Talk:Eclipse (horse)

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Ahnert reference book

Does anyone have the Ahnert book widely used as reference when talking about thoroughbred breeding? This article references it when saying that the Royal Veterinary College found that 80% of thoroughbreds "had Eclipse in their pedigree". I find this percentage shockingly low when you look beyond the tail-male line. Unless the study was done in the 1800s, I find it hard to imagine any thoroughbred who doesn't have multiple crosses to Eclipse through his daughters and sons of daughters and daughters of sons and so on! I softened the wording to say that the book was published in 1970, as opposed to the earlier wording that said the study was done in 1970. I do wonder if the study was talking about tail-male line: 70% before the explosion of Nearco and Native Dancer descendants seems possible.Jlvsclrk (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article from New Scientist [1] is a bit more up to date and gives the figure at 95% tail-male (y chromosone) descent from the Darley Arabian. And all the extant lines of descent from DA go through Eclipse. Tigerboy1966 07:03, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Saw the reference to the Clee book. I read it too, can grab it again from the Library, I think, if needed for a second set of eyes. It was quite fascinating in content, though Clee is a rather dull writer. Montanabw^(talk) 21:21, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]