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Thanks Rusty & Louise – I thought you would find that telling information! & yes, Louise, it does look as if that is the only conclusion that can be drawn. I had been rather hoping to see something on Stowaway’s success, but nothing has appeared so far and attention now seems to have moved on to the coming flat season’s sires (and to the big boys, as usual). I find myself wondering whether there would have been the same silence if the 6 winners had been sired by something from SW’s male line? As you say, there is a crying need for independent bloodstock reporting – i.e. proper journalism. People need to have unbiased information available to them to help inform decision taking and I can’t help thinking that some of the reason for the genetic bottleneck is that information has either not been made available to breeders or ‘spun’ in ways that are difficult to unspin, unless you have time and capacity for ‘data graft’.
On that note, I am wondering whether you’d think it valuable to do a similar exercise for Cheltenham 2018, and possibly – work permitting – the other spring festivals (Aintree, Punchestown)? For info: the raw data lists the breeding of all runners and the full result by (type of) race. It seems to me that the festivals (individually and collectively) provide a means to sample what is going on with the NH racing population (at least at the top level) and to benchmark sire performance, much like say the medal tables that accompany major sporting events like the Olympics. OK, there are the standard tables based on winners, but so far as I can see they are a) skewed to prize money won and b) other than black type, don’t properly differentiate the types of races won. Ergo, if a sire has a large number of runners and a reasonable number of winners they look OK. Also, if one has a standout performer they also look good. Both, along with sales results, would drive business. If I wanted to breed a chaser, though, I’d want to know if a sire was producing a larger number of bumper and/or hurdle winners. I’d also want to know if their representatives can jump (or not!), and if they do things like run through the wings of hurdles.
What do you think?
Alleged is present in some great stayers, particularly the distaff side.
Mullins has tapped into some interesting bloodlines through his connections in France. He mentioned the importance of pedigree in an interview several years ago but only briefly. It would be fascinating to discuss it with him at length.
Fine work, Titus. I came across Horseracebase.com recently and have found it a great help with research. It might be worth a look for you breeding researchers although there is no data further back than sire and dam.
Still, the Leopardstown Festival stats below for Stowaway (all stock, all years) took about 20 seconds to get together (the site takes a wee bit of learning; I’m working on some tutorials for Chris Bagnall, the founder of the site – I can put a breeding tutorial together fairly quickly if you want one).
Stowaway’s overall Leopardstown Christmas Festival win SR is 28.21%. His place SR is 41.03%.
For comparison, King’s Theatre’s figures for the same meeting are 13.4% and 29.9%.
King’s Theatre’s Cheltenham Festival figures: Win 9.55% Place 22.29%
Stowaway’s Cheltenham Festival figures: 23.08% 46.15%
Charts for Stowaway for Leopardstown Christmas & for Cheltenham Festival below
Thanks Joe – and thanks for posting that; I wasn’t aware of Horseracebase and have had a look (without taking the free trial). I’d want rather more info on pedigree than it seems is available from the screen shot, so I think for the moment I will stick with Excel. But, if it will allow that quick a calculation of the win/place SR by sire then I’d say it is probably worth writing up a breeding tutorial for the site. As your figures show, anyone who’d followed Stowaway’s progeny at Leopardstown over hurdles would have made a tidy profit. He’s not done too badly at Cheltenham either … on which, and thinking ahead, On the Blind Side (of whom I’m a massive fan) is another of his, as is the yet-to-reappear Pym (in the same ownership as Altior).
Interesting that you also picked out King’s Theatre. I did a comparative analysis on the Leopardstown data for all sires with five or more runners, ranking them by 1) Win % and 2) Win/Place %. Stowaway is, of course, head and shoulders at the top of the table (46%: 54%). He is followed by Well Chosen (20%; 40%), Yeats (20%; 20%), Presenting (18%; 18%) and King’s Theatre (14%; 43%). Some pretty big names (commanding very large books in some cases) are much further down the table.
I have always been far more interested in the ‘horse’ side to the industry than in betting, but for sure – as Mark says above – pedigrees matter in this game. When you look at the pedigrees of what’s in 7B, Ditcheat, Closutton etc. you see that in spades. Equally though, and this is a massive part of its attraction for me compared to the flat,‘difference’ is no barrier to success in NH racing, viz. my delight at watching Maria’s Benefit whiz round the other day at Taunton (only one half line of ND in 5 generations, and that’s Nijinsky).
No worries, Titus.
I’ve never quite caught the breeding ‘bug’ myself and have little more than a passing interest. But I can see how easy it would be to become immersed.
On Maria’s Benefit, apart from her speed and ability, I thought her hurdling technique at Taunton was very close to Buveur D’Air’s. Remarkably slick for one of that experience. I hope she wins at Cheltenham although I have reservations about her record left handed so far. Still, it’s early days.
