b4breeding

Let’s bring to life the remarkable story of Romola Hal. She was a good racehorse herself, but her legacy has been so much more. She is one of standardbred’s breeding gems.

Article on Romola Hal win in Chicago Daily Tribune 4 Oct 1949

The focus of the Romola Hal line revival in the past two decades has been on the flowering of the line from her daughter Romola Hanover, particular with branches such as Rodine Hanover and now her daughters like World Order and Perfect Profile.

I’ve done  a few blogs that touched on the excellence of this maternal line in modern breeding and also reported back comments from New Zealand breeders, and my own interest as a breeder from Dreamy Romance.

In this blog I want to revisit the topic in detail, and put out a call for other breeders who are working with Romola Hal descendants in this part of the world – and indeed in North America – to get in touch with me.

Does the connection play any part in your breeding? And if so, what have you tried/want to try? Or are you focused more on the present when it comes to choices of sires? How do you rate the branch you are working with? And have you got any learnings to share?

I’m using the online database Classic Families as a guide (although a word of caution: their database has Dexter Hanover wrongly listed as a son of Romola Hal when in fact he is a 1968 born Dancer Hanover son of Romola Hanover, her daughter. Plus the split of Romantic and Romantic II is also wrong, these are the same mare. I’ll take these issues up with the Classic Families contacts).

I am travelling online and real time to find out the answers – how is this family tracking now, and especially downunder?

Romola Hal’s most famous daughter Romola Hanover had heaps of ability but issues as a racehorse, as Frank Marrion covers in his very good 2008 article on Harnesslink, quoting Murray Brown of Hanover Farms as saying

She could go incredibly fast, but was neither good gaited nor the most sound of fillies.

Of course Romola Hanover’s success as a broodmare is well known and her incredible line of “classic” descendants, males and females, can be tracked on Classic Families. The modern day branches show up in maternal lines of Art Major and his late brother Perfect Art, Real Artist, Captain Treacherous, Panspacificflight, Nuke Of Earl, and the females like Worldly Beauty, Michelle’s Revenge, Artriverderci ….and so many young ones like Rock N Roll World, Wake Up Peter, Cooperstown, Shadowbriand, and Sir Richard Z Tam.

There are several maternal descendants in Australia and New Zealand, and I will catch up on some them as we go through. and would love breeders to contribute their stories.

So let’s get going on this series.

Coming soon – The “other” daughters of Romola Hal.