G'day all. To clarify the above, I’m having a fair jab at Thomas there but obviously he’s not Ken Jackson. However it does remain my contention that this 'gene pool is shrinking' routine largely began to get air-play in the lead up to then reached a crescendo upon the arrival of Christian Cullen at Kentuckiana. Further to this I believe it was irresponsible as it was used a marketing angle, one that was co-opted for stallion promotional purposes and it served to put an unfounded scare into breeders who invariably seek to do the right thing by their mares and the breed as a whole. Perhaps Noel & Dobby pulled a kind of ‘National Broadband Network’ thing, like that dreamt up on a short flight between Canberra and Sydney by Oz’s former PM Kevin Rudd & Sen. Stephen Conroy? Maybe little or no more thought went into it than that? Who knows? Whatever it was, in my opinion breeders and the breed were done a significant disservice greatest at the time. The absence of contrary thoughts being aired anywhere else saw an idea with no real scientific basis nevertheless grow wings & fly in the wider consciousness....instead of it being clubbed into submission ‘juvenile Mutton Bird’ or ‘baby Harp Seal’ fashion (apologies for the gruesome imagery there). Maybe it was simply that both back then and apparently right through up until today, some people either forgot or were just not old enough to remember back to the very same Chicken Little 'the Sky is falling' routine being pulled by those who was said the breed had been irreparably saturated with Meadow Skipper influence? History has shown those fears to have been completely unfounded then, just as the regurgitated and rebadged version thereof is today.
Whilst on the subject of History, it is of course the greatest of all predictors of the future. The fact is that the breed always finds an out. That is the basic nature of Nature, it is the basic nature of Genes. It is the basic nature of Life itself. Given even only half of half of half of an opportunity it will always find a way to continue. As I said above, we’re now blessed to have front row seats to what promises to be one of the greatest shows of our generation. We might well see a couple of trans-generational horses that took things to a whole new level on the racetrack go on to take things to a whole new level in the breeding barn. Now wouldn't that be something?