Body and Soul | Horse Racing Free Tips

Body & Soul: Empire State Perspectives

Been paying attention to what's going on in the Empire State lately (er, you might know it as New York)? We speak not of the mess in the Governor's Mansion or resulting headlines and cable news rumblings. Rather, we refer to the status of registered New York-breds, exploits of which are tickling the fancy of the state's breeders–many of whom went home dancing with dollars following the conclusion of the Fasig-Tipton sale for a brace of indigenous yearlings.

The sale continued a recent demand from owners, trainers, and pinhookers because New York-breds are winning important open company stakes, and a lot more of them are earning tons of money in bonuses and other rewards offered through the Empire State's incentive program.

However, we are not here to shill for these horses–they do well enough on their own. Rather, we are here to offer perspective on how this has come about, a perspective that will focus on the development of the state's stallion rosters since the program was initiated in the late 1970s. That's because without perspective there is no other way to explain the current success of the program.

First, let's get this concept of “perspective” defined relative to this exercise. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, putting something in perspective has two basic definitions (italics added): 1) “the art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other when viewed from a particular point,” 'a perspective drawing'; and 2) “a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something, a point of view.”

Your correspondent is in a unique position to present this perspective because: 1) the algorithms for the biomechanical analysis we have utilized since the early 1980s generates a series of graphs for each horse measured, hence a “picture” of how the horse is constructed in terms of potential racing and breeding efficiency; and 2) your correspondent has been intimately involved in the New York Thoroughbred industry since the early 1980s in many ways including as an adviser to breeders and owners, newspaper publisher, compiler of state sire lists, and one who also helped shaped policy for the program.

As for the latter issue, without getting too deep into the weeds, suffice it to say that as president of New York Thoroughbred Breeders (NYTB), your correspondent wrote the rules and regulations passed into law in 1994 governing mare residency and stallion breed-back requirements, which in 2020 were altered modestly to expand the residency issue to attract more quality mares.

Over the years we have watched the comings and goings of stallions in New York and have come to several conclusions based on what the market wants, what the stallions brought to the breeding sheds in pedigree and biomechanics, and how the development of a stallion program in New York is not very different from those in other states, including Kentucky.

Go for Gin, shown in retirement, was by New York-based Cormorant | Sarah Andrew

Our conclusion: While dozens of stallions were either retired to stand in the state or moved from elsewhere, all faced a basic disadvantage regardless of the rules and incentives promulgated by the state. The majority of available mares lacked either the pedigree and/or biomechanical qualities to match many of the stallions available.

That said and “all Gaul” notwithstanding, the Empire State's breeding program can be divided into three parts (or, in this case, three time periods, or “cycles”). Each is defined by economic and regulatory factors that strongly affected the development of a competitive stallion roster within the state.

Five stallions emerged through those cycles that shaped the story of the entire program: two of which moved into the state and three of which retired to stud there. Parenthetically, each of those five had a favorable biomechanical profile to be successful irrespective of pedigree and, given the quality and quantity of the mares they attracted, all of them succeeded as expected on those scores.

In the late 1970s two stallions moved to New York early in their careers and, despite being completely different in pedigree and race records, dominated the state's sire lists for many years. One was Cormorant, a son of His Majesty who sired Kentucky Derby winner Go for Gin, Eclipse Award winner Saratoga Dew, and Grade I winner Grecian Flight among his 46 stakes winners. The other was Talc, a son of Rock Talk who did not sire as many stakes winners as Cormorant but who consistently battled that one on the sire list. In the 1970s and 80s it was not uncommon for several races a day at NYRA tracks and Finger Lakes to feature one or more offspring of these two.

New York's multiple leading sire, Freud | Sarah Andrew

Both were average sized, very well-balanced individuals who stamped their foals in their own image. Indeed, you rarely saw a Cormorant or Talc that was anything other than bay or brown except when toward the end of his career Cormorant got the gallant gray gelding Gander, a fan favorite. The irony here is that even though Go for Gin sired Grade I winner and sire Albert the Great, the His Majesty line–and therefore the Ribot line–in North America saw the beginning of its end in Cormorant. And the Rasper II line, of which Talc was a major part, also basically ended with his demise.

Yet these two were so consistent in getting winners from any pedigree or physical type that the only caveat during that time was the well-worn advice that you should make sure the mare you bred to Cormorant mitigated his personality (which was, how you say, difficult), but you could breed a dog to Talc and get a runner.

