Breeding

[Tabitha]

I hope you guys get to read this. I can tell from my posting frequency to expect a bounce from the host...lol

It\'s too bad my horse by horse analysis I posted was erased. It was close to being  right on point.

I\'ve studied pedigree and breeding for a long time. I don\'t believe in any absolutes in horse racing but I do check out a horses pedigree. I challenge those that know breeding to look closely at the two links below and invite them to comment upon which is better bred to go long.


http://www.dmtc.com/p/14901.php

http://www.dmtc.com/p/15041.php

[alm]

There was only one link that was active in your post...the pedigree page for Empire Maker...can you repost the other that you had in mind?

Re: the EM page....

There are very few stamina influences in either family...particularly in the sire line...most horses there are from the brilliant category...milers and a little better.  The dam\'s side is better. with Swaps and Busanda, but that\'s really it.  Many more brilliant types.

I really didn\'t pay much attention to this before the Derby and can only imagine, from your comments, that FC has a stronger page.

The truth is that the sire line is not as relevant as to its influence on stamina, except as far as muscular-skeletal issues are concerned.  The dam provides energy, respiratory, and cardiac influence, which is probably much more important.

(by the way, this is not based on my personal opinion or intelligence...the Australians broke the horse genome about five or six years ago...this insight is the result of their work)

Where EM is concerned, he is a nice looking horse and his balance will carry him a long way, but I think that he might have a lot more trouble going on in the Belmont, if he even gets there, based on this pedigree.  

Many thanks for the post.

[Tabitha]

The links to individual animals seem to be changing.

Here is the main link, I recommend saving it to favorites. Just type in the horses name at bottom of page:

http://www.dmtc.com/dmtc98/Pedigree/

Once again I\'ll try and post the two profiles to review:

http://www.dmtc.com/p/26952.php

http://www.dmtc.com/p/27024.php

Its funny you mention the importance of the dam side. My anecdotal experience has pointed that out to me over the years so I\'m not surprised about the Aussie study, although I hadn\'t heard of it.  I always said \"You could breed a Steer to a nice mare and get yourself a stakes winner\"  

lol

[alm]

OK...you were right on...FC has quite a bit more stamina influence on the dam side...some of it is a little hard to read because they are not the famous stallions and mares that people in the Kentucky part of the business talk about.

For example: Poker, Dan Cupid, Busanda, and Flower Bowl...all very important...the Graustark influence from Flower Bowl is tremendous.  Also, remember Poker sired My Charmer, who is found in champions on both sides of the Atlantic (Lomond, Seattle Slew)...they are able to run on and on.

Best of all, to me, this horse has the Busanda/Buckpasser influence, which is a mark that lots of great producing dams carry.

This doesn\'t mean that FC will sweep the Triple Crown, or even show up for all of them...there are so many other factors.  But he has a solid pedigree in all the right places through second and third ranked, but very important sires and dams.

If you want to get a brief, but really terrific history of the shift of the breed over the past twenty years or so, go to equixbiomechanics and read the entire site.  They link genetics to horse measurements to make breeding recommendations, which is a lot more intelligent than all the books you can find on bloodlines (which are largely fictional in light of what the Australians discovered.)

Equix recommended Grand Slam and Stravinsky as potentially great stallions in recent years, so I actually tried to bet the 2yo stakes yesterday along those lines.  Unfortunately, I bet the Stravinsky, because of the better odds, and the Grand Slam won.  The Henessey favorite finished...where?

[Tabitha]

If you don\'t know ancient breeding Funny Cides dam side might not impress you.  I love Dan Cupid and was wild about the Summer Tan influence. But lets be real it means nothing if the horse isn\'t showing he can run to it. But the catcher is Funny Cide was showing that heart. That Louisana Derby race on a layoff showed it to me. He was coming back in the end on short conditioning. I know the trainer he didn\'t have him cranked. The genetic ghosts of Native Dancer and Ribot picked him up and began carrying him back at the leaders. You could see with additional conditioning he was dying for distance. The \"back at em\" move existed more subtly in the Wood too. Bobby and Jerry still think Empire is the better horse...lol (Hell he might be with more mojo)

I really love Slewacide in the right animal. He got one named Clever Trevor that no one really appreciated. I saw some of Clever in Funny Cide. Theres been others as well. Although I think Funny is better.

The Triple Crown is a very tough series. You got juice to deal with now too. Bobby is juicing and I\'m about positive Tagg is not. So you gotta factor that variable. Its hard for a non juice horse to have to keep putting out super efforts to beat juicers. It catches up with them eventually.

[jeffbonds]

both EM and FC descend from the same great stamina influence- Teresina, by Tracery.

[Tabitha]

Teresina is 7 generations back in direct tail female in both horses.  

She looks like she was a good one in the big races of her day 1923.

I think I\'ll side with the more recent stamina influences in Funny Cides dam side pedigree and the Derby results.



Nice Research

[alm]

Absolutely Tabitha...the fact is that the further back you look, the closer together EVERY horse becomes...there are only three foundation sires and the bulk of today\'s runners descend from one.

