A CLONED GELDING WINS WITH THE WORLD NUMBER ONE

Chilli Morning III, one of three clones of top eventer Chilli Morning, has won the intermediate A section at Little Downham in England with Tim Price.

The nine-year-old gelding is one of three clones of the eventer Chilli Morning. He moved to Tim Price this autumn from Alex Hua Tian, who had produced him to three-star, and Price plans an eight-week break before building towards a three-star long next year. Chilli Morning IV is competing at four-star with Gemma Stevens, and Chilli Morning II is ridden by Julia Krajewski.

The result matters less for us here in SA than the question it raises for breeders: what does cloning offer a horse that cannot breed, and what does it ask of the sport?

How cloning works

The nucleus from a cell of the horse being cloned is placed into a donor egg whose own DNA has been removed. The embryo is then carried to term by a recipient mare. A clone, however, is not a perfect copy. Farmer’s Weekly reported in 2016 that about 2% of a clone’s DNA comes from the donor egg, and markings such as white patches can differ.

What it costs

A Horse and Hound feature quotes prices from Gemini Genetics and its partner ViaGen. Preserving a horse’s cells costs £600 plus VAT, storage is £12 plus VAT a month, and culturing the cells costs around £1400 plus VAT. The cloning procedure itself costs around US$85,000. For a horse that has died, the company accepts a biopsy taken up to five days after death if the body was kept at about 4 degrees, though they note that the chance of success falls with each day.

Do clones perform like the original?

The evidence is a handful of horses, not a controlled comparison. The Chilli Morning clones Deuce and Quattro scored the same dressage mark at the 2024 seven-year-old World Championships, where Quattro ultimately won, and Deuce was sixth. Quattro later stepped up to four-star and finished eighth in the eight- and nine-year-old class at Blenheim in 2025. Tomatillo, a clone of Tamarillo, has competed up to four-star, and both Cruising clones have showjumped.

Interestingly, the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses has advised that clones be assessed as individuals rather than assumed equal to their donors, The Irish Field reported in 2015. This is the key takeaway from all of this, at least in our view, as sharing DNA is only part of the picture when you consider the influence of each horse’s upbringing, training, or rider.

What the rules say

The FEI allows clones and their progeny to compete, but studbooks decide for themselves whether to register them. From what we can find, Zangersheide, KWPN, BWP, Holsteiner Verband and the Irish Sport Horse Studbook have accepted clones, while the Warmblood Studbook of Ireland and the American Quarter Horse Association have not. Cloning is also prohibited in the Thoroughbred industry.

The future

It will be interesting to see how these horses continue to progress in the sport, and whether or not it will be something that ever arrives in South Africa. It’s certainly a subject with strong arguments for and against, and we’ll be staying tuned to see how it develops over the coming years.