TrueNicks : Broodmare Sire Lines

The Aga Khan Stars Also Shine

aporter — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:31:00 GMT

Horses bred or owned the Aga Khan swept seven French group events, five of them group I last weekend and they came all across the distance scale, with all manner of pedigree patterns....(read more)

Another Weekend, Another Runaway Filly

aporter — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:45:00 GMT

Icon Project, Sara Louise, Capt. Candyman Can & Summer Bird all won graded races at Saratoga last weekend. All four are by noteworthy sires and have noteworthy pedigree patterns....(read more)

Dehere and Storm Cat Emerge as Profitable Duo

brogers — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:03:00 GMT

Sons of Storm Cat and daughters of Dehere -- the combination is proving to be a top-notch nick....(read more)

DE MARE -- Dehere Makes Impact as a Broodmare Sire

aporter — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:24:00 GMT

Thoroughbred stallion Dehere has moved from Kentucky to Australia to Japan, and made the circuit complete in 2006 when he returned to Kentucky. His success as a racehorse sire is laudable, but it's his broodmare daughters that are really establishing his legacy....(read more)

TrueNicks Special Report on Emerging Broodmare Sires

aporter — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:56:00 GMT

TrueNicks releases a free special report on emerging broodmare sires....(read more)

Un Homme Français au Japon

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:04:00 GMT

In an increasingly commercial world it is becoming more and more evident that particular sire lines - and more specifically, one stallion and his sons - can, at least from a commercial sense, quickly dominate the broodmare population of a given country.

It then becomes a race for the next sire line - one that fits the dominant sire and his sons from a physical and genetic viewpoint - to emerge, as in general terms breeding a sireline back upon itself is never as profitable as finding an alternate sireline.

A great example of this is the position that Japanese breeders are in after the dominance of Sunday Silence and his sons. While Sunday Silence followed on the back, at least from a nicking viewpoint, of the great Northern Taste, the increased dominance of Sunday Silence and his sons in Japanese racing has seen the frequency of his blood appearing in the commercial end of the broodmare population reach almost saturation point.

Shadai Farm, which stood both Northern Taste and Sunday Silence, has been trying for the past few years to find the logical successor. Shadai held great hopes for the ill-fated duo End Sweep and El Condor Pasa, the international superstar Falbrav (IRE), and the shy breeding Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem - all receiving their fair share of mares by Sunday Silence and his sons.

One stallion that seems to have found some level of favor with mares by Sunday Silence is the former Three Chimneys Farm stallion French Deputy. Imported to Japan in large part because of his highly successful son Kurofune, French Deputy has done quite well with Sunday Silence mares, with the most recent example being the weekend's Oka Sho (Japanese One Thousand Guineas) winner Reginetta. Hailing from the great Fall Aspen family, Reginetta's win came as a bit of a surprise to the betting public, but not to her connections, who think that better is in store for the well-bred filly.

As TrueNicks is able to use the vast Jockey Club database, we are able to look at all the stakes results in Japan and use this data to generate ratings for Japanese runners. Reginetta is a B TrueNicks rated horse, falling right on the cusp of becoming a B+, which is reflective of the fact that French Deputy has received a great number of Sunday Silence mares, yet has still produced some outstanding runners.

Hitting a Rich Seam

admin — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:03:00 GMT

Mineshaft and his family were major winners over the Feb. 24-25 weekend. On Saturday, Little Belle took the Busher Stakes at Aqueduct. A daughter of A.P. Indy, she is out of Dubai Belle, a Mr. Prospector mare who is three-parts sister to Prospectors Delite, the dam of Mineshaft (Dubai Belle is by Mr. Prospector out of Flagbird, a grade I winning half sister to Prospectors Delite). All of this makes Little Belle a seven-eighths relative to the 2003 Horse of the Year.

Meanwhile, Mineshaft's stud career took a major step forward when Cool Coal Man - a member of his first crop - took the Fountain of Youth Stakes (gr. II), to become the first graded scorer for his sire. Cool Coal Man is out the Rubiano mare Coral Sea, and the A.P. Indy/Rubiano cross - which has also produced graded winners Teammate and Ecclesiastic - has already done enough to earn an A++ TrueNicks rating. Of course this is an extension of a cross that has already proved very potent in preceding generations, A.P. Indy being very good with both Rubiano's sire, Fappiano, and of course, his sire, Mr. Prospector.

