arabian horse "Burning Sand"

[brunanas]

i've heard about him multiple times but never really did much searching. however this time i realized he is from 1986 which means he can't be around anymore and wanted to know if was still producing babies (through frozen semen) because just from the little i read i know how important he is to the arabian breed and idk, got curious as to for how long they'll be able to get Burning Sand babies? anyways, i got to pedigreequery and his info box says "HIS HERITAGE IS BANNED BY HARC CRITERIA". aaaaand now i'm curious. why was his heritage banned? and what is the HARC criteria?

and additional question, does anyone know how many foals he produced? and how rare it is to find a modern race arabian without him in their pedigrees?

[tranquilo]

I would say "banned" is a stretch since HARC didn't have any actual authority. It was a club that offered bonus money to people who raced Arabians without certain popular stallions in their pedigree (Amer, Baroud III, Burning Sand, Dragon, Saint Laurent, Tiwaiq). They did have a goal of diversifying the gene pool, which is a good thing, but a lot of people took it as proof that those stallions weren't purebred Arabians, which Burning Sand's people obviously weren't happy about. As a racehorse, he did have his racing papers stripped due to speculation about his breeding, but nothing was ever proven and his foals were allowed to be registered.

I'm not sure how much frozen semen is left, but he's still being advertised for breeding and had foals last year. As of now he has 366 foals in the US registry. He is very prolific in racing pedigrees in the US.

[Oasis Dream]

This article explains how some of this came about:
DNA typing showed that Arabians weren't part of the TB breed- instead, it actually showed that TB's were introduced into the Arabian lines instead of vice versa, as had been commonly assumed- mainly from Whalebone, a prominent TB stallion with a unique genetic mutation.
I think part of HARC's goal was to eliminate Arabs with TB in their bloodlines.
https://usahr.org/thoroughbred-dna-in-racing-arabians

[sweettalk]

This article explains how some of this came about:
DNA typing showed that Arabians weren't part of the TB breed- instead, it actually showed that TB's were introduced into the Arabian lines instead of vice versa, as had been commonly assumed- mainly from Whalebone, a prominent TB stallion with a unique genetic mutation.
I think part of HARC's goal was to eliminate Arabs with TB in their bloodlines.
https://usahr.org/thoroughbred-dna-in-racing-arabians

did i happen to miss it, or was this genetic mutation not specified?

[brunanas]

This article explains how some of this came about:
DNA typing showed that Arabians weren't part of the TB breed- instead, it actually showed that TB's were introduced into the Arabian lines instead of vice versa, as had been commonly assumed- mainly from Whalebone, a prominent TB stallion with a unique genetic mutation.
I think part of HARC's goal was to eliminate Arabs with TB in their bloodlines.
https://usahr.org/thoroughbred-dna-in-racing-arabians

what does "bred ex" and "DTR" mean?

[brunanas]

I would say "banned" is a stretch since HARC didn't have any actual authority. It was a club that offered bonus money to people who raced Arabians without certain popular stallions in their pedigree (Amer, Baroud III, Burning Sand, Dragon, Saint Laurent, Tiwaiq). They did have a goal of diversifying the gene pool, which is a good thing, but a lot of people took it as proof that those stallions weren't purebred Arabians, which Burning Sand's people obviously weren't happy about. As a racehorse, he did have his racing papers stripped due to speculation about his breeding, but nothing was ever proven and his foals were allowed to be registered.

I'm not sure how much frozen semen is left, but he's still being advertised for breeding and had foals last year. As of now he has 366 foals in the US registry. He is very prolific in racing pedigrees in the US.

thank you! do you have any articles about him losing his papers? i'm curious now.

[brunanas]

and also reading the article Oasis Dream shared, it says Burning Sand was bred to multiple of his own daughters. does anyone have at least a partial list of that progeny, just out of curiosity?

[Flanders]

This article explains how some of this came about:
DNA typing showed that Arabians weren't part of the TB breed- instead, it actually showed that TB's were introduced into the Arabian lines instead of vice versa, as had been commonly assumed- mainly from Whalebone, a prominent TB stallion with a unique genetic mutation.
I think part of HARC's goal was to eliminate Arabs with TB in their bloodlines.
https://usahr.org/thoroughbred-dna-in-racing-arabians

did i happen to miss it, or was this genetic mutation not specified?

If you mean what the mutation does, I don't think they have any clue. Its a Y-chromosome mutation that every male that descends from him has. Then there is another mutation 700 years ago that shows that just about every breed in the world is from the same sire, except for a very few. https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing ... male-lines

what does "bred ex" and "DTR" mean?

The bred part just appears to be from Saudi bred (as a note of where Tiwaiq was bred, maybe there is another Arabian stallion with the same name?) not sure why they highlight Saudi and not bred. Ex = out of ; DTR = daughter

This is unrelated to the thread but does anyone have "Vavra's Horses: Ten of the World's Most Beautiful Equines" was Burning Sand one of the horses in it? I tried searching but couldn't find a list of the horses in the book. I used to have it but I downsized from 3 bookshelves to one so it was a cut. I just ask because I've never followed Arabian racing and I heard of this horse.

[BaroqueAgain1]

I had several of Vavra's books (now all lost to fire), mostly with his gorgeous photos of Andalusians. I think I had that book you note, but I don't remember Burning Sand in it.

[Flanders]

I had several of Vavra's books (now all lost to fire), mostly with his gorgeous photos of Andalusians. I think I had that book you note, but I don't remember Burning Sand in it.

Yeah I just checked when the book was published(1989) and when he was born(1986) I don't think he could have been. I just remember there being at least one racing Arabian in it.

[sweettalk]

This article explains how some of this came about:
DNA typing showed that Arabians weren't part of the TB breed- instead, it actually showed that TB's were introduced into the Arabian lines instead of vice versa, as had been commonly assumed- mainly from Whalebone, a prominent TB stallion with a unique genetic mutation.
I think part of HARC's goal was to eliminate Arabs with TB in their bloodlines.
https://usahr.org/thoroughbred-dna-in-racing-arabians

did i happen to miss it, or was this genetic mutation not specified?

If you mean what the mutation does, I don't think they have any clue. Its a Y-chromosome mutation that every male that descends from him has. Then there is another mutation 700 years ago that shows that just about every breed in the world is from the same sire, except for a very few. https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing ... male-lines

that's wild. very interesting stuff, ty flanders!

[tranquilo]

and also reading the article Oasis Dream shared, it says Burning Sand was bred to multiple of his own daughters. does anyone have at least a partial list of that progeny, just out of curiosity?

I could only find one instance where he was bred to one of his daughters and the foal died as a baby. But I know several of his sons were bred to Burning Sand daughters, and one of those matings produced RB Texas Hold Em who was the Champion 4YO Male in 2019 (pic attached).

Regarding his racing papers, I'm not sure if there's much info online about it and it was before my time. If I remember correctly, the story was that someone thought his teeth didn't match the age on his papers and the Arabian Jockey Club wasn't able to verify his parentage because his dam was deceased. So the Jockey Club decided to pull his racing papers, but the Arabian registry found no reason to take away his registration and he was allowed to breed.