Entries Tagged 'Breeding Theory' ↓
September 23rd, 2017 — Breeding Theory, Horse Racing, News, Winners
Maybe Miami is becoming one of my all-time favourite gallopers. The son of Iffraaj and the Waikiki Star mare Miami was one of my selections for long-time client Kevin Hughes at the 2013 NZB Ready to Run Sale and I have followed his progress with more than usual interest. Yesterday’s win in the Open 1200 event at Riccarton was his ninth success from 28 starts and took his stakes winnings over the $200,000 mark. His success is also a timely reminder that you don’t have to pay a fortune at this sale to become the owner of a decent horse.
One of the things I really liked about Maybe Miami’s pedigree was the consistency throughout recent generations of his female family. When he went through the sale ring he was the eighth foal his dam had produced; six had raced and five had won. Most of the mare’s offspring had been by reasonably-performed but not top-class stallions and most of them had been multiple winners. To me, this sort of consistency indicates two things: such a mare can produce sound racehorses and these animals have at least reasonably adequate temperaments. The pedigree was nicely balanced, with duplications of Mr Prospector, Northern Dancer, Princequillo and Dr Fager; the last-named was a brilliant USA sprinter whose influence remains strong to this day. As an added bonus, Miami traced directly to the wonder mare La Troienne.
Clearly, there was potential here. My homework also told me that the brown colt had been sold by NZB at their Select Yearling sale earlier in 2013 for $31,000 and I therefore assumed that his value at the RTR sale would be in the $40,000 to $50,000 range. When Kevin called me and let me know that he had been the successful bidder on Lot 117 for a mere $20,000, I was as thrilled as he was.
As you will imagine, I’m looking forward to the Group 2 Couplands Mile at the CJC’s NZ Cup meeting with more than usual interest. Apart from Maybe Miami, La Diosa and Nashville have also been entered.
I’m also looking forward to this year’s edition of the Ready to Run sale.
September 10th, 2017 — Breeding Theory, Choosing A Stallion
Readers of articles on this site will have been aware of my admiration for this son of Fastnet Rock for quite some time and, although it’s early days, I’m increasingly getting the feeling that I just may have been right.
As I’ve mentioned before, advocating for a stallion before he’s even got as far as getting his first mare in foal is just a little ridiculous because we have no idea what sort of foals he’s going to leave. We can make suppositions about which bloodlines will suit him best but this is a long way from analysing the pedigrees if his best runners after he’s had several crops to the races.
However, it’s worth saying that what really is boosting my confidence about Highly Recommended is that there are very good genetic reasons as to why all of his winners so far are decent horses.
His 2YO SW Waldorf is out of a mare bred on a Pins x Centaine cross. Highly Recommended’s female family has done very well with Pins’ sire Snippets and this mare also features two significant Star Kingdom lines – Kaoru Star and Todman – which complement Marscay in Highly Recommended. Group 1 placed Joyfilly has Storm Cat close up and the affinity between him and the Royal Academy influence in Fastnet Rock is well established. Yesterday’s impressive Riccarton winner Greenpark Gem has Kaoru Star in her pedigree, although of probably greater significance are the Nureyev and Blushing Groom lines in Stravinsky. Even the minor winner Vishnu has Kaoru Star close up.
It’s going to be very interesting indeed to analyse the pedigrees of High Recommended’s winners over the next few months. Both Waldorf and Greenpark Gem look well above average and Stylish Applause (Volksraad/Star Way) won very nicely at Te Aroha last weekend.
I’ll keep you posted
September 1st, 2017 — Breeding Theory, Winners
He’s only won a restricted maiden at Kranji after two of the favourites were withdrawn but the way this son of Darci Brahma dispatched his rivals in that event last Sunday suggests that he’s well above average. NZ Thoroughbred Marketing devoted an article to him in their 28 August edition; he clearly has some upside if his jockey and trainer are to be believed.
Metallocene was bred by long-time client Terry Archer out of the winning Galileo mare Glam Girl. Do feel free to research the purchase price: you’ll discover that Terry found himself an extreme bargain. If Australians have a fault (OK, I am just being polite) it’s that they under-rate world-class bloodlines if they haven’t set the world on fire on their own rock-hard tracks. Galileo was not rated by Australians when Terry made his purchase; which was just as well, I suppose.
Anyway, I did the mating for Glam Girl’s second foal, the Jimmy Choux mare Chambon, and when Terry intimated that it would be a good idea to spend some more serious money on his Galileo mare, I immediately thought of Darci Brahma.
