All Thoroughbred horses have a pedigree, officially included in a register, the Stud Book, kept up to date since 1791 by the Weatherby family of London. The latest volume, number 50, was published in October 2025 and records those born from 2020 to 2024; the next will be released in 2029. Over the years, every country in the world has published its own Stud Books (Italy since 1875) and, in addition, other privately initiated Lists have arisen, which gave rise to today’s databases.
Interesting and convenient to use, for example, is Pedigreequery, offered both in a free and paid version. More sophisticated is Tesio Power, now in version .10. Here, in addition to the database, we find software that allows you to create the future colt or filly, checking the quality of the imagined cross with the data in the database and verifying its degree of compatibility. Much reliance is placed on the nick, the name used to designate the combination between the sire’s bloodline and that of the maternal grandsire, in terms of successful results from identical or similar combinations.
A quintessential genetic topic, which we will revisit in the future. Here it is enough to point out that this is only one of the possible investigative tools and perhaps no longer the best, as it was in the last century. From a male-centric perspective, attention is increasingly shifting today to the female line.
Tesio Power is an Australian company. Its founders acknowledge in Federico Tesio (Turin, 1869 – Milan, 1954) the most brilliant breeder in the world of his era. Ribot (1952–1972) and Nearco (1935–1957) are the crown jewels among more than one hundred great horses bred and trained between 1910 and 1960 (the work of Federico Tesio was shared and continued by his wife, Donna Lydia Fiori di Serramezzana in Tesio, who survived him for several more years). A fantastic equine heritage, first under the Tesio-Incisa name and later Razza Dormello-Olgiata, which heavily influenced the evolution of the Thoroughbred worldwide.
Why did I want to highlight this relationship between Australia and Italy? Because horse racing has always been a global phenomenon, without borders, and must be read and interpreted as such. Closedness is a negative factor in the world of racehorse breeding (one need only think of the plague of hereditary defects); openness, on the other hand, is a flourishing phenomenon, full of novelties and surprises and often of progress.
Experience demonstrates a fundamental principle that runs through all of nature. Survival occurs through adaptation. The new forces the discovery of new vital solutions; the habitual leads to weakness and progressive corruption, eventually irreversible.
