The Thoroughbred

The term Thoroughbred describes a breed of horse whose ancestry traces back to three foundation sires — the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerly Turk.

Named after their respective owners — Thomas Darley, Lord Godolphin and Captain Robert Byerly — these three stallions were brought to England from the Mediterranean Middle East around the turn of the 17th century and bred to the stronger, but less precocious, native horse.

The result was an animal which could carry weight with sustained speed over extended distances, qualities which brought a new dimension to the burgeoning, aristocratically-supported, sport of horse racing.

So began a selective breeding process which has been going on for more than 300 years, breeding the best stallions to the best mares, with the proof of excellence being established on the racecourse.

The New World of North America was quick to adopt the pastime. Although there are records of horse racing on Long Island as far back as 1665, the introduction of organized Thoroughbred racing is traditionally credited to Gov. Samuel Ogle of Maryland, at whose behest racing “between pedigreed horses, in the English style” was first staged at Annapolis in 1745.

As the country developed so did Thoroughbred racing, spreading across the nation from coast to coast until, today, the volume of racing in America far outweighs that of any other country in the world. American bloodlines, too, have come to be respected in the four corners of the earth.

The American Stud Book

In the early days of the Thoroughbred, breeding records were sparse and frequently incomplete. It was left to Englishman James Weatherby, through his research and by consolidation of privately-kept pedigree records, to publish the first volume of the General Stud Book.

This he did in 1791, listing the pedigrees of 387 mares, each of which could be traced to Eclipse, a direct descendent of the Darley Arabian; Matchem, a grandson of the Godolphin Arabian; and Herod, whose great-great grandsire was the Byerly Turk. The General Stud Book is still published in England by Weatherbys and Sons, Secretaries to the English Jockey Club.

The first volume of The American Stud Book was published in 1873, by Col. Sanders D. Bruce, a Kentuckian who had spent a lifetime researching pedigrees of American Thoroughbreds. Bruce produced six volumes of the register until 1896, when the project was taken over by The Jockey Club.