I have always rated the potential of the Darci Brahma – Sadler’s Wells cross. Apart from the huge success of Danehill x Sadler’s Wells, The Sir Tristram strain in Darci’s pedigree has a strong affinity with Miswaki. Many years ago I urged Donna Logan to buy a filly bred on this Danzig x Miswaki x Sir Tristram cross; she developed into the Group2 winner Focal Point so I was confident that the Darci mating was worth trying from this point of view.
However, what about the 3×3 inbreeding to Zabeel that sending Glam Girl to Darci Brahma would produce? Would it make the progeny too dour or too temperamental? I remember talking to Terry about the risks but the mare really did need a big horse at that point in her breeding career and, at the end of the day, if you don’t take a few risks in life, where do you end up?
August 26th, 2017 — Breeding Theory
Every month the excellent Australian magazine “Bluebloods” publishes five-generation pedigrees of Group 1 winners from around the planet. (It’s always encouraging when our trans-Tasman cousins get something right; perhaps this comment is not unrelated to the topic of genetics which has been the focus of most of my recent articles).
Anyway, better not be too rude about the green and golds – there’s no credit in demolishing a soft target. Back to the pedigrees. This month’s edition of “Bluebloods” features 24 Group 1 winning pedigrees; I’ve just finished analysing them and they’ve thrown up some fascinating data.
No less than 23 of the 24 pedigrees feature inbreeding in the first five generations; 8 instances involve just one stallion, the other 15 contain duplications of either 2 (7 cases), 3 (6 cases) or 4 (2 cases) stallions and/or mares.
Of these 23 inbred pedigrees, no less than 20 include duplications of Northern Dancer in these first five generations. Other stallions who appear are Mr Prospector (7 times), Hail to Reason (2), Danzig (2), Nijinsky (2) and Blushing Groom (2). Buckpasser, Mill Reef, Never Bend, Sir Ivor, Sadler’s Wells, Storm Cat, Raise a Native, Native Dancer, Konigsstuhl, Tamerlane and Nearctic all appear once. On the distaff side, Special turns up twice; Natalma and Where You Lead make a single appearance.
When we try to interpret any data we’ve got to be careful. The most important question of all is – to what extent do these patterns of inbreeding occur in the racehorse population at large? In other words, if 20 out of every 24 racehorses have Northern Dancer duplications in the first five generations of their pedigrees, then we have proved nothing at all. Moreover, we need to remember that 17 of the 24 Group 1 contests referred to took place in the Northern Hemisphere, that part of the planet where Northern Dancer reigned supreme. And there’s also the question of whether or not our 24 races are a representative sample of all Group 1 events.
So what can we conclude? Well, our analysis may suggest that Northern Dancer is a more significant influence for racing quality than many of us had previously imagined. (You’ll have noticed that Danzig, Nijinsky, Sadler’s Wells and Storm Cat are all Northern Dancer descendants as well). It is generally accepted that inbreeding to this phenomenal animal helps to provide athletic ability, soundness and equable temperament in our mares’ offspring; it’s the dominance of these figures which may be surprising. Secondly, one out cross Group 1 winner out of 24 does not exactly strengthen the position of those of us who support out crossing as a method of improving the breed. Finally, it’s at least interesting that 15 of the 24 pedigrees we’ve looked at contained more than one incidence of inbreeding.
When the Southern Hemisphere Summer rolls around, I’ll repeat this exercise and report back.
August 23rd, 2017 — Breeding Theory
Some three years ago the excellent Manchester Guardian printed a fascinating article about thoroughbred genetics. I’ll link it below but there are a couple of points of interest which I’d like to comment on.
Firstly, the writer mentions the estimation that around 30-35% of racetrack performance is determined by genetics. Unfortunately, a detailed analysis of how this figure was arrived at was not produced, but you’d have to think that this is one very interesting statistic. Does it mean that agonising over the best possible mating is a waste of time or does it mean something entirely different. Perhaps it could suggest that since environmental factors affecting racing performance do not vary very much at all (please note, this comment is just for the sake of argument), then it must be the 30-35% genetic factors which make the difference.
The second really surprising aspect of the article was the assertion that inbreeding is much more likely to occur in the pedigrees of good sprinters than of good stayers. This is probably reasonably true and there’s also an implication is perhaps that good sprinters are easier to select from an analysis of their pedigrees than are good stayers. I’m not sure whether this data is solely sourced from the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s fair to say that the terminology used in this section of the article is anything but exact, but my experience has been that this is not the whole story. Sprinters can come from the most surprising bloodlines – Vonusti (Ustinov), Start Wondering (Eighth Wonder) – but stayers are much more predictable. It’s very rare for a 2400 winner to be sired by a sprinting stallion. I must admit that I haven’t any reliable data to back up this theory but it certainly my impression based on looking at thousands of sale catalogues.