Ever since I bought one of my first racing books and saw a pedigree showing the descendants of the original Arab stallions I’ve been fascinated by the breeding side of racing and wish I understood it more; but I love reading about it. [that and reading National Velvet when I was a child ‘and her blood ran down like time into her flying children’ or something like that…]
I can recommend a book called Champion Sires 1722 – 2003 by Michael Church, published by Raceform; you’ll probably like, Moehat.
Value Is EverythingI am using this site to help with horse ages for my Grand National Website. What’s available for free seems to have a ton of pedigree info (Google search result):
Thoroughbred Horse Pedigree Query
http://www.pedigreequery.com/
Welcome to Pedigree Online’s Thoroughbred Pedigree Database, an online Thoroughbred horse database consisting of more than 2.7 million horses from around the world. If this is your first time visiting the site, you can pull up the pedigree for any horse in the database by simply entering its name in the form above and …I use Horseracebase to check an individual stallion’s runners, Steeplechasing, but wasn’t aware of the more in depth reports. I might take the free trial and have a look. I like their standard report anyway (last 100 runners), because you can look at chasers only, and you’d be surprised which stallions don’t get chasers (if you are interested in that type of thing). Be careful of pedigreequery, Golden Miller – it is like Wiki in that anybody can add information. In general it is correct, but if you want real data, use this site: http://www.equineline.com/Free-5X-Pedigree.cfm. I only use pedigreequery for AQPS horses or non TBs, which are not in the Weatherbys one. The other useful thing about Weatherbys is that, at the bottom, it gives you the sire’s runners to foals, and winners to foals, so you get a feel for which are getting sound stock. On this measure, for example, King’s Theatre is streets ahead of Stowaway, so Festival winners are just part of a jigsaw.
To answer your previous question, Titus, I think the Spring festival winners would be very interesting – in some cases the ground is likely to have changed (perhaps!), so it will give another slant to things. It will also be good to see which sires get mentioned in the bloodstock sections afterwards. I wonder if Sandmason will get a headline after the Tolworth? He stands for 1000 euros, and as far as I can see, he covered 3 TB mares in 2015, and nothing since – to put it into perspective, there are unproven stallions covering more mares in one day than this horse has covered in three years, which is how perfectly viable horses are getting squeezed out. Summerville Boy is from a really nice family, so it just shows that if ‘lesser’ stallions get decent mares, they can do the job. He was bought for 4k as a 3yo, so it illustrates RustyRails’ point about how you get penalised at the sales, but it’s nothing to do with the quality of the animal as a racehorse – just by the ‘wrong’ sire. Last year’s Tolworth winner cost 50k as a 3yo, with no better (possibly slightly inferior) pedigree, but by Oscar.
He sired the precocious 2yo G1 winner Rainbow View, a Kentucky Derby winner (Barbaro) and several other 3yo G1 winners (Blue Bunting, Lucarno, Weiner Walzer, Brilliant Speed, Vergennes, Film Maker, Gozzip Girl, Critical Eye, Harmonious). His offspring could do just about anything on any surface except sprint. They weren’t late developers but they did/do tend to race for a very long time. In the US at least they were nearly as prized on the flat as they were over fences, hence his enormous stud fee near the end of his career. He was a biter himself but for the most part his progeny haven’t inherited that and many have gone on to be fine pleasure horses after their racing careers.
I will carry on with the Festivals then, Louise, and see what patterns emerge from Cheltenham and Punchestown, compared to a proper winter festival on proper jumping ground. I may do Aintree as well – we’ll see. I’ll post the summary data on this thread for anyone interested.
The Weatherby’s data you mention re starters from foals of racing age is certainly an eye opener. A far from systematic ‘dip’ suggests ~50% is doing well (so, 1:2 foals of racing age make the track), but that there are some who do very well (> 70%). Others do not – 14% (from 934) was the lowest figure I found, and that for a sire covering large books and who is one of the ‘right’ sales sires. Similarly, there are other ‘right’ sires with figures in the 20% bracket, one of whom has recently been ‘bigged up’ in the RP. I may well dig a bit more on this, but in the meantime the question that I am struggling to answer is ‘what makes a sire a ‘right’ sire in NH?’ Both you and RustyRails have flagged this issue – and its connection to reduced diversity. Somewhat naively, perhaps, I thought this, at least in NH, would be about racecourse performance – I mean, I’m not at all convinced that (assuming I had the money – LOL) I would be shelling out six figures on a store that, on the numbers, had only a 10-15% chance of making the track.
Interestingly, today has seen some activity in the RP bloodstock section re Sandmason and Summerville Boy. Not before time.
Looks like Coolmore are looking for even more money from their NH stallions
FLEMENSFIRTH tops the list of published stud fees for the 15 stallions standing under the Coolmore National Hunt banner in 2018.
Just turned 26, Flemensfirth has had his fee raised from €12,000 to €15,000 for the new season at The Beeches Stud in Lismore, Co Waterford. There are also increases for Soldier Of Fortune (from €5,000 to €8,000) and Mahler (€5,000 to €5,500) at the Beeches.
