What’s in a Name?
Harness racing is full of many delights, endeavours, achievements and challenges. Nothing can beat the wonderful feeling when your horse finishes first across the line, outracing all others in the field; whether you have bred, trained, driven or backed the horse, there is always a great sense of accomplishment. The bright lights, flashing colours and even more colourful characters associated with harness racing make for a wonderful carnival atmosphere, and at the track is where hard work pays dividends!
But what about the immense responsibility of naming a horse? There is an old racing adage that says, ‘the horse makes the name’. While this is true, great names are noticed no matter where they finish in the field. Many horses have money riding on their backs – or in the sulky in the case of standardbreds, based purely on their names. But the real challenge comes with naming skewbald pacers.
Now, there are a lot of clever, emotive and just plain silly names in the harness racing industry applied to the plainer cousins of the pacing skewbalds, and I know the gallopers can boast the same, but the skews open a whole new world to naming. Imagination!
With a skewbald pacer you are no longer restricted to combining sire, dam or sibling pedigree names, or mixing up family or using well known identities, or choosing something completely ‘off the cuff’ or ‘out of nowhere’, you have colour, patterning and association to add to the naming mix! And this is where imagination plays an interesting and an integral part.
Possibly one of the best known skewbald pacers is Rorschach. A multiple winner, who on merit alone won Horse of the Year at Redcliffe in the late ‘90’s. Now, many people would not have known what a Rorschach was until this great staying son of Preux Chevalier made his mark on harness racing, winning nine and placing 22 times. Displaying great determination and stamina to become, at the time, the Worlds Fastest skewbald pacer. But now most harness enthusiasts are able to tell you that a Rorschach is an ink blot test.
Rorschach sired quite a few foals before being exported to England, and as most of his progeny were exported as well, they never had a chance to be cleverly named. But he did manage to produce Lithograph, the art of etching metal. This lovely bay skewbald colt out of Let Her Be had progressive ticking on his face that was only about as big as a 50 cent piece when he was born, that eventually covered half his face by the time he was a three-year-old. And one uncoloured bay colt who was aptly named Assumed Identity.
But let’s not forget Rorschach’s dam, Mix ‘n’ Match. One of my favourite skew names! Or Horse in Pyjamas, another favourite, a beautifully marked piebald mare who is the dam of Ishihara, a shielded bay tobiano (skewbald) mare. Ishihara is the Colour Blind Test! You know the one, with all the coloured dots placed in a circle that has a number ‘hidden’, if you are colour blind you can’t see the number. And Horse in Pyjamas is also a dam of Cartography, a filly by Ringleader. Cartography- map making of course. This filly had a very pronounced halo effect surrounding her brown patches, giving the effect of sandy beaches.
Good old Horse in Pyjamas has inspired many great skewbald names. What about the Honest Hooker filly she produced. Black Ice, which is also known as a hoar frost! – go on, say it out loud - This was the original thought for this piebald Honest Hooker filly, though I don’t think the AHRC would have approved that one.
Rembrandts Touch, a Cool Hand Nukes filly also from Horse in Pyjamas, was a minimally marked bay skewbald filly with long white stockings and just a ‘lick’ of white on her neck – hence Rembrandts Touch! And while we are invoking the great painters, how about Picasso’s Pride? A lovely marked colt that boasted about 80% white who was exported to Ireland.
A very clever name that uses some old tools and a play on words and colour, is the New Zealand filly, Cullermein. By Christian Cullen from the skewbald mare Splashed she is another great name for a painted pacer. And Victoria has Cool Strides, adding colour to the fields at and around Warragul.
So what names may harness racing fans expect to see from the skewbald breeding fraternity in the coming years? Lots and lots of imaginative and thought provoking names I hope. The skewbald industry within harness racing is really starting to take off with good colourful racehorses such as White Fire (1:58) and Magnolia Drive (1:59.3), gracing the tracks and mixing it up with the plain old boys! And the skew population is increasing every year with stallions such as Medicine Dance, who will produce colour every time, serving more mares each year.
So what would be my ultimate skew name? A filly by Live or Die, called Dressed to Kill, but the name has already gone, so I’ll have to think of something else!
