Racing, Kontiki and the Davenport Hadbans
Last week I was talking with a Syrian friend from Aleppo over the phone. Conversations always start with updates on the security situation there, and end with what they were supposed to start with — horse talk. I was telling him about the recent concerted preservation effort that is underway in the USA, to conserve what remained of the Davenport Arabians of the Hadban Enzahi strain, which goes back to the desert mare *Hadba of the Northern Shammar Bedouins, imported to the USA by Homer Davenport in 1906.
I was telling him how much I was struck by the racy, elongated, body structure of these Davenport Hadbans — see Anita Enander’s photo of the heavily linebred Hadban RL Boomerette as one example. He laughed, and told me how a now deceased horse merchant had told him that, in the past, the particular branch of the Hadban Enzahi strain from the Northern Shammar (which *Hadba belongs to) were very prized as racehorses across the Middle East, despite their small size. He told me the story of one of these Hadban stallions, who raced and won at the Beirut racetracks, was so successful there that he was sent to the Iraq racetracks, where he also won, and from there to racetracks in India, where he won so many races that a statue of his likeness was erected there.
I promised myself to check for an Arabian horse statue at one of the racetracks in India at some point, but in the meantime, as I was looking at the pedigrees of US Arabian horses of racing lines, it downed on me that the founder of the top US racing lines of Arabians horses, the legendary racehorse Kontiki (Camelot x Almiki by Abu Farwa) (“Kontiki The Great”, winner of 8 races out of 9, including the 1971 National Championship, photo below), was ….. a Hadban Enzahi tracing to Davenport’s *Hadba.
According to this link, “Kontiki was such an exceptional racehorse that he was honored by the Thoroughbred Jockey Club as the 59th entry in the prestigious list of “100 All Time Greatest Racehorse of the World-Regardless of Breed”” along with Man O-War, Native Dancer, Kelso, Secretariat and John Henry. He was also named U.S. National Champion Racehorse and a member of the Arabian Horse Trust Hall of Fame.”
I thought to myself, that if I owned one of these Davenport Hadban colts, (a) I would feel lucky; (b) I would put it on the race track in a minute, and if I were one of those racehorses breeders, I would (a) brand my horses as “from the same female line as Kontiki”, and (b) I would go straight back to the source of the greatness, and try to find other Kontikis within the Davenport Hadban tail female, instead of linbreeding to Kontiki himself again and again.. then again, it wouldn’t be the first nor the last time that the greatest of horse lines end up in the wrong hands, and become so overlooked and under-appreciated that they are literally thrown away to the dogs..
love kontiki!!! lots of his blood still racing in usa–and doing great!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a person or a group of people would do what you have described above? These horses (the Davenport Hadban group) are so nice and they have not been given the respect and accord that they truly deserve!
Great story about the Hadba’s Edouard. Contiki also benefits from 5 lines to Hamrah, several to Wadduda and of course Antez is in there, the horse who ran a very fast mile and then sired some winners in Poland when exported there before comming back to the US. Thinking of Antez I am reminded of the 2007 AK convention fantasia and the handsome chestnut stallion Personic LF, a very Antez look-alike who had been briefly trained for racing and showed great form in the horse presentation in Paso Robles.
Another performance element in Kontiki’s pedigree is the repeated crosses to Astraled, via his son Rustem with multiple crosses to his daughters, plus a line to Astraled’s son Gulastra, a key element in many endurance winners. Add to that there is one line to Nasr who for a while held the record for one mile in Egypt.
Kontiki is also double Alla Amarward, perhaps one of the more influential Al Khamsa part-Davenport stallions in American breeding.
The Davenport foundation mare in Kontiki’s tail female line is Saaida (Gommusa x Hadba) is pictured in the old AHC stud book in both the 1918 and 1927 volumes. She has good legs and great depth of heart as can also be seen on a lot of these old Hadbans.
it’s really not the horses’ fault, it’s the people’s who own them and misbreed them.
So the theory is that horses sharing a distant tail-female ancestor will also share racing ability? This sounds like the Bruce Lowe Figure System applied to Arabians.
