Analysis of factors affecting length of competitive life of jumping horses.docVIP

Station de génétique quantitative et appdiquee, Institut national de la recherche agronomique 78!52 Jo!iy-en-Josas cedex, France (Received 13 November 1996; accepted 25 April 1997) data were recorded from 1972 to 1991. Horses still alive in 1991 had a censored record (43% of records). The survival analysis was based on Cox’s proportional hazard model. The independent variables were year, age at record, level of performance in competition a random sire effect. The prior density of the sire effect was a log gamma distribution. The maximization of the marginal likelihood of the ’Yparameter of