Anyway, here’s what The Guardian has to say.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/22/horse-breeding-genetics-thoroughbreds-racing-dna
August 10th, 2017 — Breeding Theory
The themes of my first two articles in this series have been that, firstly, luck is the central component to breeding success and, secondly, that inbreeding, for all the theories that abound and the thousands of column inches which have been written extolling its virtues, is very much a two-edged sword.
I’m not arguing that inbreeding is doomed to fail – or that it has no place in the thoroughbred breeder’s arsenal. All I’m saying is that it’s a technique that needs to be used with caution – especially as there is some extraordinarily dodgy science referenced in the most reputable publications, “science” which seems to suggest that sex-balancing stallions or mares in a pedigree is the recipe for success.
For the life of me, I just can’t see how this works. To begin with, when you’re breeding anything – humans, horses or hamsters – you do get some quite unexpected results. I’m not trying to be offensive, but just think of your own relatives. Sure, they are highly unlikely to be the result of inbreeding but there will be some surprises out there. If you are inbreeding, and I’m not writing about humans here, there’s still an awful lot of variability involved.
One reason why inbreeding enthusiasts sometimes are disappointed by the results of their efforts is that they have made one fundamentally incorrect assumption – that when a name appears more than once on a pedigree printout it means the same thing – in terms of genetic inheritance – on both occasions. As an example, let’s look at Zabeel and a couple of his sire sons, Savabeel and Zed. Even a cursory inspection of these two animals will show that there is a significant difference in their physical make up. Now let’s fast forward 15 years and assume we have a grand-daughter of Zed and we’re thinking of sending her to a grandson of Savabeel because we’re rather keen on Zabeel blood. Are we really increasing our chances of a significant number of those magic Zabeel genes ending up in our foal?
I think not.
August 6th, 2017 — Breeding Theory
When I first became interested in breeding thoroughbreds back in the late 1960’s, I read everything I could find on the subject. It quickly became apparent that there were two main schools of thought as to how one could produce superior animals. One established opinion recommended inbreeding to “desirable” ancestors; the opposing group to theorists thought that outcrossing as far as possible was the way to go. This latter group even went to the extent of using emotive terms such as “incestuous” to describe what they considered to be excessively close inbreeding.
As we all know, the way the breed has developed means that every thoroughbred is inbred to some extent but the question is, should we try to make this occur as distantly as possible or should we do the opposite? Or, as is so true in other areas of life, does the truth exist somewhere in the middle?
The first point to consider is that inbreeding clearly improves our chances of breeding a good horse. The catch is that it also improves our chances of breeding a bad one. If you reduce the gene pool, it all depends which combination of genes comes through as to whether your pride and joy gains black type or struggles to keep up in a maiden event at Hokitika. (I once owned an Oregon filly with the most beautifully balanced pedigree you could imagine; unfortunately she found West Coast competition far too hot). The more inbred your racehorse is, the more likely it is to be very good or very bad.
Advocates of inbreeding often use the adjective “judicious” to qualify either “inbreeding” or “linebreeding”. I would argue that we don’t really know whether it’s judicious or not until the horse in question is well into its racing career. To be fair, those who use the term often mean that a little inbreeding is no bad thing, but let’s not overdo it. However, the plain truth is that it’s impossible to ascertain whether or not an example of inbreeding in a particular horse’s pedigree has any influence at all in its level of performance. Any attempt to over-simplify a remarkably complex process is always doomed to fail.
Putting that argument to the side, there does seem to be a fair amount of evidence to suggest that duplicating some stallions or mares may coincide with a good level of racing performance in general. For example, there are many very useful racehorses which are inbred to Northern Dancer, Somethingroyal and Lalun.
However, the converse is equally true (also in general). A few decades ago I bred several horses with the great mare Eulogy duplicated in their pedigrees. The best of them was a maiden winner at Woodville. Similarly, inbreeding to Danehill appears to be fraught with danger at the moment.
All in all, inbreeding can be spectacularly successful but you’ve got to be (a) lucky and (b) careful. Beware complicated theories because theories are just that.
August 5th, 2017 — Breeding Theory, Horse Racing, News
It’s always a thrill to be associated with a Group winner, but it’s a special feeling when the horse concerned can win a Group event at nine years of age, giving weight to much younger rivals.
The son of Darci Brahma and the Royal Academy mare Royal Kiss was a real enigma earlier in his career, losing several major races which he could well have won, but now he seems to be much more consistent in his approach to racing. Apprentice Kate Cowan rides him superbly and showed no signs of panic when he was well out of his ground with 800 to run.