These two paved the way to the next cycle wherein two stallions who retired directly to stud in the state met the challenge in completely different ways. First came D'Accord, a Grade II-winning son of Secretariat out of champion Fanfreluche, by Northern Dancer, who was purchased by John Hettinger of Akindale Farm in 1984. He was unquestionably the most prominent “marquee” stallion prospect to stand in the state if only because of his pedigree.

He came along before his sire became better known as the broodmare sire of epoch-making stallions Storm Cat, Gone West, and A.P. Indy rather than as a sire of sires, and in many ways D'Accord turned out to be right up there among Secretariat's best sons at stud. Richly supported by Hettinger, his book was also very carefully monitored for quality, so he never had huge crops commercial sires required as a pivot for success. Though he got one good son who went on to become a sire in Montreal Red, it was his fillies among his 19 stakes winners who stood out. Thus, like Cormorant and Talc before him, D'Accord, in effect, was one of those who helped precipitate the end of a sire line.

On the other hand, a large multiple Grade III-winning speedball son of Danzig came into the stallion barn at Sugar Maple Farm, a few miles up the road from Akindale, and immediately became the star of the show. That would be Belong to Me, who was not only a phenotypical carbon copy of his sire (though larger) but given his opportunity in New York, a most propitious pedigree and physical match for the state's broodmares.

His first runners set the tracks on fire and after siring four crops at Sugar Maple, he was dispatched to Kentucky where he subsequently became a successful shuttle sire in Australia. By the time of his demise at age 31 last year, and without a son to establish a Danzig branch, it was most probably forgotten by many that he rang the bells initially in New York.

The young Central Banker is getting early, fast runners | Barbara Livingston

Which brings us to the third cycle which has been dominated by a horse with a name that should require him to explain everything to us: Freud. Retired to the state after a modest group-placed career in Europe, he was given a chance primarily because he was a full-brother to international champion Giant's Causeway, being by Storm Cat out of Mariah's Storm, by Rahy. First impressions might lead one to believe, as a friend once remarked, “well, that shoots the full-brother theory,” for Freud is a dark bay resembling Storm Cat while Giant's Causeway was a chestnut though much bigger than his similarly colored broodmare sire.

However, the tale of the tape shows that they were virtually twins phenotypically and in body measurements, so much so that on several key biomechanical tests they scored almost identically. Thus, it was not so much of a surprise to those who bred to him early on with this knowledge that Freud would be successful, at least in a state-bred program. That he has sired nearly 70 stakes winners including 17 graded victors thus far has certainly solidified his standing as the most successful stallion to retire to stud in the Empire State. The fact that two of his leading earners are out of mares by D'Accord sweetens the pot.

Freud has been New York's leading sire many times but in the past two years he has been challenged and now surpassed by Central Banker, a son of Speightstown who benefitted from huge books in his first few years to gain a reputation for getting a lot of early, fast runners. He needs to step up with more than the few black-type earners he has at this time to justify a prognostication for leading a future cycle, but as of now his yang to Freud's yin at the top of the list of stallions retired directly to the state is somewhat analogous to the counterbalance that Cormorant and Talc brought with them when they hopped on vans all those years ago and settled in the Hudson Valley.

Bob Fierro is a partner with Jay Kilgore and Frank Mitchell in DataTrack International, biomechanical consultants and developers of BreezeFigs. He can be reached at bbfq@earthlink.net.

The post Body & Soul: Empire State Perspectives appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Body & Soul: Hey Sport, How Ya Doin’?

Your correspondent distinctly remembers interviewing a youngish financial guru over lunch at The Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel on Central Park West. It was in 1977, and it was shortly after Seattle Slew won the Triple Crown, something one doesn't forget.

What sticks in our mind, however, was not the interview. Rather he went on a rave about “Slew” after our chat uncovered a mutual obsession with the sport. We tossed out that he might be judged a “freak” by blue-blooded observers, upon which my tablemate provocatively opined that, “No, he's not a freak, he's a 'sport.'”

That caused an eyebrow to arch. We'd come across the term in biology class in college and while subsequently covering a wide variety of sports as a journalist and statistician. However, in 2021 we found this definition in the Macmillan Dictionary: “A sport is a plant or animal that is different in a noticeable way from other plants or animals of the same type.” Not exactly “part of the in-crowd,” maybe a bit of an outlier.

