The Little Book On Watching Horseracing
By Harold Washburn

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE THOROUGHBRED

To quote from the Koran
When God created the horse, He said to the magnificent creature: "I have made thee unlike any other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes, Thou shalt fly without wings and conquer without sword."

Every thoroughbred racing today traces back in direct male line to one these imported Eastern stallions... The Byerly Turk, The Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Arabian.

In 1743, John Cheny an English sports man wrote "I have been assured by a person of rank and great honor that the horse called by sportsman the Byerly Turk... Was in fact an Arabian."  A black horse, foaled in about 1679, he’d most likely been captured or bought form the Arabs by a Turkish officer who rode him off to the wars in Hungary. He was in turn captured by Captain Robert Byerly at the siege of Buda in 1687. Three years latter - as colonel of the Sixth Dragoon Guards, Byerly used the horse as a charger in the Irish Wars. The horse was sent to stud in 1691,and the so called Byerly Turk stood until approximately 1698. The blood of the Byerly Turk survives through his great-grandson Herod - foaled in 1758. Herod a decent, but not noteworthy racehorse sired the winners of more than 1000 races. Only about 5 % of modern thoroughbreds trace back to Herod, including the outstanding mare Waya Champion of 1979.

The Darley Arabian foaled in 1700 - was one of the few stallions imported directly from the Middle East. In 1704 - Thomas Darley, a merchant from Aleppo, Syria, purchased (as he wrote in sending him home to his father) "a horse that comes from the most esteemed race among Arabs". The horse stood at Aldby Stud in Yorkshire for 26 years, and was intensively bred to Darley’s mares.

Through his great-grandson Eclipse he became the progenitor of 80% of the modern Thoroughbreds.

The story of the Godolphin Arabian is the singly most colorful of all the tales of these foundation sires. Foaled in Yemem in 1724,He was exported to Tunis, then shipped as a present to King of France by the Bey of Morocco. Inasmuch as the horse arrived from the Barbary Coast, and, because of a painting that gave him a Barbish look, this horse sometimes is erroneously refereed to as the Godolphin Barb.

There is a somewhat romantic though unverifiable story alluding to the fact that Mr. Edward Coke found the Godoiphin Arabian pulling a water cart in Paris in 1729. The more likely happenstance is that Coke purchased the horse, privately and sold him to the second Earl of Godoiphin for his stud near Newmarket.

Through his grandson Matchem... Foaled in 1748... the Godolphin Arabian’s male line accounts for about 15% of today’s Thoroughbreds. His direct male line in America includes the great Man O’War and Triple Crown Winner War Admiral
The sigh of a thoroughbred in synchronized, poetic motion pounding down the stretch of a racetrack brings to mind a D.H. Lawrence quotation, "Far back far back in our soul the horse prances - The Horse! .. The Horse! The symbol of surging potency and power of movement, of action, in man.”

Written By Peter Kules For the publication "FROM THE BACKSTRETCH TO THE WINNER’S CIRCLE" Published by Harold Washburn and Peter Kules.

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