So let’s talk about cloning, a controversial subject. For the last 8 or so years horse cloning has been perfected, and after 6 months, a cloned colt is no different from any other horse. The only problem is clones can’t be registered as purebreds, and without papers, they are useless for breeding, showing, or racing.

This summer all that changed. The Associated Press ran articles about some clone owners who sued the Quarter Horse registry, and a judge ruled in their favor. If the registry’s appeal fail, it could mean that cloned Quarter horses can stand at stud, be seen at shows, and raced at the tracks. How much longer before other horse breeds including Thoroughbreds have clones in their registry? And is this modern day miracle of science a blessing or a curse? Should man be allowed to cheat nature and recreate a champion from its donor’s DNA?

In my novel, Secretariat Reborn, a young man named Christian, receives a colt from his dying father, an Ocala horse trainer and learns that the horse is a clone of the legendary Secretariat. In the eighties, his father had stolen and frozen Secretariat’s DNA, waited until cloning was refined, and then falsified the colt’s registration papers. On his death bed, he makes Christian promise to race the colt. This is the dilemma that Christian faces throughout the book. Should he race the clone, knowing if found out, he’d faces fraud charges and jail. Plus given Secretariat’s popularity, he’d be lying and screwing with the nation’s trust.

The upside of cloning, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see Secretariat run again? Cloning can no only bring back dead champions like Barbaro who won the Kentucky Derby, but was euthanized after an injury but can save the bloodline of other great horses who were geldings or sterile. Without cloning these horses and their offspring are lost.
When promoting my novel, I’ve seen a even split on the subject. Most horse people are against cloning, luck and nature should create a champion while the public is for it. You decide.