Rather than get into a spat over semantics, our opinion was exactly the opposite: Seattle Slew was what you might imagine would be the result if you bred his fifth dam Myrtlewood to his great grandsire Bold Ruler–he was a replica and thereby the culmination in the perfection of a physical type. He was “part of the in-crowd,” so to speak. But he was no “sport.”

This all comes to mind because of our continual research into how Thoroughbred functionality as expressed in biomechanics and pedigree research can be combined to produce insights into how the breed has evolved and, perhaps, what we can look forward to in the future. In this respect we adhere to the underlying theses set forth by Dr. Franco Varola, by virtue of the titles of his two books: The Typology of the Racehorse (1974) and The Functional Development of the Thoroughbred (1979).

Varola's development of the Dosage system has been misinterpreted by many as a pedigree tool first and foremost. In fact, he developed the system based on how the offspring of stallions performed, what types they produced, how those types functioned, how they influenced the breed typologically–i.e., biomechanically. Along the way the functionality accrued to the pedigrees, but to date there has really been no detailed research into how the two arts (or, scientific arts) have interacted–or could.

We have no issue with pedigree research or utilizing a Dosage system as a basis or supplement to insight. But what sparked our interest of late is that in going through our biomechanical database, we discovered that in the past 30 years there has been one epochal and three additional extraordinary stallions which when they retired to stud were not considered in any biomechanical or pedigree sense “part of the crowd.” They were considered somewhat like outliers. They are their own crowd phenotypically.

A bit of background here: It is axiomatic that a species has a best chance of survival if the breeding population develops leaders whose physical properties adapt to and survive challenges to their environments–ergo, the strong survive. In Thoroughbreds, one wants a balance of power for speed, stride or extension for flexibility, and body weight that neither runs out of gas sprinting (too heavy) or going long (too light).

Phenotype charts tend to place the most consistent breeders close to the center of a target–the more balanced the phenotype, the more likely it will pass on quality.

Our research has shown this to be extremely consistent–indeed, leading sires were usually very well balanced physically and were usually by excellent stallions and had historically successful family trees. Crucially, however, they were of certain types with one or two biomechanical properties that produced runners who could compete at the top levels within the demands of racing programs and market preferences at the time.

For example, the racing programs through the end of the 1970s were geared toward prepping horses for the Classics and handicap races. One of the key properties that was consistent in stallions in those days was that the combination of gears through the hip, or rump if you will, were almost always of the same lengths.

The congruency of these body parts equals balance and strength. If one of them is longer, the function provided by that part of the gears would more than likely help define the racing aptitude of the horse. Up until the 1980s, the only one of those gears that was most often longer than the others was the tibia–whose function was to provide strong, steady closing power–which was what owners of Classic and handicap horses prized.

Beginning in the 1980s and increasingly with the blending of successful European racehorses into North America we saw something more often associated with horses that excelled on the turf–the tibia was shorter than the ilium and femur. This functionality is the biomechanical explanation behind the word “kick.” The shorter the tibia, the more quickly the horse was likely to move late, more likely on the turf at any distance. The longer the ilium, the more pronounced a horse's downhill motion could be generated. The longer the femur, the stronger the thrust toward flexible speed.

Rarely, if ever, had we seen a major commercial sire prospect enter the stud with either the ilium or femur longer or shorter than the tibia–and, more importantly, few of them ever appeared among the leading sires. However, the demands of the marketplace caused breeders to alter their selection processes and, even if they were unaware of biomechanical implications, what happened is that half of the leading lifetime sires of 2020 had “mixed” rear triangles. However, they are almost all completely different from each other phenotypically and most of them are backed by extremely commercial pedigrees.

Then two in 2005 and another in 2012 with completely different pedigrees showed up with rear triangles that were completely different than what we were used to–and they were almost identical to each other phenotypically. Even more remarkable was the fact that they are virtually identical phenotypically to the qualities a previous “sport” brought to the breeding shed in the 1980s. His name was Storm Cat: his rear triangles were evenly balanced but, wow, did they deliver.

Remarkably, none of them look like you would have expected based on their sires or their broodmare sires. None comes from a distaff family that until they came along could have wedged close relatives into select portions of yearling or mixed sales. Functionally as racehorses they were brilliant miler-middle distance types–brilliance accentuated by one or more rear triangle lengths being longer or shorter than the tibia.

Does Medaglia d'Oro remind you of El Prado (Ire) or his broodmare sire Bailjumper?

Does Candy Ride (Arg) remind you of his rangy paternal grandsire Cryptoclearance or his blocky broodmare sire Candy Stripes?

