THE reaction to Chilli Morning IV and Gemma Stevens (GBR) winning a gold medal at the FEI WBFSH World Breeding Championships for Young Horses at Le Lion d’Angers last weekend has been vast and varied.

The horse is one of three clones to William Fox-Pitt’s 2015 Badminton winner and 2016 Olympic mount Chilli Morning, who was hailed as the most successful eventing stallion of all time after his death in 2020.

It was definitely interesting, if a little bit freaky, to note that Chilling Morning IV and Chilling Morning II (ridden by former German Olympic champion Julia Krajewski) scored the exact same mark in the dressage competition, with the latter picking up some penalties across the country and a fence down in show jumping to finish sixth.

While there have been many many good horses cloned down through the years, there are few clones that stand out as having gone on to have the same success (as the original) in the sport. Will the clone(s) of Chilli Morning buck that trend? Very often, medal winners at the world breeding championships go on to succeed further in the sport.

The genetic makeup of the three Chilli Morning clones might be exactly the same, but the environment, stable, rider, etc is all different and, the medal winner is a gelding while II is entire. It raises the nature versus nurture debate. It will be fascinating to see how they each fare out under the saddle of three different top-class riders. Imagine a championship podium in the future, with three genetically identical horses!

I will caveat the above success comment with the fact that, often, clones are not campaigned for a career in the sport, but instead used to continue the genetics in breeding. In an interview with Australian journalist Christopher Hector in 2016, Joris de Brabander of the huge Belgian breeding stable Stal de Muze, said he did not agree with cloning after he stood the clone of the great Quidam de Revel – named Quidam de Revel II Z. “When you have a stallion that bred already 3,000 foals, you don’t have to clone him and try and write the same story again, that’s worthless. You have to give chances to other bloodlines, young stallions,” de Brabander said.

What do you think about cloning? Email your thoughts to horseworld@theirishfield.ie