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OLD ETONIAN HORSERACING & BREEDING SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
Issue 30 November 2024
Elstar: The only pure English Thoroughbred stallion playing polo in the world today
Alexander Fiske-Harrison (WHR ’94) about Elstar, snapping his ankle and a challenge…
“Our stallion Elstar directly descends from a pure sire line to the Darley Arabian through Two-Twenty-Two, Fairy King, and Northern Dancer etc. etc. I don’t need to tell our readers this. His maternal line, through Elsaayoura, showcases one of the last direct descendants from the Byerley Turk via Elsaayoura’s sire, Indian Ridge, showing a significant and rare genetic lineage within the thoroughbred breed. www.StallionElstar.com
In terms of genetic markers – and I know it has fallen out of fashion, indeed had when I was an undergraduate biologist at Oxford in the mid-’90s – the Dosage Index (DI) presents intriguing figures: Indian Ridge boasted a DI of infinity, Elsaayoura carries a DI of 7, and Elstar himself has a DI of 6.2. These values, when compared to, for example – his cousin Frankel’s 0.67 – highlight a lineage predisposed to speed without stamina. I have often wondered if the endless stoppages that polo provides – along with the pony changes every 7 or even every 3.5 minutes – didn’t finally put him in the sport for which he was actually bred. His racing career up until the age of 4 certainly left little mark on that sport!
For the upcoming season, Elstar is slated to stand at Stallion AI, offering an opportunity to access one of the few remaining lines from the Byerley Turk. This engagement not only provides a link to historical thoroughbred roots but also a chance to observe the effects of hybrid vigour within the English Thoroughbred breed, by mitigating common genetic issues associated with inbreeding depression – particularly those often seen in descendants of the Darley Arabian line.
P.S. Apologies if I am limping at the forthcoming dinner at White’s. I snapped an ankle lining up this rather special photo of an 8-year-old sire fighting bull of Miura – for the whom the Lamborghinis are named – for the great David Yarrow earlier this year, an encounter of which Richard Dunwoody captured another angle, while I was balancing on the fracture (I taught Richard Pamplona-style bull-running many years ago).
I would note that David and I have a plan to pit Klarina on Elstar on a stormy beach against one of Elstar’s racing cousins in David’s famously dramatic style against anyone who wants to put a suitable horse with a suitable jockey, all credits duly given: provisional title – Death & The Maiden / The Chase & The Game. So far suggestions have run from Dunwoody on Frankel (who could afford the insurance?) to someone asking me to nudge Mr Waley-Cohen if his son fancied another canter on Noble Yeats – his and Elstar’s paternal grandfathers being full brothers – for the camera.”‘
P.S. I should add that alongside half of Elstar, I am also proud to own half a hoof – technically half of one of forty shares in the racehorse Romany King along with other members of my year at Eton, including the trainer Charlie Longsdon, another O.E. of ’94.
The syndicate is suitably named On The Bill, the harshest of disciplinary measures at Eton for which I hold the record since its foundation in 1440 – as reported from Condé Nast’s Tatler to The Spectator – my ‘share’ being divided with my old schoolfriend and sometime long distance running mate the Marquess of Stafford, formerly James Edgerton, son and heir to the Duke of Sutherland.
Alexander's Journal 
