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A small group of researchers, entrepreneurs and horse owners is moving ahead with the cloning of horses, ignoring prohibitions against the practice instituted by the horse racing industry.

The retirement of racing’s stars — horses who have achieved a lot in a very short time — hurts the sport by removing the best-known competitors just as they're becoming household names. It’s as if Brett Favre or Roger Clemens were packed off to the breeding shed after one or two good seasons. But it's simple math: A horse is more profitable as a breeder than a racer.

As soon as the horses thunder past the finish line in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday, at least three of thoroughbred horse racing’s brightest stars will step off the racetrack for the last time. Any Given Saturday, Hard Spun and Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense all are headed for second careers as stallions, even though they are only 3 years old and none will have raced more than 13 times.

Industry leaders acknowledge that the lack of continuity is an age-old problem in trying to rebuild interest in the sport. But that doesn’t mean they are stampeding to embrace cloning, which some advocates say could restore some balance to the economic equation.

Although cloning of food animals has become relatively common since 1996, when Scottish scientists made a DNA duplicate of a sheep named Dolly, the notion of copying racehorses for entertainment purposes is a controversial one. The Jockey Club, which writes and enforces thoroughbred racing’s rulebook, and the American Quarter Horse Association both prohibit the practice.

Dan Fick, executive vice president and executive director of the Jockey Club, said the practice would “be detrimental to the breed” and said racing fans won't see cloned thoroughbreds battling their naturally conceived counterparts anytime soon.

“You’d have to see humans (cloned) before you’d even consider it for the horse,” he said.

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But some researchers already have produced more than 20 cloned horses and a trio of mules, all of whom are galloping, grazing and, in the case of the mules, racing.

Researchers clone horses the same way they do other animals, by transplanting the genetic information from a cell in a donor animal into an unfertilized egg cell whose genetic information has been destroyed or physically removed. That egg is then implanted into a surrogate mother, where — if everything goes smoothly — it develops into a viable foal.

In horses, the process is still highly inefficient, but the scientists are making strides.

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“Last year we transferred 26 embryos and got seven live foals,” said Katrin Hinrichs, head of Texas A&M’s Equine Embryo Laboratory. “… This year we’ve only had two foals, but we only transferred four embryos.”

Among the cloned horses is Clayton, the 14-month-old son of the legendary quarter horse Scamper, a gelding. Scamper won a record 10 consecutive barrel racing world championships from 1984 to 1993 in events sponsored by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and is the only barrel-racing horse to be inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. He also helped make his rider, Charmayne James, the first million-dollar cowgirl and the all-time leading money winner in barrel racing.

“When they were doing all those polls back in 1999 and 2000 on who were the greatest athletes of the century, they polled horse people and they picked Scamper over Secretariat,” said James’ husband, Tony Garritano.

Garritano said he and James paid $150,000 to ViaGen, an Austin, Texas, firm that is a leader in the commercial applications of cloning, to restore the otherwise extinct bloodlines of Scamper. Scamper, while still in good health at 30, can’t be bred because he was gelded at an early age.

“To us, he’s a regular horse that runs and plays,” Garritano said of Clayton, who could begin breeding late next year or early in 2009. “But he does have Scamper’s body, some of the same swirls in his hair, and he’s got an aggressive side and a dominant personality, just like Scamper.”

Assuming they come into existence, Clayton’s offspring will not be able to compete in organized races sponsored by the 350,000-member AQHA. But they could compete in barrel racing and other non-breed-specific cutting, reining and show competitions as well as rodeo events, all of which offer significant prize money.

Cloning experts say thoroughbred and quarter horse racing also could benefit from the use of clones for breeding.

“Imagine the potential,” said Blake Russell, vice president of business development and sales at ViaGen. “John Henry just died. What a tragic loss to the industry. … He was a gelding and had a very underutilized pedigree. He would have been an interesting breeding stallion but, unfortunately, we’ll never know.”

Using clones for breeding could allow owners to continue to race the original horses rather than be forced to retire them, Texas A&M's Hinrichs said.

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"You could take cells from every horse when they’re 2 years old — the younger the cells, the better for cloning — then run your horses for as long as you want,” said Hinrichs, who has cloned 13 horses, 11 of which are still living. “ … The cloned foal can go to stud and produce the offspring that the original horse would be producing if it were retired.”

That, says Gregg Veneklausen, a Texas vet who works with ViaGen, could move racing breeders away from emphasizing “win early” pedigrees at the expense of soundness and long-term success.

“When you retire your biggest stars so young, what you’re selecting for — whether you know it or not — is young speed,” he said. “If we let them run until 8, one of them might win $12 million instead of $200,000 and see his value as a stallion increase as a result.”

Another benefit, he said, could be the use of cloning to create “non-rejectable stem cells” that could be used to repair injured tendons or joints, a procedure that already is being done by harvesting cells from the injured animal. Greg’s Gold, a 6-year-old gelding who is entered in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Saturday, returned to competition after undergoing the procedure on a tendon.

Leaders and members of the Jockey Club and the AHQA remain unpersuaded, though the quarter horse group does allow the registration of horses born through the use of artificial insemination and embryo transfer techniques. 

“We feel if we did this, it would reduce the gene pool because …  people would only want to clone the more prominent and popular bloodlines,” said Fick, the Jockey Club official.  “… We feel the long term health of the breed is better served by the natural cover.”

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