Does Uncle Mo remind you of Indian Charlie or Arch?

Each is his own man, and each reproduces a replica often enough so that he has become an influencer.

Looks like they are making “sports history.”

Bob Fierro is a partner with Jay Kilgore and Frank Mitchell in DataTrack International, biomechanical consultants and developers of BreezeFigs. He can be reached at bbfq@earthlink.net.

The post Body & Soul: Hey Sport, How Ya Doin’? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Body & Soul: What Goes Around Comes Around?

Don’t let that headline throw you off–we are not about to bury anyone in keeping with the Oxford English Dictionary‘s definition of the proverb, i.e., “the consequences of one’s actions will have to be dealt with eventually.”

However, there may be a little karma being tossed around herein because of what the graphic which accompanies this essay seems to indicate.

To set the stage we take another bit of a dip into the endlessly fascinating brain of Dr. Franco Varola, for whom our admiration is shameless. He devoted Chapter 11 in The Functional Development of the Thoroughbred to how the species developed over time in each country to reflect the culture and economy of that country. His is a fascinating analysis of how breeding and/or purchasing Thoroughbreds tends to reflect the psyche, if you will, of a particular country–or at least how it likes to present itself to the world.

For example, the British tend to emphasize excellence in a royal sense–the Classics are the be-all and end-all, and one should breed a horse that comports itself royally, don’t you know. The French strive for all-around excellence but also want to see it done with style–or as Varola called it, “souplesse.” The Germans built their bloodstock on the dour professional, and it used to have to be “dunkelbraun”–dark bay or brown.

As for the Americans, well, no one can figure us out, not even Varola. But we’ll give it a try.

To bring some perspective into our thesis please note that your correspondent spent a good portion of the 1970s and part of the 1980s as a journalist with three specialties–financial matters, travel, and Thoroughbred racing. This was a wonderful gig, especially when a travel assignment coincided with locations where racetracks were located.

One might recall that the 1970s and 1980s were eras of turbulent social change and, almost forgotten today, massive financial dislocations–recessions, inflation, ruinous scandals. These two decades also saw extraordinary changes in Thoroughbred racing’s financial infrastructure beginning with the Northern Dancer mania at the sales to the development of multi-member racing partnerships to the exploratory and eventual embracing of simulcasting.

We will not need to expound upon the specifics here but instead we will share an insight which, over those years, we expounded in print: It seemed that whenever the overall international economy was disrupted for the majority, the hints were there first in Thoroughbred racing and breeding–sometimes up to two years ahead. Yearling sales went through the roof, and a year or so later inflation grabbed the news headlines–followed by market crashes. Breeders suffered through market crashes and foreign interests scooped in to nearly decimate historic broodmare bands.

In short, things went from a period of financial stability which dominated the 1950s and most of the 1960s to a push-and-pull amongst the entrenched Wall Street ways of doing things to financial innovators who invented, peddled, and profited from questionable futures as well as sometimes wild, and usually unsuccessful, tax shelter schemes.

In hindsight, we can now look back on the cultural changes, many of which evolved into political expressions, and see that what many feared was the loss of political stability at the time of John F. Kennedy’s election turned out to be just a hint of what would come. There was always a push-and-pull in American politics between conservatives and progressives but it was usually the men in the middle (without much female assistance) who held the center and prevailed. However, with the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, women’s liberation, LGBTQ awareness–all wrapped in a mix of disco, heavy metal, rap, and country music–the push-and-pulls turned into tugs of war.

What follows logically is how the stallion population, which comes from the racing population, is shaped by the culture and economics of an era. This shaping comes into focus over one or more decades, and we noticed in a biomechanical sense that something interesting might be going on.

We present herein a graphic depicting the phenotypic distribution of the leading sires for the past five decades. One should recall that a phenotype is defined as any “detectable characteristic of an organism (i.e., structural, behavioral, etc.) determined by an interaction between its genotype and environment.” As such, we have arranged our phenotype targets in clockwork fashion by decade with the 1970s at the top. Note that stability and conformity are closest to the center, and the more traditional (i.e., Classic-oriented) is off to the right (Emphasis = Stride), while the new (Emphasis = Power) is off to the left.

Note that the distribution of phenotypes in the 2000s and 2010s appear to be congruent, but in reality we are seeing a subtle move back toward the center because the stallion population in the 2010s is relatively young and are of the type that are getting sons who might help influence that movement over the next decade.

It might not turn out to be “everything old is new again,” but it could very well be somewhat karmic.

