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That under-appreciated Nijinsky II line stallion, Hernando (by Niniski), is having an excellent run with his current crop of three-year-olds, which include the English Oaks (gr. 1) victress Look Here (A+ TrueNick Rating); Casual Conquest (A+), winner of Derrinstown Derby Trial (gr. II) and third in the English Derby (gr. 1); and most recently, on June 24, Indian Daffodil, who took the Prix Daphnis (gr. III), having been second to French Derby (gr. I) winner, Vision d'Etat, on his previous outing.
Looking through the international racing results, we were surprised to see that another pedigree consultancy had doomed Indian Daffodil with an F rating on their own scale. A look at TrueNicks found Indian Daffodil rated A on our scale. A reasonable man (or woman) may ask - why such a discrepancy?

The difference in the ratings comes down to the way that TrueNicks calculates its ratings. With access to the vast set of foals, runners, winners and stakes winners that are born and race every day throughout the world found in the TJCIS database, TrueNicks is able to produce a rating based on all possible opportunity, rather than basing a rating on a restrictive subset of stakes winners and a hypothetical opportunity as the other company does. The result is that the ratings that TrueNicks generates more readily reflect the population as a whole, or in other words the reality of what is actually occuring in the thoroughbred, than the ratings generated by the other company whose efforts are hypothetical at best and misrepresent reality when sire lines met more or less frequently than they should in theory.

While he stands in Europe, Hernando had never previously had a stakes winner out of a mare by Danehill (the broodmare sire of Indian Daffodil) or his sire Danzig with opportunities for the cross limited to Indian Daffodil appearing to be his only starter out of a Danehill mare, and there being only five starters for him out of mares by other sons of Danzig. However his record with Northern Dancer line mares in general had been very good, yielding eight stakes winners prior to Indian Daffodil, including the French Derby (gr. 1) winner, Holding Court, and three other group winners. A quick look at the "Best Horses bred on this cross", a unique feature found with TrueNicks also revealed that these stakes winners came from a wide variety of branches of the Northern Dancer line, so it's not particularly surprising to see him work over Danzig.

Before leaving Indian Daffodil, we have to note that his second dam is by Nijinsky II's son, Green Dancer, also sire of the third dam of Hernando's classic winner, Look Here. Hernando actually has four stakes winners with Nijinsky II inbreeding, and it's possible that this works well for him as he is out of a mare by Miswaki whose broodmare sire Buckpasser is a son of Tom Fool, a stallion bred on a reverse cross to the dam of Nijinsky II.

Filed under: Recent Winners, Validity