At least in the Middle East, and until the relatively recent advent of sire-centered Thoroughbred-style racing practices in the Gulf, race horse breeders believed (and continue to believe) that the racing potential of a line originates in the tail female, and is enhanced (or reduced) by the addition of good (or bad) stallions in the middle of the pedigree down to the sire.
Race horse breeders have classified female lines according to their racing potential.. and in years of observation of race horse winners at the Beirut racetrack I found that the classification does hold water.
For instance, in a given race, a horse from the Shaykhan (Layya’s) strain, or the K. Dunaysan (Lebnaniah’s paternal grandsire’s strain), or the Hadban al-Fawairah strain (Lebnaniah’s sire’s strain) would always be favored to win over horses from strains recognized as less “racy”, everything else held equal. of course many other factors come into play as well.
The branch of the Kuhaylan Dajani strain to which El Nasser belongs to has been throwing one race winner after the other for sixty years now.. etc. etc.
But what’s the Bruce Lowe Figure System?
There’s an article about it here:
http://www.thoroughbredreview.com/BruceLowe.htm
In brief, during the 1800s, Bruce Lowe analyzed the General Stud Book and determined that every modern English Thoroughbred traced to one of 43 taproot mares in Volume I of the GSB. Subsequently, other researchers argued that some of Bruce Lowe’s separate families actually traced to the same taproot, and of course modern mtDNA analysis has further rewritten the story, so the system was flawed from the outset.
But back to Bruce Lowe. Once he identified his 43 root mares, he counted how many wins members of each mare family had in the Epsom Derby, Epsom Oaks, and St. Leger Stakes. The family with the most wins became Family 1, and the family with the fewest winners became Family 43.
The article linked above comments:
“Perhaps the only documented case of statistically analyzing the validity of Lowe’s system came in the late 1930’s when Phil Bull, a professional handicapper and founder of Timeform, compiled the pedigrees of what he believed to be the worst horses running in England at the time. With a sample size of 430 (possibly a passive aggressive jab at Lowe and Allison), Bull itemized them as a function of their Lowe family number and found similar dynamics to what Figure System proponents claimed to exist in the upper echelons of the population. That is to say, the largest contributors to this sad group of individuals were families one and two. Conversely, there was but one member of this sample that originated from Family 43.”
Here are the last ten winners of the Kentucky Derby with the family numbers given in the pedigreequery.com Thoroughbred Database:
Smarty Jones, family no. 1
Super Saver, family no. 1
Animal Kingdom, family no. 1
Giacomo, family no. 2
Big Brown, family no. 5
Funny Cide, family no. 6
Barbaro, family no. 16
Street Sense, family no. 22
Mine That Bird, family no 23
I’ll Have Another, family no. 23
That’s interesting. A somewhat similar informal classification developed in Lebanon, for Lebanese and Syrian race horse lines, along three categories. Category one was composed of those lines, whose representatives were expected to win 10 races or more, everything else held equal, and were priced accordingly. In this category, there were: 1) the Kuhaylan al-Kharas marbat of Akkar in Northern Lebanon; 2) the Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq marbat of Dabbah Agha al-Dandashi of Tall Kalakh; 3) the Ma’naqi Sbayli marbat of Malek and Sulayman al-Ali of Akkar (the strain of Karawan sire of *Bint Rajwa); the Saqlawi Jadran Ibn Zubayni marbat of Nayif Agha al-Dandashi of Tall Kalakh (the strain of the sire of *Muha, daughter of *Noura), etc.
Regarding the importance of the tail-female connection, Secretariat’s daughters also have/had a higher percentage of successful progeny–far more than Secretariat himself. So I don’t find it surprising at all that Kon Tiki’s female descendants have had such an impact.
Edouard
Do you recall my bay Kontiki stallion you saw at the 2009 Al Khamsa/CMK symposium in Oregon? On your above mentioned queries to breeding the females aspects of Kontiki’s pedigree, I have a colt from breeding TIKIS BAY DUST to MISSTHUNDERSTRUCK. MISSTHUNDERSTRUCK is an Ibn Kontiki daughter out of a WAIKIKI daughter, therefore triple ALMIKI, KONTIKIs dam. Not exactly breeding tail *HADBA, but concentrated.