That being the case, the first five or so generations tell us the most...and you were looking at the right stuff.  I wish that I had taken the time myself.

[jeffbonds]

What I didn\'t mention is that the people who think pedigree counts crossed both teresina and nogara in the back generations of FC\'s mares. Look at Cherished Moments 5x.
A guy named Tesio used those names to some good effect and the Darby Dan people tried to further the plan.

[Tabitha]

O.K. Jeff, I give. When it comes to breeding you\'re Funny Cide to my Empire Maker...lol

You\'re knowledge in this realm clearly exceeds mine. I can see that Nogara was the dam of Nearco and that is enough to merit regard for her influence. Is there something else about her I am unaware. What about this duel inbreeding N x N to Teresina and N x N to Nogara. Is it significant in and of itself? I know Tesio had some inbreeding theories, but thats about all I know.

O.K. I tried to answer it myself. You\'re talking \"line breeding\" aren\'t you? As Olin Gentry said \"Return to the sire the best blood of his dam\" Funny though Cherished Moment follows this Tesio theory through Teresina/Tracery but not Nogara as Nogara is not in the pedigree of Graustark. Hmmmm but if you do a 5x pedigree on Graustark you get Tracery blood returning to the sire Ribot through Flower Bowl. The result was Graustark. Not a bad horse. lol  You\'re really into this I see. Its giving me a headache   lol

[alm]

I don\'t mean to insult anyone, but the supposition that a horse is good because you find this mare or that stallion repeated in its pedigree (Nogara, Teresina, Tracery, The Man In The Moon) or these stallions crossed and that one outcrossed is one of the major fictions of horse breeding.  The bullshit dosage system is another.

Let\'s start with dosage first.  A few years ago, when the idiots who are the priests of dosage could not make a case for Strike the Gold, they revised the rankings of certain of the stallions in the elite group until they proved that he COULD win the Derby.  By then, of course, he had already won it.

Some wiseguy then went and made an analysis of ALL of the foals of that year, and discovered \'lo and behold\' that over 70% of them qualified in the dosage range that would enable them to win the Derby.  Maybe 20,000 foals in all.

Jiminy, it\'s really tough to pick the winner from a group like that.

Let\'s go on to breeding.  Since ALL thoroughbreds trace back to three foundation sires from the 18th. century, it is inevitable that you will find repetition of many stallions and mares in tons of pedigrees.  Over and over again.  It proves nothing.

What made Tesio great?  Or Olin Gentry?  Or any of these guys?  It wasn\'t their knowledge of bloodlines, no matter how much they may have believed in what they said.

That stuff is mostly fiction.  Pleasant memories that filter out the overwhelming number of failures that they had, and no one writes about, when the same crosses or outcrosses did NOT work.

Gentry, to his credit, in an interview late in life, described how he picked stallions with certain physical attributes in the hope that they would override certain physical weaknesses in this or that mare....by God, it worked!  He bred some of the great horses of the second half of the past century with this approach.

Why did it work?

Because stallions impact the physicality of the foal, while mares impact the cardio health, the mitochondrial energy of the cell, and the nervous system (which Bob Cook of Tufts researched to prove that it affected breathing and, thus, bleeding...he will also point out that 95% of all horse breeds,including thoroughbreds have RLN, which is a nerve defect that screws up the windpipe in horses...which may be why only 5% of thoroughbreds are stakes horses.)  

Find me a good mare, then give me a stallion with a decent physique and I MAY be able to breed a runner.

Certain mares and certain stallions, their sons, have had a tremendous impact on the breed when they are found in the dam\'s family.  But only when they are bred to prepotent stallions who can stamp a foal with a balanced body and good bone.

As I said in an earlier posting: read everything on the Equix Biomechanical web site if you want to know who these stallions have been for the past twenty years, or who to look for next year, and you will be halfway towards finishing the equation.  But please don\'t waste your time talking about inbreeding and line breeding or whatever else.  This is one of the most inbred groups of animals on the planet to begin with.

There are a lot of smart bloodline \'experts\' in Kentucky, running a lot of breeding farms, picking a lot of stallions every year, spending a lot of money...who NEVER consistently breed a good horse.  

Why?

Because they ain\'t got the mares to begin with.  And when they buy fillies for breeding, they look at the wrong things, like pedigrees.

[jeffbonds]

In addition to Nearco, Tesio got Niccolo Dellarca from Nogara. He was high class and is in FC\'s pedigree. Imagine how great Tesio could have been if he had studied figs instead of pedigrees.

[Tabitha]

Alm, I think the Tesio and Gentry anecdotal theory is completely consistent with the Aussie study you mentioned. The studied involved the importance of the influence of the mare. At least thats how I interpret it. I wasn\'t clever enough to understand that the mares I considered phenomenal producers were actually being \"line bred\". I think they were now. At least those I\'ve looked up since this revelation were.

[bdhsheets]

Alm:

Do you have a web address for Equix Biomechanical, the subject intrigues me. Have typed several combo\'s and googled it, but no luck.

Thanks,

[Upper Nile]

http://www.equixbio.com/index.html

Here ya go.
Phil