UPDATED 4:05PM, MAR 4 2021
Philippa Cooper is continuing to swim against the tide of popular opinion in her determination to breed and race middle-distance horses and stayers but the task is being made more and more difficult by a lack of top-class, affordable and commercially viable stamina stallions in Britain and Ireland.
Cooper declared her intention to re-introduce staying power into her mating plans in an article published on these pages last year, having been mortified to discover through speed gene tests that many of her mares and young stock were of the CC genotype that most suited to sprinting.
Twelve months on, she reports she has not been able to use as many stallions of the TT genotype, those whose optimum trips are long distance, as she had hoped.