So maybe if Funny Cide hadn’t been gelded, he wouldn’t have won the KD or Preakness.
To follow up on Osip’s answer, there is a fairly detailed article about Funny Cide’s particular case here.
It also touches upon the some of the advantages for gelding in general – a more even temperment in most cases. Owners making the decision to geld have to make a bit of a gamble – an intact horse may be extremely valuable for stud, but generally only if he is a big winner. However, gelding might give the individual horse the edge (in improved temperment that leads to more effective training, and in some cases a change in the distribution of body mass that some believe to be an advantage) that allows him to be a big winner in the first place. Decisions, decisions! (Or should that be “Incisions, incisions!”?)
Just to present the other side of the coin for a moment, many trainers feel that the more aggressive temperment of a stallion (not gelded) is an advantage, not a disadvantage on the track. Also, although race horses have a reputation for being high-strung, some horses naturally have a nicer, or more “trainable” dispostion than others, even before they’re cut. Horses are very social animals that respond well to training, so when people talk about a high-strung race horse, that’s in comparison to other horses, they’re not like rabid wolverines (do wolverines get rabies? I have no idea. I’m looking for an image of a vicious animal). So even if Funny Cide wins the Triple Crown, I doubt we’ll see geldings take over the line-up at the Derby next year.
Well, nowadays, a Triple Crown winner would be so valuable a s a stud horse, he’d probably be retired and sold for that purpose as a 3 year old… even though he SHOULD have many years of good races left in him.
Since Funny Cide won’t have any stud value, he’ll keep racing for several more years. Maybe he’ll be the new Forego!
Wouldn’t it be possible to freeze sperm samples, pre-gelding? The costs of storage might be minimal compared to the potential payoff, if you only did this with the most promising horses.
I don’t think so, no. In horse breeding generally, frozen sperm is held less highly than fresh, and in the thoroughbred breeding industry, there has to be proof and witnesses to each mating – which, by tradition, doesn’t involve artificial insemination.
Another factor is that Funny Cide’s success now increases the stud value of his sire, if he’s still working (good if you can get it). And the value of his mare as well, so there is earning potential from them, in addition to the winnings potential for Funny Cide’s continued racing career.
It would be perfectly possible, and protocols could easily be developed for witnessing artificial insemination (just as is the case with cattle breeding). But, as Ice Wolf said, tradition dies hard in horse breeding. After all, many horse breeders still believe in garbage like telegony.
I’m always hearing people on ESPN saying things like this when they talk about horse racing. They think he could be a very popular horse with many years of racing in him and that it could do a lot for the sport.
Just to further clarify what others have said, for a foal to be registered with the jockey club, it has to be the product of a live cover–not artificial insemination.
Shoot! I don’t know why that like doesn’t work. If you want to check it, go to jockeyclub.com, click on registration, then the rules for registering a foal.
Telegony is the belief that the genes of the father of one child can affect children born from the same mother, but by different fathers. Some breeders believe that one breeding with a low-quality stallion will ruin the quality of any of a mare’s future foals, regardless of who the stallion is.
I should add that telegony isn’t really relevant to the case of Funny Cide, it’s just an example of folklore and superstition trumping science in the minds of some breeders.
It’s quite possible, and fairly common in some breeds of horses. But not Thoroughbred race horses, since their registry rules require live cover.
In other breeds, you can still breed via AI to stallions that are now geldings. (So the owner has to submit the annual "Stallion Breeding Report on that gelding!) You can even breed your mare to a stallion that has been dead for many years.
The Thoroughbred association requires live cover because they worry that there is more possibility for fraud on breedings done via AI. And given the money involved in top level racing horses, this is an obvious temptation to unscruplous people. (They may be right; at least 2 other breeds have ongoing major controversies, lawsuits, etc. over breeding substitutes & falsely applying for registration. Blood & DNA testing can catch much of this now (if there are valid samples available from the prior generation), but even so it can cause a lot of problems for the registry.)
Sorry for the hijack, folks – your link didn’t work, MaddyStrut, because you put the words “Jockey club foal registration rules” before the URL itself in the link formula, instead of afterward. It might help if you use the “http://” button at the top of the reply screen: a lot easier.
