Belisarius at two, and more bays from that family
Landrace Belisarius, Jamr’s only son so far, is slowly unfolding into a great stallion prospect for his proud owners Moira Walker and Jeff Vorwald. I cannot stop staring and squinting at his pictures, trying to figure out which parts of him are after his sire, and which ones after his dam. Of course it keeps changing, and he has a long way to go before reaching maturity. The other Jamr offspring is Belisarius’ full sister Bassma Al Arab.
Below, for comparison, is his not-so-distant damline relative *Sunshine (O.A. x *Nufoud). They share more than the bay color and the blaze.
For further comparison between the three is a closer relative, the 1991 “red bay” stallion Salil Ibn Iliad (Iliad x LD Rubic), photos by breeder and owner Lesley Detweiler. The last photo shows a lot of the elastic-like quality of that family. Or it’s the influence of the Craver Davenport stallion Ibn Alamein, another bay who is Salil’s grandsire and a strong presence in Belisarius’s pedigree.
Exquisite!!!
It is really informative to study ancestral photos. So fortunate to have them, and decent ones. And even better to know or hear stories of their personalities and quirky things about them!
Oh, I see the Sunshine resemblance! It is really neat, looking at families of horses and comparing their similarities and their differences – have seen a pair of siblings who were quite different in build but who nevertheless had a similar walk, and, oddly enough, the same desire to eat shoes, even though they had never known each other. Heritable traits are sometimes mystifying.
Really good shoulder and withers on Ibn Iliad in that last photo. Reminds me of the description of the Godolphin Arabian by William Osmer:
“There never was a horse (at least, that I have seen) so well entitled to get racers as the Godolphin Arabian; for, whoever has seen this horse must remember that his shoulders were deeper, and lay farther into his back, than those of any horse ever yet seen. Behind the shoulders, there was but a very small space ere the muscles of his loins rose exceedingly high, broad, and expanded, which were inserted into his hindquarters with greater strength and power than in any horse I believe ever yet seen of his dimensions, viz fifteen hands high.”