From a pedigree point of view, it’s worth nothing that he’s bred on the same Danehill – Royal Academy cross that features in the genetic make-up of the brilliant Fastnet Rock, this being an extension of the highly successful Danzig-Nijinsky nick. When I recommended the mating which produced him, I was also well aware of the affinity between Danehill and Sharpen Up (as evidenced in Danehill Dancer).
Sure, the pedigree features inbreeding to Northern Dancer, Natalma, Native Dancer, Menow, Buckpasser and Rockefella and it could be argued by linebreeding enthusiasts that it’s these duplications which make Nashville as good as he is. Nevertheless, it’s unarguable that close relatives have a greater influence on genetic make-up than do distant ones and I’ve always been a fan of not ignoring the obvious. Darci Brahma clearly passes on what we would agree are identifiable Danehill traits. When finding a stallion to suit a mare with Royal Academy and Sharpen Up close up, why would you not start with by looking for a well-credentialed son of Danehill, given the evidence we have that the Danehill – Royal Academy – Sharpen Up blend has a good chance of success.
Yes, as you will suspect, my next article on the truth and lies in thoroughbred breeding will focus on inbreeding and some of the myths that surround it.
July 29th, 2017 — Breeding Theory
Quite some time ago now I recall making the point that although it’s understandable that we breeders, especially those relatively new to the industry, can spend much time looking for the silver bullet, the theory that will lead to an avalanche of black-type winners, such a search is doomed to fail. Firstly, there have been so many smart people engaged on this quest that you’d think that one of them would have found the magic formula long since; secondly, no-one’s found it for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist.
This not to denigrate the remarkable level of success that some breeders have experienced but you’d have to take into account other factors when evaluating their success – apart from any magic genetic formula they may or may not have had. For example, some have been fabulously wealthy: Nelson Bunker Hunt did pretty well as a breeder before his ill-judged attempt to corner the global market in silver. Others have been expert horsemen and ruthless cullers of animals which didn’t turn out to be up to the standard expected – think Federico Tesio, the legendary Italian breeder.
My argument is that there’s one factor that supersedes all others and that’s sheer blind luck. Some of us will have bred a good horse early in our breeding careers and drawn the totally erroneous conclusion that this business is easy. In a sense that’s the worst luck of all because it leads to blind faith in our own brilliance leading to unwarranted expense and ultimate failure. We always need to remember that however clever we think we are, it’s chance that dictates which sperm gets to that egg first.
However, that’s not to say that we’re all doomed and that if we are not fortune’s darlings we have no hope of success. There are certainly some tactics we can use to nudge the odds just a little in our favour. Just one of these is to acquire a working knowledge of equine genetics.
In the remainder of this series of articles I’m going to focus on some of the myths and legends of genetics which, if we put our faith in them, will certainly lead to unjustified expense, if not abject failure.
July 22nd, 2017 — Breeding Theory, Choosing A Stallion
As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, it’s extraordinarily difficult to make an intelligent assessment of a stallion’s likelihood of success until his first crop hits the yearling sales – and it’s challenging enough to do so then.
Sure, there are some of us who are really good judges of foals but the old adage of “fools and foals go together” has more than an element of truth about it. Nonetheless, breeders always look forward to the first crop of a stallion’s foals just in case the progeny of their favourite horse really do catch the eye. Leading the charge are, of course, the studmasters who have sweated blood to obtain the best possible book of mares for their new stallion the previous Spring.
In spite of the above comments, there is one prophecy I can make with the absolute certainty of being correct. No studmaster is going to be quoted as saying, “Well, I have to say that if this is the best that Bob’s Revenge can do in terms of siring foals, I might as well sell up now and move to Fiji.” What we do hear are comments like, “Bob’s Revenge has left a striking line of foals with excellent bone and amazing natural muscle.” Because breeders just have to be positive people in order to survive in the industry, we do tend to lap up this sort of report. We forget that judging bone in a foal is virtually impossible and that there’s no alternative to ”natural “ muscle. We also forget that published photographs of foals won’t be random. No-one is going to display an undersized foal with crooked legs. Besides, most foals are pretty cute anyway.
Now I’m not suggesting that studmasters are chronic liars. Anything but. When you’re running a business you’ve got to be positive about what you produce. However, what I am suggesting that if you are thinking of using a second-season sire, it’s really worthwhile to see as many of the horse’s early foals as you possibly can. If you have an empty mare or an early-foaling one, that’s going to be more than a tricky proposition. On the other hand, if you are thinking of breeding a later-foaling mare, then it does pay to get in the car and do your homework. You’ll need to remember that your research will be anything but conclusive but you will be able to make some sort of assessment about such variables as size, correctness and attitude.
In my opinion, it’s attitude that’s the crucial variable. A foal that has the confidence to cruise up to a stranger and say gidday is always preferable to one that uses its mother as a shield against a frightening world.
