Bloodline_ The Search for Speed

humans love the power of a horse what was forged by nature has become our passion Island has a deep love affair with the horse in the land of the horse you can see all around you that bond between human and animal that goes back thousands of years this pleasure in horses is one of the world's most enduring and enchanting of all pastimes and the great skill to breed the best horses is as precious as it ever was in history every new phone brings with it a unique genetic legacy a journey across vast geography reaching back to prehistoric times thirty thousand years ago humans crept into the darkness of caves and painted their world here are the beasts they feared and among them a creature that caught the eye for its speed as it raced across the plains many thousands of years would pass before humans took another step towards the horse and two nature's entwined forever this new relationship with the horse brought power and with it wealth horsemanship was knowledge more precious than gold it was carefully passed to each new generation for centuries breeders have relied on that same highly skilled horsemanship to judge the next generation of champions but today a new kind of knowledge is beginning to emerge about the potential for horse dr. Emmeline Hill leads a team of scientists at University College Dublin she investigates the genetics of racing performance in the thoroughbred all the horses that we work with run fast some just run faster than others and that's always been the big question what is it genetically about them that makes some of them run faster dawn approach is a champion racehorse one of the world's best through the stud book we can trace his bloodline back over 300 years back then the fates of nations abdun flowed on horseback the fire leet earth is famously captured in the Turkish war now is jeans thrill millions on the world's racecourses and from time to time a horse like dawn approach stands above the others and reveals that rich history in his blood he has come to meet his challengers at new markets two thousand Guineas he enters the store as the highest ranked horse in the world when in every race of his career so far his owner and his trainer are confident he can do it again but this is his biggest test seven wins from seven races what is it that made him a champion people love to watch horses race power and the speed of horses thrilling and people have been doing it for centuries but I most like to do is to look inside a horse and try to understand what makes a great horse really great dr. hill needed to find a partnership in the world of elite horse racing she found a great ally in Jim Bolger one of Ireland's top trainers one of the world's best for the last ten years her team has had the opportunity to study some of the world's best racehorses early in the work they made a groundbreaking discovery taking hundreds of blood samples from horses racing at the highest level all over the world they examined the genetic code for a particular muscle gene the myostatin gene and they found that a tiny single difference at that gene could determine the best racing distance for a horse they called it the speed change it was the world's first discovery linking a single gene with a profound effect on racing performance finding this leap was a real Eureka moment it was something that readers had been selecting for for centuries and there in the DNA we could actually see the difference a single simple natural indicator of speed at a mile and under dawn approached has excelled and in fact his speed gene test reveals the optimum code for sprint distances the speed gene is only the beginning of this new chapter in our relationship with the horse scientists will go on to find many fascinating pieces of the jigsaw in the horse genome that breeders have been trying to unlock for thousands of years every new foal carries a genetic history well we're now trying to do is to understand parts of that DNA that enable it to be a future champion you

Channel: UCD Research

Views: 134,818

Rating: 4.8556261 out of 5

Keywords: Dawn Approach, Jim Bolger, Emmeline Hill, Equinome, Irish Horse Racing, Speed Gene, Genomics, CC Gene Type, 2000 Guineas, Newmarket, Sheikh Mohammed, Olympic Glory, Queen Elizabeth Stakes, Ascot, UCD, New Approach, Darleys Stud, Kildangan Stud, Darley's Stud, Godolphin, champion two-year-old, Max Hug Williams, Research, Equine Studies, Coventry Stakes, Galantas, speedgene, horse racing, Hymn Of The Dawn, Phone Trick, Equine Science, Magic Of Life, Miss Oceana

Id: _rHZCtwl-hw

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2013