Why marrying kinfolk ain't all it's cracked up to be

Recently the barn acquired a young horse, about 5 or 6 years old, from someone who bought him off the track. Former racers can be great riding partners once they're taught that not everything means "go fast now" or "stop dead," and since many are sold at a loss by barns hoping to make room for the next great hope, they can be good investments for riders looking for project horses.

One of the women who rides our new boy, whom I will call Edmund for reasons amusing to myself alone, took the trouble of running his lip tattoo against the Jockey Club's records. Holy shit, y'all, he's royalty: Seattle Slew on one side and War Admiral on the other. Those are some hellishly impressive names to have in a pedigree. Whenever a horse runs well, the owners hope to make real money from the breeding—witness all the effort put into keeping poor Barbaro alive (Jockey Club rules forbid artificial insemination)—and many horses are bred back to the big Triple Crown names of the past, but it's still impressive to actually see that a horse is the grandson of a legend.

So, was Edmund a boy wonder? Turns out, he ran only twice, finishing well out of the money both times. He is somewhat goony-looking, with a scraggly long neck, and he can't seem to keep track of his feet. He's still coltishly flexible, able to scratch his ear with a hind hoof even with a rider on his back, and he'll probably grow up into a lovely hunter/jumper or dressage horse if his trainers are patient enough. But still. Seeing him try to balance himself in a turn, and knowing about all those big names gleaming like stars in his family tree, is like watching a Hapsburg try to do calculus: You start to wonder whether breeding out might not have helped a little.