Well I you look at it horses do largely record the same times, and I don't really understand where you're going with the chestnut idea, that's just a recessive gene coming out, but if you look at the horses that do break the ceiling if you like, say frankel, if you bred him to the best filly around, for arguments sake say black caviar, the offspring could be very good, but the chances of it being better are so minute, whereas in game it would automatically equal a better horse. The reason in the past they we're able to get horses like clips thy were so superior was because the breed was so relatively new still that it was still improving, and its the same with everything say breeding an animal for looks you can selectively breed an animal to look like something very quickly but after that the gains are so marginal they're almost unnoticeable. To be honest, how could the thoroughbred improve much more anyway? When they started out thy were crossing large mares with speedy Arabs, so the impact of the Arab was huge- think of it like numbers- call the mare 10 and the Arab 30, and lets assume each passes on half their number- so the Arab passes on 15 and the mare 5, that's 20 which is twice as much as the mare was, so the horse produced is twice as good as the previous generation. Lets now give frankel a number say 110 and a good broodmare 100, and they moth pass on half, so 50 + 55 = 105, which is a much smaller increase over the mare than before. This is a very simplistic and unrealistic explanation, but it does give some explanation of why it is almost impossible that frankel will produce something better than himself and why horses could be more standout at the beginning. 'Regressing to the mean' is sadly what's highly likely to happen to frankel.

I do see what you're saying, but I think your view is quite reductionist. But this is very much a discussion for another thread.

Nearctic - Northern Dancer - Sadler's Wells - Galileo - Frankel
you could say 4 of the 5 of Frankels generations produced better horses than themselves there Ubar

Obviously the analogy really simplified the idea a lot, but if you think about it, it's taken about 45 years for a horse, frankel, to beat sea birds timeform rating of 145. Now, his rating may have been inflated slightly as the organisation was still fairly new then and it may have slightly exaggerrated him, but general consensus is that it's a pretty true rating, and it shows that in 45 years there has been only 2 horses rated 145 or higher. You could say that maybe the general quality of horse has improved since then, making it harder to standout, but the times do not suggest that, so the only conclusion I can really gain from that is that horses have pretty much hit a ceiling, something which I am expecting is eventually going to happen with human athletes, though obviously a lot more slowly as humans aren't selectively bred.

Your point is entirely valid Paul, but if you're talking about on the track, did any of them produce any real champions that have gone on to better things at stud? It's highly unlikely frankel will produce anything nearly as good as himself. Also, we're the aforementioned horses really any better than the previous generation on the track? That's debatable, but if you look at all the statistics it's generally the horses that were good racehorses but not quite the best that make the best sires, because they are able to pass on the genes well but also because they are not having their offspring judged against them. Also, if you look at it, the best sires always had a paternal half brother who was a better racehorse- sadlers wells had el gran senor, Galileo montjeu, new approach frankel, etc. not being a genetics expert I don't really know why this is the case.

Also I think one of the huge problems is the massive increase in breeding in general. How can you expect the breed to improve when everything is being bred with everything else over and over again. It isn't even that wide either, there is a very small pool of good horses (therefore a very small pool of genes) that are constantly being bred together to produce our current top horses. It is quite scary for the future of the breed, and why we need 'revolutionaries' (in apostrophes because it isn't really revolutionary, but common sense, but it is a revolution when thinking about modern race horse breeding) like Rick Jamieson (Black Caviar's breeder) who look carefully at pedigrees, but most importantly at confirmation and is trying to breed for complimentary pedigree and correct confirmation rather than to the detriment of correct confirmation and/or temperament.

Anyway. Whilst I would love to debate this because it is something that really fascinates me, here is not the place. Feel free to open a new thread in Real Racing, but please discuss game development rather than horse breeding on this page.

In agreement with supercats post it is companies like coolmore with stallions such as Galileo that are arguably leading to the detriment of racing- the commercial outlook of shuttling stallions etc. is making the racing world smaller and withs hugely successful stallion, more people want it which means the breed is becoming more and more based on one family. What with horses like montjeu, Galileo etc., the sadlers wells line dominates breeding, and it stretches right back to northern dancer, who arguably has done more bad for the breed than good when you look at his legacy, which stretches all over the world and means many horses have him as a common ancestor multiple times on a pedigree.

Even I owned a horse with Northern Dancer 3 times in his pedigree! He wasn't even a full Thoroughbred!

There's no doubt that genes play a part in the breeding of a fast horse but as anyone who has studied genetics knows the environment is at least as important as the genes. Take Frankel for example. You could clone Frankel as a new foal but that would not necessarily result in the same kind of performance on the track. There are a million different factors that would result in a different potential being realised e.g. training/feed/tons of other things that made Frankel the horse he was. The genes might be the same but the individual would not. It may well be that someday we understand the genes to the point where we can predict which horses when born are worth training because they have the potential to be great but at present that research is in it's infancy.

But ultimately, would that not take all the fun out of the sport? As frustrating as it is, the uncertainty of racing and breeding is that makes it great and if very horse is good, then surely none are?
But the point about the environment is key- if frankel was with AOB, he would have been completely different. However, what shouldn't be forgotten is the ability has to be there in the first place- you can't make a horse faster, only get the best out of what's already there.

They saw you coming supercat ha ha