Their careers commenced within months of each other in the second half of 2021. And from the moment the two sons of Curlin began flaunting the ability honed by their shared Hall of Fame trainer, Godolphin’s homebred Adonis named Cody’s Wish and Juddmonte’s purple-bred yearling purchase aptly deemed Elite Power would share nearly everything in a competitive setting other than a starting gate.

The pursuit of genetic perfection no longer ends with traditional selection. Alongside meticulously planned breeding programs and increasingly sophisticated genomic profiling, a new and controversial possibility is quietly gaining ground—gene doping. The idea of altering a thoroughbred's gene expression to enhance muscle power, endurance, or cellular recovery is both compelling and profoundly unsettling.

In experimental research, these tools are already being tested using animal models and although no official cases have been reported in racing so far, the specter of their potential use is growing increasingly real. The discourse around gene doping and gene therapy more broadly, is emerging with greater urgency, raising complex ethical, technical, and regulatory questions.