Equine battle of the sexes
QUESTION Male and female horses race against each other. Does gender have an effect?
There is a perception that the female racehorse is inferior to the male, lacking size, strength and determination. however, many fantastic female runners have blown away the male competition.
The great Dawn run is the only horse to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Champion hurdle in Britain, Ireland and France. That said, only four mares have won the Gold Cup in the race’s history.
On the flat, stallions perform the best, followed by mares, geldings (castrated males), colts (males under four) and fillies (females under four).
Interestingly, females perform poorly on all-weather surfaces and far better on grass, which may be a reflection of the stamina and running style of a smaller animal.
Over jumps, geldings have the best win percentage, followed by mares, stallions, fillies and colts. At least 70 per cent of National hunt horses are geldings.
Temperament-wise, female horses are placid and stallions can be flighty and aggressive on the track.
Charles Bonner, Windsor, Berks.
FILLIeS and mares do not compete on level terms with colts and stallions. They have a weight allowance of 3 lb on the flat and up to 7 lb over jumps.
Using last year’s Derby and Oaks as an example, because each race is run over the same course and distance at epsom, the colt Adayar won the Derby in a time of 2mins 36.85secs, while the Oaks was won by the filly Snowfall in 2 mins 42.67 secs.
In both races, all entrants carried a weight of 9 st.
had Snowfall competed in the Derby, she would have received a weight allowance of 3 lb, which would most likely have brought the two horses closer together.
Numerous other factors come into play, such as the going, ability of the horse to handle the course, skill and experience of the jockey, pace, draw, race tactics and luck in running.
At level weights, Adayar would most probably still have been the winner.
Only six fillies have won the Derby and on all occasions the weight allowance in their favour was 5lb, which is more than is allowed today. Fewer fillies enter this race. This is not to say that top-class fillies can’t hold their own against colts given their weight allowance.
There is a school of thought that the better bred the colt or filly, the closer they are in ability. For the best horses, the weight allowance gives the fillies an unfair advantage.
The first time a filly won the Derby, eleanor in 1801, the third-placed horse was also a filly, remnant. This feat has never been repeated.
David Urquhart, Burntisland, Fife.
QUESTION Are the Cornish places Jacobstow, Davidstow and Michaelstow related?
They are related in the sense they follow the same naming convention. Stow (or Stowe) is a common Old english name, simply meaning a place of assembly, usually a holy place.
There are more than 60 places with Stow in the name, such as Walthamstow in London, Chepstow in Monmouthshire and Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds.
In Cornwall, unlike the rest of the country, -stow is always prefixed by a saint’s name. Davidstow means St David’s holy place. St David is the patron saint of Wales, but is also venerated in Cornwall and Brittany.
The place once bore the Cornish version of the saint’s name, Dewi. The pronunciation ‘Dewstow’ is still known in the area.
Like St Michael’s Mount, Michaelstow is probably named after the Archangel Michael. Jacobstow may be derived from St James, one of the Apostles.
Other Cornish places suffixed -stow include Padstow, formerly Pedroc-stowe, named after the 6th-century St Petroc. Legend has it he arrived from Ireland in 520 AD and built a monastery above Padstow harbour. There’s also Morwenstow: St Morwenna was one of the 24 children of the Welsh King Broccan. She is said to have carried a stone for the font on her head from the seashore to show the place where the parish church should be built. Warbstow, St Werburgh’s holy place, is named after the Anglo-Saxon princess, the daughter of Wulfhere of Mercia. Arthur G. Scott, Falmouth, Cornwall.
QUESTION What are the youngest stars in the Milky Way?
STArS are being formed constantly in the universe so it’s impossible to determine which is the youngest.
They form inside dense concentrations of interstellar gas and dust known as molecular clouds. These regions are extremely cold, just above absolute zero. At these temperatures, gases become molecular, meaning atoms bind together.
The deep cold also causes the gas to clump to high densities. When the density reaches a certain point, the material begins to collapse into it, becoming a dense core. As more material goes to the core, temperature and pressure rise at its centre. This triggers a thermonuclear reaction, but this process may take millions of years.
Stars in the early stages of formation are young stellar objects or ySOs. They are usually not visible to optical telescopes because they emit very little light until they reach the protostar phase.
A protostar looks like a star, but its core is not yet hot enough for fusion to take place. The luminosity comes from heat generated as it contracts.
Many new stars are being formed in the Orion Nebula, the active star-forming region nearest to earth, 1,350 light years away in the constellation of Orion.
It is home to a stellar nursery called the Trapezium Cluster, where 1,000 or so very young stars are crammed into a space only four light years across.
The nebula contains hundreds of protostars siphoning gas from their nascent nebulae, making it the most popular arena for studying star formation. Alan D. Salt, Oxford.
IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.