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When reading the paper like the Star/Racing Post/Timeform Annuals/Mark Howard’s Books, or trainers comments on GG or Sporting Life, this comes up a lot.
If a horse is Black in type or is in need of black what is this?
I get the impression it has nothing to do with the coat either.
A horse achives "black type" by being placed in pattern races; essentially it’s about breeding value.
Pattern races are just below listed level right Rory? If wrong what are they……….and how do they come into the breeding side of things?
Any placed or winning form in pattern races is generally shown in bold type in both form guides and sales catalogues, so when a horse is said to ‘get black type’ they have been competitive in such a race (a pattern race, in short, being a Listed or Group contest – a quick search on Google will provide a greater history of ‘the Pattern’).
The Pattern was essentially formed (some time in the 70s I think) to offer structure to all non-handicaps run in Europe throughout the season. The races are categorised as ‘classics and major international’, ‘less significant interational’ and ‘domestic’, but it essentially covers all Listed and Group races (though how a French or Italian Group 3 relates to breeding/sales value in this country exactly, I don’t know).
The Pattern is officially just the Group 1, 2 and 3 races – the Listed races are slightly separate and weren’t originally encompassed by the system.
It’s meant as a guide to races of a set standard – so in theory an Italian Gr.3 is of equal standard to an Irish or British Gr.3. Prizemoney ceased to become a useful measuring-stick, and of course was tricky to evaluate with different currencies and exchange rates, so Pattern races have instead set conditions – such as the ratings of the first four horses over a few years must reach a certain level.
The Pattern was specifically for Europe – now the International Cataloguing Standards applies the method more or less world-wide. Hence why American races are referred to as Graded races, while European are called Group races – it is actually a slightly different system in the different continents.
A win in a Gr.1, 2, 3 or Listed race will give a horse upper-case black-type in a catalogue, so obviously the best horses will stand out on the page. A place in any of those races will give lower-case black-type – the horse will stand out on the page more than an ordinary winner, but not as much as a black-type race winner. Obviously, the more black-type on a catalogue page, the better the breeding of the animal, as they are related to more big race winners. A filly winning some black-type greatly enhances her breeding value.
Sorry for the much longer answer than was probably necessary!
Sal / (or others) – will this system hold up with more and more races being upgraded year upon year? I don’t recall any races at all being down-graded due to a regular low quality of winners. This seems to me a one way street, with more horses having a better stamp of Black Type year upon year.
Because of this, will Black Type become of less symbolic importance as the form book will need to be researched due to saturation?
Any advice / opinions on this would be of great interest to me.
I suppose with the horse population growing it makes sense for the Pattern to also grow – to reflect the top 10% of horses (for example) you would need more races if there are more horses in training.
But, yes I would agree that it can be a problem, with weak races giving a horse some undeserving black-type. It has been a problem in the past too though – at one point horses that finished fourth in Group races were given black-type; this practice has been discontinued because it was becoming meaningless.
Some races have been downgraded or had black-type status dropped completely. At the moment I can only think of the Beeswing Stakes, which has pretty much ceased to be, the Zetland, the Blue Riband Trial at Epsom and the Albany Stakes at Goodwood is now a conditions. Some get moved, so they look like new races, when they are actually just replacing an old one (like the Predominate). The Gran Premio d’Italia used to be Gr.1, it is now a Listed, and the French chop and change their races frequently. In addition, in the past, the big handicaps such as the Stewards’ Cup and Ebor carried black-type – that stopped in the 80s.
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