Welcome back to another Friday judging clinic! This week, we're returning to the land of Thoroughbreds. I last covered this in a mini breed post, so the text regarding the breed standard is going to sound the same - I'm not one to reinvent the wheel, so I copied and pasted my previous work.
As always, my personal judging history and credentials can be found on my About Me page.
Unlike most breed registries, the Jockey Club does not have a specific breed standard for Thoroughbreds. Foals are eligible to register based on their parents, so long as certain conditions are met (both parents are registered, foal was conceived naturally and not through AI or embryo transfer). That being said, there are still ideal characteristics to look for in a Thoroughbred's conformation. They're bred for racing, so their form should follow function.
With this in mind, these are the characteristics to be looking for:
- Small, expressive head with a straight profile
- Long slender neck, prominent withers, deep chest
- Long sloping shoulders
- Sloping and muscular croup
Standard taken from Rousseau, Élise. Horses of the World. Princeton University Press, 2017, p 48.
Like with our Quarter Horses, there can be some wiggle room in the body type. A race fit Thoroughbred is going to look different from an active stud, or a Thoroughbred in a second career.
Let's look at our class!
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| Thoroughbred mare |
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| Thoroughbred stallion |
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| Thoroughbred stallion |
The Placings:
🥇1st: Horse C - Smarty Jones
In first place, I pinned the Smarty Jones. He's pretty much an ideal racing Thoroughbred - he has a small expressive head with a straight profile, a deep chest, sloping shoulder, and muscular croup. He makes sense anatomically and biomechanically, as he benefits from a stand that allows him to balance on one leg as he should be in this phase of the gallop (see Cigar's placing below for more on this!) In addition, this model in particular has more dramatic shading than the Strapless, as well as details like ermine spots. Between the better conformation and being a nicer model in general, the Smarty earns the top placing in this class.
🥈2nd: Horse A - Strapless
I pinned the Strapless second. Unlike the other two in the class, she is not in race fit condition. This does not make her a bad Thoroughbred! Plenty of Thoroughbreds go on to second careers, and Strapless works perfectly well as a Thoroughbred who has moved on from racing. Her withers are a little flatter than I'd expect from a Thoroughbred (they don't call them shark finned for no reason!), but otherwise she has a nice head, long neck, and sloping shoulders. In a competitive Thoroughbred class she may not place as high (Emersons and Love Classic molds set a high standard), but she works as a Thoroughbred in a second career with anatomy and biomechanics that make sense, and that's enough for her to place second in this particular class.
🥉3rd: Horse B - Cigar
Cigar is my third place pin today. He's not necessarily a bad Thoroughbred, but due to the nature of making this pose exist in plastic, his ABCs aren't the best. Cigar is in a phase of the gallop where two feet are supposed to be on the ground, but he comes from an era of Breyer where having models on stands was a new innovation - the Cigar mold was introduced in 1998, and Huckleberry Bey was introduced in 1999. Huck's style of base additionally would not have worked for the phase of movement Cigar is in, and in fact we would not see this type of innovation for OF Breyer plastic models until Smarty Jones in 2004. All of this to say the Cigar mold has some (necessary) ABC issues that bring him down in comparison to the other models in this class.
How did you pin this class? What made you pin one horse over the other? Remember, we don't have to pin the class exactly the same! Being able to explain your placings if asked is an essential skill for judges.
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