NO DOUBTS
One of the fascinating things about horse racing for someone like me, who writes about history for a living as well as doing research for fun, is the level of record keeping attached to the sport from its very beginning. Okay, if we go back to the 1700s, some results are a little sketchy, but we know the runners in most races, and where they came from thanks to The General Stud Book - a bible tracking the bloodlines of every Thoroughbred ever born. Move into the mid-1800s, and the race reports are impeccable.

Compare this with car racing or rallying records, which is something I have to contend with on a regular basis, and the gap is obvious. Although we're talking about events that have taken place far more recently, and the number of machines involved is fairly limited at the top level, it's amazing how difficult it can be to track the history of a particular car.

Factories not recording chassis numbers is common, and when they do, there are often mistakes. One vehicle may have been used in practice, but a different one sent out for the actual race, as the driver and race number is often considered the only point of identification necessary in documentation. The engine may have been changed several times, and crashed cars rebuilt or given new frames. As historic racers became valuable commodities, things started to become even more twisted, with restorations taken so far, little of the original machine was left, chassis numbers being swapped, and cars that we thought had been scrapped decades ago suddenly appearing at auction as if by magic.

With the racehorses, it's a breath of fresh air. I built up a file on Jaguar's racing career and ancestors in no time, going back 13 generations, and then back to the foundation stallions via selected names within that block. I even made up my own quick reference database for eight generations, with things like date of birth, country of registration, owner and breeder names, race record and classic wins listed, and added photographs of the horses involved wherever possible. On reading that last paragraph through, I'm actually starting to scare myself!

But each Thoroughbred is a piece of walking history, with the majority having famous male lines that have between them won every race worth winning, owners that read like a who's who of European society (Jaguar, as Mayano Time, can boast about the likes of King Edward VII, King George V, King George VI, HH the Aga Khan, Lord Derby and Viscount Waldorf Astor being in his past), and links with the top breeders from Britain, America, Italy and France. In posts to come, we'll look at some of the great stallions and the characters behind them - we'll never run short of subject matter, that's for sure...