There are a couple of other points of interest here. Firstly, Mineshaft is out of a Mr. Prospector mare, as are A.P. Indy's leading sons, Pulpit and Malibu Moon, who have both sired multiple stakes winners out of Mr. Prospector-line mares, including from the Fappiano branch. Secondly, whatever his shortcomings as a sire, champion sprinter Rubiano is looking very promising as a broodmare sire. His daughters have already produced 19 stakes winners, including grade I winner Take Charge Lady and graded stakes winners War Front, Victorina, and Minatlya (FR), in addition to Cool Coal Man, Ecclesiastic, and Teammate

It's a Family Affair

admin — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:01:00 GMT

The 6-year-old Giant’s Causeway horse Angliana, who captured his first stakes with a win in last week's Aqueduct Handicap, has a very clever pedigree pattern. Out of the graded stakes winning Jade Hunter mare Pratella, he earns an A TrueNicks score on the basis of the extremely successful Giant's Causeway/Mr. Prospector cross-one that has also produced grade I winners Shamardal, Maids Causeway (IRE), My Typhoon (IRE), and Aragorn (IRE).

Another important feature in this pedigree is that Angliana's third dam is by Nijinsky II, a genetic relative to Storm Bird, whose son Storm Cat is the sire of Giant's Causeway. We can note that there are at least 59 stakes winners from the Storm Cat male line out of mares carrying Nijinsky II, and a third of them (20) are out of Mr. Prospector-line mares, giving the type of pattern we have here.

The unique factor in the pedigree, however, is the appearance of Devil's Bag as sire of the second dam of Angliana. He's popped up in at least six previous stakes winners by Storm Cat and his sons, but is particularly interesting here as Giant's Causeway is out of a mare by Rahy (TrueNicks, SRO), a horse whose dam, multiple champion Glorious Song, is a sister to Devil's Bag. This is the first time we can recall the siblings - both by Halo out of Ballade - appearing together in a stakes winners, but there are going to be plentiful opportunities to combine these genes, either with each other or with another sibling, Saint Ballado.

With Rahy daughters having also produced young stallions Posse (TrueNicks, SRO) (the leading freshman sire of 2007), After Market, Even The Score, Freud, Grand Reward (TrueNicks, SRO), and Roar of the Tiger (TrueNicks, SRO), there is a good chance of seeing these crossed-over mares carrying either Devil's Bag or Saint Ballado. Devil's Bag is most likely to appear through his daughters, although he is also broodmare sire of 2008 first year sire Teuflesberg (TrueNicks, SRO). Saint Ballado, who has some very well-bred daughters from his Kentucky crops, also has some stallion sons out there, including Sunriver (TrueNicks, SRO)-a grade I winning brother to Ashado-who just retired to start his stud career in New York.

Of Math and Men (and Horses), part II

admin — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 03:12:00 GMT

Things get really tricky for a system when lack of opportunity forces a default to deeper generations for analysis (which happens less frequently with TrueNicks than with hypothetical systems that depend on a much smaller-and problematically incomplete-sample size).

It's one thing, for instance, to rate Storm Cat when mated to mares by Mr. Prospector, but quite another to rate an untried son of Storm Cat with a mare by a modest grandson of Mr. Prospector. This is because of a couple of factors.

First, the more successful a stallion or broodmare sire is, the more representation he will have in the population, and those representatives will vary greatly in quality and class.

Second, the more successful a cross becomes, the more it will be copied, and by the nature of things, it is going to tend to be copied more frequently using inferior rather than superior stock.

As a result, the strike rate of our example cross will be dragged down by the number of times that it has been tried using uncommercial sons of Storm Cat with mares by modest grandsons of Mr. Prospector.

There is a way around this, however. If we consider a group of mares bred to a stallion, we find that they have generally been bred to other stallions of similar quality. Expensive sons of Storm Cat will generally have been bred to high-quality mares, with less expensive sons of that horse bred to mares of lower quality.

The mares bred to the expensive sons will generally have been bred to other leading stallions, and the mares bred to the less expensive sons, to other stallions at their own level.

Therefore, the group consisting of "mares bred to Storm Cat and his sons" is going to have been bred proportionally to a range of other stallions at a similar level. The reverse of that equation would apply to the group "mares by Mr. Prospector and his sons and grandsons which have been bred to Storm Cat and his sons" with regard to their other mates.

So, when we assess how well Storm Cat and his sons have done with all mares by Mr. Prospector and his sons and grandsons, compared to how well those mares have done with all other stallions, some valid statistics emerge.

The development of TrueNicks provided plenty of opportunity to test the validity of the premise. With the input of The Jockey Club, we were able to evaluate and calibrate the rating on a test group of over 100,000 horses, representing two entire recent U.S. foal crops.

