ver since Dolly, cloning has been discussed as a way to reproduce pet Labradors, Nobel Prize winners — and racehorses. But even if technology improves enough to make such cloning possible, scientists say creating a clone of Secretariat or Man o' War will be far more complicated — and considerably less interesting — than fantasy suggests.

For one thing, the superstars of the track owe their success to more than the genes they were born with. Secretariat did not just have the right ticket in the genetic lottery. From birth, he received the best training, nutrition and veterinary care the racing world had to offer.

"Everything went right," said Dr. Ernest Bailey, a geneticist at the University of Kentucky's Gluck Equine Research Center. Included in that everything, Dr. Bailey said, was the chestnut colt's embryonic development — something cloning would not reproduce.

"The difference between the winner and second place may hang on having 50 more neurons in the brain," he said.

Secretariat the clone, though he might win races, would not be the same Secretariat who thundered across the finish line at Belmont in 1973. And even if he performed well, Dr. Bailey noted: "The expectation for a clone would be that he would break records. So if he did, it would be no big deal. If he didn't, people would say the trainer was a bum."

Category: 33. Cloning