Of course. How can I ever forget that stallion. His sight has stamped my memory forever and ever.
Thank you Edouard
Did you happen to look at the pictures of the colts by him?
no i did not
I tagged you to a couple pictures on Facebook.
Rereading blog posts & I must say I was surprised to see no one mentioned a particular horse of the *Hadba line on this post nor on Joe’s related ‘More on Davenport Hadba female line and racing’ post either.
That horse would be El Gohari, a son of *Moftakhar (a grandson of the Hadban Enzahi stallion Nabras who was used by the RAS and out of the mare Kateefa who is most famously the dam of Bint Kateefa & Alaa El Din) out of the asil CMK mare Gariba (who was only a few generations away from *Hadba!).
El Gohari had raced for several years, running in 39 races, and winning 10 of them. He was reported to have stayed sound even in his 20s by Eugene Anderson, his final owner who rode him in the mountains.
There’s a couple photos of El Gohari, and I’ve yet to find one where he wasn’t on the track.
Tragically, El Gohari was gelded, a crying shame to me as his pedigree was rich in precious lines that I would’ve loved to see carried on through him.
Of course, through his sire he carried the Nabras sireline which tragically died out in both Egyptian & Egyptian related breeding. This was the introduced RAS sireline that held out the longest, but tragically it met its end like all the other lines, being relegated exclusively to middle pedigree in modern horses.
El Gohari’s dam brought forward a heavy influence of Crabbet through her sire Katar, who was a son of Gulastra out of the Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare *Simawa. His second dam was Zara, a daughter of Nuri Pasha. His third dam was Zamora, a daughter of Nejdran Jr. Finally the last generation before we hit desert breds, his fourth dam was the mare Saaida (who was bred by Homer Davenport & sired by *Gomusa out of *Hadba).
El Gohari did have a full brother, but last I checked his only descent was through Skowronek bred mares.
Although it is sad this line didn’t continue, I think it is quite notable to have a horse so close to his desert ancestry on both sides of his pedigree that had done as well as he had on the track.
Thanks for pointing him out. I was not aware of him. It reinforces my initial belief that the racing potential of Hadba-linebred horses comes from the tail female to Hadba not from linebreeding Kontiki.
An aside: The asil status of Nuri Pasha, especially that of his ancestors El Emir and Ishtar, remains an open question.
Of course! He was an incredible horse & I’m glad to talk about him a little.
That is very true. El Emir has more information about him but an ugly photo (the editing doesn’t make matters any better, I’m fascinated by the choices made by whoever messed with it).
Ishtar’s got nothing to her really, I can’t lie I do think it odd whenever a horse is a popular strain but has nothing to tie them to anyone (a horse that is just “Saqlawi Jidran” gives me pause, as it was sought out so I always wonder where is the supporting evidence to prove they are indeed a Saqlawi Jidran, but if there is a marbat & known tribal history attached than can be traced it obviously is a different story).
I can’t lie, I kind of hope there is some information out there we don’t know about currently that could be found some day to authenticate them simply because there are some rare lines that would otherwise be considered asil that only carried on with El Emir & Ishtar:
TF Nejdme horses, TF Ferida horses, horses who carry Nejdran, horses with the Ayerza element, El Bulad descendants, two horses descending from Slipper, some Mirage descendants, nearly all of the last asil descendants of Nureddin II are intertwined with these two, and a mare with the Tairah damline though I’m afraid this damline is probably forever lost as she was a ’98 maiden with no registered progeny. This is a very quickly put together list I’m writing after a long day that doesn’t cover the sheer amount of uncommon lineage that is wrapped up with El Emir & Ishtar, though I hope it does give a little better picture as to why I hope we can find information that clarifies the asil status of these two.
All this to say I’m aware there’s a massive asterisk next to their status as purebred Arabians. I hope they are more than we know them to be with murky information to authenticate them, but am also acknowledge we don’t have anything to really prove ‘genuine asil’ at the time of writing.