WikiBreeding & genetics
Fragile legs
The heritable weakness from career-ending injuries, and the gamble.
Fragile legs is a weakness a horse can inherit. It costs durability, raises the risk of injury in every race, and it can be passed on. It enters a family when a horse whose racing ended in an injury goes on to breed.
What fragile legs do
- Lower durability. The horse’s durability potential is 100 lower than its genes would otherwise give. Training can’t win it back.
- More injuries. On top of that, the injury risk in every race is multiplied by 1.3. The entry sheet lists it as “Fragile legs (inherited)”.
- It passes on. A fragile horse can hand it to its foals, so it can run through a family for generations.
The same horse with and without the gene, as the game works it out for a normal ride over a mile on good going:
| Sound | Fragile legs | |
|---|---|---|
| Durability potential | 635 | 535 |
| Overall potential | 571 | 554 |
| Injury risk per start | 0.4% | 0.6% |
| Risk label on the entry sheet | Low | Moderate |
By the numbers live from the rules
- Durability potential lost
- 100
- Injury risk multiplier
- ×1.3
- Copies needed to show it
- 1 (dominant)
- Chance an injured parent passes it on
- 50%
- Chance a one-copy carrier passes it on
- 50%
How it is inherited
Fragile legs is dominant: one copy is enough to show. A foal gets one copy of the gene from each parent, and it can come two ways:
- From a fragile parent. A parent with the gene passes one of its two copies at random: with one copy that is half its foals, with two copies every foal.
- From an injury. A parent whose racing career ended in an injury passes fragile legs 50% of the time, even though the parent itself isn’t fragile. A career ended by choice or by reaching the maximum starts doesn’t count.
The rules combine both. Here are the chances for some example pairings, straight from the game’s own calculation:
| Pairing | Chance the foal has fragile legs |
|---|---|
| Two sound parents, both retired from racing normally | 0% |
| One parent's racing ended in an injury | 50% |
| Both parents' racing ended in an injury | 75% |
| One parent has fragile legs (one copy) | 50% |
| One parent has fragile legs (two copies) | 100% |
| Both parents have fragile legs (one copy each) | 75% |
| One fragile parent, the other's racing ended in an injury | 75% |
Where you see it
- The horse page. In the Genetics panel, a fragile horse has a Soundness line reading “Fragile legs (inherited)”. Like the coat it is public stud-book information, so you can check any stallion at stud before you book him. See reading the Genetics panel.
- The breeding preview. If there is any chance, the preview warns in words: “Fragile legs in the family” when a parent has them, or “A parent’s racing ended in an injury”. It gives no percentage; the table above shows how the rule works.
- The entry sheet. “Fragile legs (inherited)” appears among the injury risk factors. See Injuries & insurance.
Breeding from an injured champion
A career-ending injury doesn’t end a horse’s breeding life: it retires from racing and can still breed (see Stud & broodmares). Its genes are exactly as good as before. The only thing that has changed is the fragile-legs risk for its foals.