Zola's Shoulder Analysis
I think every horse person has a conformation feature that they really get excited about. For me it's the shoulder. I love a good shoulder, and believe that the further back it lays and the further back the withers end, the better the horse.
Zola's shoulder is really nicely sloped and just for curiosity's sake I wanted to compare the slope of her shoulder with that of her sire, and her sire's half brother, A.P. Indy. I drew lines following the angle of the shoulder on the photo of each horse - color coded - in PowerPoint. I then copied each line and placed them together with the top point of each line touching all the others. For whatever it's worth, Zola's shoulder has the most slope. I believe the better the slope the better the horse, and I guess we'll see eventually. But it's interesting to note that Eavesdropper's shoulder has less slope than A.P. Indy's and his racing career was nowhere near as successful. Coincidence?