This produced some very significant results. For example, more than a third of all stakes winners earned a rating of A++, and two-thirds of stakes winners are rated A or better. Against this, less than one third of the whole population is rated at that level. At the other end of the scale, horses rated D or F make up more than a third of the population (actually 36%) , but supply only 8% of the stakes winners.

What is even more interesting is that the system performs well when studying horses bred in numerous different geographic locations, or even from different eras going back as far as the immediate post-World War II period. (Watch out for a coming article: The Test of History - Grading the Greats.)

Case in Point: Kingmambo and Sadler's Wells

admin — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:12:00 GMT

In his first crop, Kingmambo sired El Condor Pasa - a champion in Japan and France - out of a mare by Sadler's Wells. Kingmambo has gone on to sire seven other stakes winners out of Sadler's Wells mares, including classic winners Divine Proportions and Virginia Waters and current European juvenile standouts Henrythenavigator and Thewayyouare. Obviously, a great cross. Right?

Not necessarily.

One proprietary system (one that measures hypothetical opportunity) certainly reflects this premise, awarding it the very highest rating-a very misleading conclusion.

First, Kingmambo has been bred to many, many Sadler's Wells mares. In fact, more than 10% of his starters are out of Sadler's Wells mares, meaning that he has covered a far higher proportion of Sadler's Wells mares than hypothetical opportunity would lead one to expect.

Then there is the class factor: as one of the world's best sires, Kingmambo will, in general terms, tend to impart more class to his offspring than the average sire, even in a universe consisting solely of sires of stakes winners. The same goes for Sadler's Wells mares: Sadler's Wells is a very good broodmare sire, and his daughters are an extremely well-credentialed bunch. Kingmambo's commercial standing would dictate that the Sadler's Wells mares bred to him were particularly outstanding members of that clan.

When we were first testing TrueNicks we were rather surprised to see the Kingmambo/Sadler's Wells nick earn a "C" with a variant score (i.e., stakes winner-to-expectation figure) of very slightly less than 1.0, indicating that the cross was underachieving. Further research revealed that this really was an accurate reporting of the picture at the time.

Kingmambo had done a little better, in terms of stakes winners to starters, with mares by Sadler's Wells than he had with with mares by all other stallions. Conversely, that group of Sadler's Wells mares had done poorer with Kingmambo than with all other stallions to which they had been bred.

Thus-while not a disaster, and certainly a match worth considering given the quality of the individuals both involved and produced-the statistics confirmed that Kingmambo wasn't necessarily the optimal cross for a Sadler's Wells mare. (Incidentally, with two new group winners bred on the cross from his current 2-year-old crop, the rating has improved to a TrueNicks score of 1.56, which translates to a "B.")

In the Beginning

admin — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:12:00 GMT

The launch of TrueNicks represents the completion of a full circle regarding my involvement in the Thoroughbred industry.

By age 19 I had completed three years “hands on” experience working at an English stud farm. Around that time, the English magazine Stud & Stable published an article with a grid showing sire line crosses and the percentage of stakes winners each cross had produced that year. As a student of statistics, it struck me that the calculations of these figures made no allowances for opportunity. In those days it would have been nearly impossible to track down all the foals that made up the population, so I did what seemed to be the next best thing. I dug out a copy of The Register of Thoroughbred Stallions – at that stage it would have included just about every sire of consequence in England and Ireland – and counted up how many stallions were recorded and from there calculated the likely percentage of the population represented by each sire line, taking into account hypothetical opportunity.

Young and brazen, I mailed off my conclusions to the magazine along with a "corrected" version of their grid. Fortunately for me, the criticism was generously received and the letter led to a nine-year job and an association with the company that has continued on to the present day.

Male line crosses or “nicks” have since become a big business, but it has always been in my mind that they have never really been done as they should. Nicks that are based on hypothetical opportunity never accurately reflect what has taken place in reality. Unfortunately, to create nicks that truly reflect opportunity requires knowing all the horses bred on the cross, and for that a comprehensive--and very large--database is required.

In association with Byron Rogers, and partnering with The Blood-Horse magazine, my life's project started to get off the ground. Making use of the historical records of The Jockey Club, the TrueNicks system was born during three years of intensive testing and development. Having waited 30 years, it is immensely satisfying to have been involved in the creation of what I feel is destined to become the new industry standard for measuring nicks and sire line crosses. And of course, with The Jockey Club and The Blood-Horse--the official publication of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association--involved, TrueNicks is very much the industry’s nicking system.

While the TrueNicks rating completes a personal journey, it will also become the departure point for new expeditions, as the next months and years see the introduction of a complete suite of exciting new products.