Page 39 - 12 April 2013

horses needed in the armed services, especially the Army.
As modern Quarter Horse racing became more organized, the breeders started looking for the right kind of Thoroughbred to cross on Quarter Horses. This is where stallions like Three Bars and Top Deck came into
the industry. This has lead to an interesting situation with the modern racing American Quarter Horse.
Speedhorse magazine’s focus in this issue on the Million Dollar Sires allows us to explore the sire line influence of today’s racing American Quarter Horse. This look at the modern sire lines will show how the Top Deck and Three Bars sire lines influence the breed today and give us another interesting bit of information about the modern day sire line of the racing American Quarter Horse.
The difficult part of this task is that there are 454 stallions that have sired winners that put
them on the million-dollar sires list. So to give us a workable sample, let’s look at the top 100 million dollar sires. The leader of this list is, of course, First Down Dash with winnings of $79,207,618 through January of this year. The 100th stallion on this list is TR Dasher with earnings of $4,973,802 through January of this year. The part we have
to remember is that the position of many of
the stallions on this list is in constant change as
we add new earnings on a daily basis and so we have picked a given time to explore the sire line influence on the modern Quarter Horse.
The sire lines we have identified in these 100 stallions are Three Bars, Top Deck, Nasrullah, Hyperion, Northern Dancer, Fairway, Teddy, Man O’ War and Native Dancer. We find that 41 of these stallions trace in the sire line to Three Bars, 22 to Top Deck, 13 to Nasrullah, 10 to Native Dancer, seven to Hyperion, one to Fairway, three to Teddy, one to Man O’ War and two to Northern Dancer.
Where do these sire lines come from? This
is the interesting tidbit I referred to earlier in our introduction of this material. Every sire line in the top 100 million dollar sires takes us to a Thoroughbred sire line and the dominance of the Darley Arabian as a foundation sire. Three Bars is the leader in this group. He traces to
the Darley Arabian, Top Deck traces to the Darley Arabian, and Nasrullah traces to the Darley Arabian. Native Dancer traces to the Darley Arabian. Hyperion traces to the Darley Arabian. Fairway traces to the Darley Arabian. Teddy traces to the Darley Arabian. Man O’ War traces to the Godolphin Arabian. So all of these stallions trace in the sire line to the Darley Arabian except Man O’ War.
The Darley Arabian is one of the three foundation sires in the Thoroughbred, along with the Byerly Turk and the Godolphin Arabian. As you can see, the Darley Arabian sire line is a major factor in the racing American
Quarter Horse just as it is in the Thoroughbred. Many of the branches of the Darley Arabian sire lines trace down to the modern era through
the Darley Arabian sire line descendant Whalebone. From Whalebone they branch off into distinct lines, with his sons Camel and Sir Hercules being primary branches. Through Camel and his son Touchstone, we see the line continue to such stallions as Three Bars, Top Deck and Hyperion. Three Bars comes from
the Hermit branch. Top Deck represents the line through Domino. From Hyperion through Noholme II, we get The Signature and Pass ‘Em Up. Hyperion is also represented by Reb’s Policy, a grandson through his son Khaled. Some other prominent stallions that come down the Camel/ Touchstone line are Little Request, Plaudit, Question Mark, Chicaro and Flying Bob.
Sir Hercules is the sire of Birdcatcher. It
is through Birdcatcher that we go to Phalaris, and through Phalaris we have the Fairway, Nasrullah, Native Dancer and Northern Dancer modern day sire lines. The Birdcatcher branch also gives us the Teddy line, giving us Bull Dog and his part of the family, which includes his descendants Tiny’s Gay, Spotted Bull, Savannah Jr, Parr Passum and Jackstraw. Birdcatcher
has a branch of the family that produced the great Oklahoma Star P-6. The Birdcatcher also gives us a branch that goes through Isonomy
to Depth Charge, a very significant sire in the scheme of things.
A third son of Whalebone is Waverly. It
is through Waverly that we get such noted horses as Ben Brush and his sons Sweep and Broomstick. This line has given the industry the modern stallions Direct Win and Piggin String. The fourth son of Whalebone we will touch on is Faugh-A-Baugh. This stallion accounts for the sire line that has produced Bonnie Joe, Joe Reed P-3, Joe Reed II and Leo.
One last thing - what are the sire lines for Peter McCue and Traveler? Well, Traveler has an unknown pedigree and so we don’t know what sire line he came from. But Peter McCue is a sire line descendant of the Byerly Turk. He goes to this sire line through his great great grandsire Old Billy. Old Billy goes in his sire line to Sir Archy and his sire *Diomed. Diomed is sired
by Florizel, a great great grandson of The Byerly Turk. This tells us that the South Texas Quarter Horses that trace in the sire line to Old Billy also go back to a Thoroughbred sire line started by the Byerly Turk.
Our look at the million dollar sires and their sire lines shows that both the Three Bars and Top Deck sire lines are still dominant in their influence as Quarter Horse sires of sires. This is a fitting tribute to these stallions as they have been the base of our industry all these years. And now we know they come from a powerful sire line - the Darley Arabian sire line.
Native Dancer
Hyperion
Man O’ War
As you can see, the Darley Arabian sire line is a major factor in the racing American Quarter Horse just as it is in the Thoroughbred.
SPEEDHORSE, April 12, 2013 37
million dollar sires
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