At Grange Stud in Fermoy both Getaway (€5,500 to €7,500) and Milan (€7,500 to €8,000) are on the way up, while Walk In The Park remains private.
Of the four stallions standing at Castlehyde Stud in Fermoy, Westerner (€5,000 to €6,000) is the only one whose fee has gone up. The drop in fee for Yeats (from €6,500 to €5,000) will surprise some breeders following the recent Grade 1 win for his daughter Shattered Love.
As regards statistics for the festivals, and the debate on Northern Dancer in the pedigree, it would be interesting to see how many of the first 3 home in each race has Northern Dancer in the first 5 of the the sire line and in the dam line is that possible Titus
This is also interesting, (I have to say this analysis was not done by me)
Free of Northern dancer in the first twelve generations …………… Aikenite (2007); Apple Tree (1989); Assertive (2003); Astrology (16) (2008); Axxos (2004); Balko (2001); Beat All (1996); Bonbon Rose (2001); Canyon Creek (1993); Carlo Bank (1996); Conillon (2004); Crillon (1996); Croco Rouge (1995); Cross Traffic (2009); Dominus (2008); Double Trigger (1991); Even The Score (1998); Flemensfirth (1992); Fort Larned (2008); Gamut (1999); Gentlewave (2003); Goetot (2001); Hat Trick (2001); I Want Revenge (2006); Kallisto (1997); Lauro (2003); Legolas (2001); Lord Of England (2003); Macho Uno (1998); Magadino (2001); Major Cadeaux (2004); Midshipman (2006); Milwaukee Brew (1997); Mineshaft (1999); Mizzen Mast (1998); Nayef (1998); Network (1997); Nicaron (2002); Noroit (1998); Panis (1998); Prince Flori (2003); Publisher (1995); Revolutionary (2010); Rio De La Plata (2005); Robin Des Champs (1997); Royal Assault (2001); Sabiango (1998); Sirzane (2000); Speedmaster (1997); Street Boss (2004); Superior Premium (1994); Tagula (1993); Taste Of Paradise (1999); Turbo Jet (1996); Turgeon (1986); Victoire Pisa (2007); Vinnie Roe (1998) …
So you would be pretty stumped to find a NH sire without Northern Dancer would you not????
I see Sandmason had another winner this afternoon
1st Black Op 1/3F
Sandmason – Afar Story (IRE) (Desert Story (IRE))
Breeder P Rothwell
Owner R S BrookhouseLouise have you seen Darsi over in Ireland I hear he is a really good looker and doesnt seem a bad price for a French Derby winner ?
Last year I analysed the field for the Champion Hurdle……
The prominence of Northern Dancer is shown by the number of Champion Hurdle contenders who are direct male line descendants or have multiple crosses to him. In fact only one horse taking part is devoid of his blood.
Brain Power: Nasrullah line by Kalanisi. 5X4 Northern Dancer
Buveur d’Air: Nasrullah line. 5X5 Red God, 5X5 Prince John. No Northern Dancer.
Cyrus Darius: Northern Dancer line 4X4 Northern Dancer, 5X5 Crepello
Footpad: Native Dancer line 3X2X5 Northern Dancer plus 1 additional line and 5 crosses of Native Dancer.
Moon Racer: Northern Dancer Line, 3X5 Northern Dancer, 5X5x5 Native Dancer, 3X4 Riverman
My Tent or Yours: Northern Dancer, 4X4 Northern Dancer
Petit Mouchir: Northern Dancer. 5X5X5X5X6 Northern Dancer
Sceau Royal: Native Dancer line. 5X5X5 Northern Dancer
The New One: Northern Dancer, technically outbred though sire is 5X5 Northern Dancer
Wicklow Brave: Northern Dancer. Outbred
Yanworth: Native Dancer. 5X6 Northern Dancer.OK ‘Rusty’ – I’ll add the top/bottom ND duplications in … though tbh these will mostly be back in generations 4,5, 6 and 7 now. I suspect most of the runners will actually have him in there somewhere, with a large number with at least one duplication on the top and bottom – so, in that sense it’s probably not going to tell you much. What’s more interesting is which branches of the Nearctic/ND male line are becoming more prevalent in NH breeding (Danzig/Danehill for e.g. alongside the firm of SW and sons), and the way in which flat breeding patterns are also becoming more common( i.e. multiple duplications of ND top and bottom, based on his main sire sons, so SW, Danzig/Danehill, Lyphard, Nijinksy, Try My Best). 4-6 lines of it are normal in flat horses now and we are starting to see that in NH too, unfortunately imo – and even more so when it’s with RaN/Mr P. So I will probably do the analysis to address that.
To be meaningful though in performance terms, it’ll need to be done for the entire fields of each race. That way one will get a measure of how well those sub groups do compared to those without or with less duplications …
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