10/26/2025
So sad, what has become of the American thoroughbred.
55.4% of Thoroughbred starters in the Kentucky Derby from 2010 to 2025 carry Native Dancer in their blood. More than half, not to mention the estimated 70% of all Thoroughbreds who carry Native Dancer. The modern Thoroughbred has been bred into a corner, stacked on top of stacked lines, glorifying speed and auction-saleability wins while systematically erasing durability, soundness, and common sense.
I recently read a 2008 ESPN article on Eight Belles, and even 17 years later, it feels like a gut punch. Ellen Parker, a pedigree analyst who actually understood genetics and cared about integrity, watched that Derby with dread. As Eight Belles loaded into the gate, she whispered to her husband, “I just hope this filly doesn’t break down.” She did. Both front ankles shattered. Parker had already seen it coming. The pedigree had written the ending.
Eight Belles carried three separate crosses to Raise a Native. Beneath that, Native Dancer, the stallion whose brilliance came with chronic ankle fragility that cascaded through generations. Native Dancer was fast, yes, with twenty-one wins in twenty-two starts. But he also passed down huge, ground pounding movement, with bones that break, tendons that snap, and legs that fail under stress. Modern breeding has piled Raise a Native, Northern Dancer, Mr. Prospector, and Danehill on top of each other until brilliance and weakness are inseparable. Parker called it: commercial breeding is an echo chamber of the same sires, the same crosses, chasing dollar signs and sales appeal rather than durability. Eight Belles failed in the exact limbs that had failed her ancestors.
Science has confirmed Parker’s warnings, and it is not pretty. A 2020 genomic study by McGivney of more than 10,000 Thoroughbreds found a catastrophic collapse in genetic diversity over the last fifty years. Modern Thoroughbreds are far more in**ed than ever, with a handful of male lines dominating the entire global breed. The statistics are sickening: from 2010 to 2025, 155 of 280 Derby starters carry Native Dancer blood. The deck is stacked. It has been stacked for decades.
The decline in durability is stark when you look at race records over time. Prior to the 2000s, a typical Thoroughbred would average 20–25 career starts, often competing across multiple seasons before retirement. Today, that number has plummeted: modern Thoroughbreds average just 8–10 starts. It’s no wonder that Thoroughbreds are widely seen as accident-prone, fragile, and prone to breakdowns. With roughly 70% of the breed carrying Native Dancer’s legacy of fragility, perception and reality are closely aligned.
But, who knows what the real cause of modern Thoroughbred fragility is? Is it starting them before their bones and joints are fully developed? Is it the relentless intensity of training at two and three years old? Is it the lack of turnout and natural movement, or the calorie-dense, sugar-heavy diets pumped into them to produce early speed? Is it the drugs and medications used to mask soreness? Maybe it’s all of it. Maybe it’s something we haven’t even measured yet. What we do know is that bloodlines matter. You can manipulate every other factor under the sun, but genetics still writes the script. Native Dancer. Raise a Native. Northern Dancer. Mr. Prospector. Danehill.
We keep pretending the problem is solely training, nutrition, or management, when part of it is literally written in DNA. And because no one wants to confront that truth, because acknowledging it might shrink a paycheck, hurt a sale, or make a pedigree less “marketable,” the horses continue to pay.
The Jockey Club knows everything about every foal, every mare, every stud, every covering, every fertility rate, every coat color, every microchip. They know how much each stallion earns, how many mares he covers. But the things that actually matter…breakdowns, end-of-career soundness, which bloodlines produce catastrophe, which horses survive a second career…they don’t track. They refuse. They have the infrastructure, the data, the power, but facing the truth would expose the industry.
Why do we keep breeding the same lines until there is nowhere left to go? Why do we prioritize speed and short-term wins over career soundness? Why track mares and foals to the decimal but ignore the fact that hundreds of horses retire broken or never finish their careers?
At the rate we’re going, Thoroughbred racing won’t survive into the end of my lifetime, and honestly, I’m OK with that. The entire industry is built on greed, vanity, and short-term gain, with people who can’t see past money-making decisions that destroy living creatures. You cannot claim to love horses while riding them before they are physically developed, forcing choices that directly harm their welfare, and then turn around and call yourself a responsible owner or breeder. The data exists. The knowledge exists. But no one in power cares. They don’t want to face the truth because it would cost them money.
And so the cycle continues, relentless, unstoppable, and utterly devoid of conscience. Thoroughbred racing as we know it is a house of cards, and when it collapses, no one will cry for the sport, because the ones who built it cared about nothing except cash, status, and spectacle. The horses, as always, will pay the price.
