Was Eight Belles doomed with bad genetics?

Question

I just heard that Eight Belles was directly related to Barbaro and a horse that suffered a career ending injury in the 1950s. Was Eight Belles doomed by poor genetics? Perhaps poor genetics kept her bones from being as strong as they should have been?

Answer 1

They both had Native Dancer in their pedigree.  Barbaro was related to him on the female side and  Eight Belles on both sides.  And yes, there have been problems with injuries in Native Dancer's descendants.  

In the Wall Street Journal the day before the Derby, there was an interesting article about Thoroughbred breeding becoming too reliant on the Native Dancer bloodline.  I have a link to it below in my source list.

Answer 2

Most likely, the answer to your question is YES. Eight Belles WAS inbred and overbred, and she was unusually tall and overgrown for her age- too tall, in the eyes of many people. She also had a superfine bone structure which was inherently prone to breakage under extreme stress. Plus, it's been recognized for some 20 years or so now that there are certain families within the Thoroughbred breed which are notorious for producing horses which have only a limited number of races in them before they break down and die, the way this filly did. I think Eight Belles probably came from one of those families. But I think the biggest problem didn't come from over or inbreeding- it came from the fact that the filly was just too young to be racing. She was just a BABY, not a mature mare. If her owners had waited until she was 5 or 6, and fully mature before racing her in a race like the Derby, chances are she'd still be alive and wouldn't have broken down so badly. That's the whole problem with racing today- there is just too much pressure on the breeders and owners of these babies to get as much return on the investments they make as soon as possible. When it costs a MILLION dollars before a foal is even born, then owners have to have a way to get that money back- and the result of this is that these young horses are started under saddle when they are only about 15 months old !! It's a rare set of owners who are like the Jacksons, Barbaro's owners, and can afford to bring a young horse along very slowly, the way they are currently doing with his younger brothers, Nicanor and Lentenor. For the Jacksons, money is no object- so they can afford to take the time to let these babies grow up some. Eight Belles' owners were not interested in letting her grow up and become a mature mare- they wanted their money now, not some time in the future. She paid the price for their greed- just like racehorses have been doing for decades now. Sad, isn't it?