Soary Stars
At the Start
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
- Messages
- 648
Too good to miss, so I hope you'll find it a good read as I did.
"Royal Ascot starts today and should, as always, be on good form. Before placing a bet, punters will pore over figures on the parenthood, training, reputation and record of the runners. Bookmakers, who tend to be better informed than their customers, do just the same when they set the odds and can, most of the time, guarantee themselves a profit. To level the playing field (and mix a metaphor), in some races, such as the George V stakes, a likely winner will be obliged to bear a handicap by carrying extra weight. Without that, experts say, the sport of kings would become dull, for the same horses would almost always win and the betting industry would suffer as a result.
Most sports have no place for handicapping. It would be bizarre to force Usain Bolt to carry a crate of beer during the 200 metres to give others a chance. His success depends on training, physical and mental ability, plus form, and those who bet on athletics take advantage of that.
For less well-known figures, they can turn to biology – height or weight, for example – to improve their chances. I have hated sport since school days. A games master once obliged me to put the shot in a competition. I came last, which, given my skinny frame, modest height and lack of interest, was predictable but scarcely fair.
When it comes to throwing steel balls, or any other sport, flawed most of us may be; but science shows that we are each flawed in our own way. Today we have the tools to look for our strengths and weaknesses. Will the ability to identify potential champions make a difference?
For horse racing enthusiasts, genetics has long been essential. Every Ascot thoroughbred descends from one of three 18th-century stallions. Experiments show that about a fifth of the total variation in heart rate, muscle power, gait style and more is inherited in flat racers.
A statement about overall levels of inherited variation says nothing about the chances of any one being a winner. Now, though, the horse’s double helix has been read from end to end. Thoroughbreds have their own high-efficiency versions of genes behind muscle power, insulin sensing (which controls the rate at which energy flows to the muscles) and more.
That may seem to do little more than confirm that a thoroughbred will beat a carthorse, but it also hints at where to look for differences in the race-winning genes of thoroughbreds themselves. Already there are intriguing hints that horses with particular versions of proteins involved in soaking up oxygen and burning glucose are more likely to be winners.
Half a thoroughbred’s body weight is muscle; and a growth factor called myostatin controls the size that any muscle can reach. A mutation that damages that essential substance makes the “bully whippet”. Dogs that inherit two copies of the mutated myostatin have muscles twice as big as normal. Horses do not have quite such dramatic shifts in physique, but now a survey of Japanese thoroughbreds reveals that the most successful tend to bear a variant form of the myostatin gene that might improve their bodily strength.
So a brief test to scan a horse’s genes, that for myostatin most of all, could add precision to a punter’s anguished attempts to work out which to back. A single horse-hair would tell the story and one can imagine prowlers the night before a race, plucking out the evidence. Such tests could lead to problems for the industry. Dog-racers already face it, for whippets with a single copy of the “bully” gene do better than average on the track and there has been talk of banning them because of this supposedly unfair advantage.
The myostatin mutation is found, very rarely, in people, some of whom have been successful athletes. I am pretty sure that I do not bear it, for my shot-putting record tells me all I need to know about my sporting heritage."
• Steve Jones is Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London and an author of several popular science books.
"Royal Ascot starts today and should, as always, be on good form. Before placing a bet, punters will pore over figures on the parenthood, training, reputation and record of the runners. Bookmakers, who tend to be better informed than their customers, do just the same when they set the odds and can, most of the time, guarantee themselves a profit. To level the playing field (and mix a metaphor), in some races, such as the George V stakes, a likely winner will be obliged to bear a handicap by carrying extra weight. Without that, experts say, the sport of kings would become dull, for the same horses would almost always win and the betting industry would suffer as a result.
Most sports have no place for handicapping. It would be bizarre to force Usain Bolt to carry a crate of beer during the 200 metres to give others a chance. His success depends on training, physical and mental ability, plus form, and those who bet on athletics take advantage of that.
For less well-known figures, they can turn to biology – height or weight, for example – to improve their chances. I have hated sport since school days. A games master once obliged me to put the shot in a competition. I came last, which, given my skinny frame, modest height and lack of interest, was predictable but scarcely fair.
When it comes to throwing steel balls, or any other sport, flawed most of us may be; but science shows that we are each flawed in our own way. Today we have the tools to look for our strengths and weaknesses. Will the ability to identify potential champions make a difference?
For horse racing enthusiasts, genetics has long been essential. Every Ascot thoroughbred descends from one of three 18th-century stallions. Experiments show that about a fifth of the total variation in heart rate, muscle power, gait style and more is inherited in flat racers.
A statement about overall levels of inherited variation says nothing about the chances of any one being a winner. Now, though, the horse’s double helix has been read from end to end. Thoroughbreds have their own high-efficiency versions of genes behind muscle power, insulin sensing (which controls the rate at which energy flows to the muscles) and more.
That may seem to do little more than confirm that a thoroughbred will beat a carthorse, but it also hints at where to look for differences in the race-winning genes of thoroughbreds themselves. Already there are intriguing hints that horses with particular versions of proteins involved in soaking up oxygen and burning glucose are more likely to be winners.
Half a thoroughbred’s body weight is muscle; and a growth factor called myostatin controls the size that any muscle can reach. A mutation that damages that essential substance makes the “bully whippet”. Dogs that inherit two copies of the mutated myostatin have muscles twice as big as normal. Horses do not have quite such dramatic shifts in physique, but now a survey of Japanese thoroughbreds reveals that the most successful tend to bear a variant form of the myostatin gene that might improve their bodily strength.
So a brief test to scan a horse’s genes, that for myostatin most of all, could add precision to a punter’s anguished attempts to work out which to back. A single horse-hair would tell the story and one can imagine prowlers the night before a race, plucking out the evidence. Such tests could lead to problems for the industry. Dog-racers already face it, for whippets with a single copy of the “bully” gene do better than average on the track and there has been talk of banning them because of this supposedly unfair advantage.
The myostatin mutation is found, very rarely, in people, some of whom have been successful athletes. I am pretty sure that I do not bear it, for my shot-putting record tells me all I need to know about my sporting heritage."
• Steve Jones is Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London and an author of several popular science books.