Bob Fierro is a partner with Jay Kilgore and Frank Mitchell in DataTrack International, biomechanical consultants and developers of BreezeFigs. He can be reached at bbfq@earthlink.net.

The post Body & Soul: What Goes Around Comes Around? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Body & Soul: Don’t Look Now… Well, Maybe We’d Better

This business about sire lines has been driving your correspondent a bit nuts for the past 40 years, dating from when he first came to understand the realm, initially through the discourses of the great analyst Dr. Franco Varola and the estimable author Abe Hewitt. In those days we all not only relied on the historical database of a rather limited number of stallions but also on the patience needed to assess the long-term impact of form, function, and pedigree. You had Phalaris and Swynford, then Nearco and Hyperion, then Nasrullah and Prince Bio, then Bold Ruler and Princequillo, then Northern Dancer and Raise a Native, then Storm Cat and Mr. Prospector, then A.P. Indy and…yada, yada, yada.

Those sire lines developed over time, as did most data-driven assessments in those eras. Ironically, it was the infinitely patient Varola who gave rise to the now half-century-long obsession with various programs assessing nicks, crosses, affinities (or, whatever)–a reflection of the instant gratification culture we have developed. As a result, we are faced with a wide variety of macro and mini “sire lines” these days, real or imagined–none of which we are going to explore today.

Rather, we are going to look at what may be developing right under our noses, and why it is a potential ground shifter. That would be the rather remarkable fact (as of this writing) that the Leading Freshman Sire and two others among the top five on that list are sons of one of the top three Leading General Sires. In addition, those three freshmen sires are from the first crop of their sire’s sons with foals of racing age.

We are speaking, of course, about Nyquist, Laoban, and Outwork, plus their big daddy, Uncle Mo.

What sparked our interest was a nagging curiosity about how a stallion like Uncle Mo could come out of the clouds of sire-line pedigree retrogression to put paid to the thought (among some) that he might be something of an outlier and might fade in both form and favor as the years go on. After all, he is by Indian Charlie, the lone nationally prominent member of a sire line that was most successful in Europe and California. Secondly, he is one big fella, which often requires studious examination of the size, if not shape, of the broodmares sent to his court–“like to like,” if you please.

Our research indicates that Uncle Mo is really no accident of genetics. Indeed, he and his better racing sons who have been dispatched to cover upscale broodmare bands are basically denizens of a remarkably consistent cluster of stallions dating back to an almost iconic and very commercial stallion who was not only not their color (he was gray) but also not quite like any of them biomechanically.

That would be Caro (Ire), who sired Siberian Express who begot In Excess (Ire), who stamped out Indian Charlie. By the Grey Sovereign stallion Fortino, Caro won the Poule d’Essai des Poulains (French 2,000 Guineas) and went on to be an internationally successful stallion. Though probably best remembered in North America as sire of GI Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors, influential sire Cozzene (whose son Mizzen Mast is still going strong), as well as the broodmare sire of Unbridled’s Song and Maria’s Mon, Caro left a genetic trail behind that was as diverse in aptitude as one could possibly have projected for a horse of his racing record and heritage.

Two of his sons, French Derby winner Crystal Palace and German Horse of the Year Nebos, became influential sires in their home countries. But it was another one–ironically, his only son to duplicate his French 2,000 Guineas success–who became an unexpected linchpin of the sire line aside from Cozzene.

That would be Siberian Express, bred in Kentucky but raced in France and retired to stud in England.

A big, strongly made gray, Siberian Express gained some success at stud but left an indelible mark on the North American racing and breeding scene with his son In Excess–and, according to our research, created a distinctive biomechanical branch of the Caro sire line.

Hold that thought.

In Excess was fast at two and three in England and was purchased at the end of his sophomore campaign and sent to California where a career on turf and dirt spookily bore truth to his name. He won turf stakes before testing the dirt. On dirt, he not only set track records in California and New York, but also became the first horse since Kelso, 30 years before, to win the Metropolitan, Suburban, Whitney, and Woodward, stamping himself the best racehorse in North America. Only an uncharacteristically dull effort in the GI Breeders’ Cup Mile prevented him from becoming Horse of the Year.

After a modest record the following year, In Excess was retired to stud in California where he not only became the leading sire in the state multiple times but, among his more than 40 stakes winners, begot a charismatic and brilliantly fast colt named Indian Charlie, who was the undefeated favorite in the 1998 Kentucky Derby, finished third, then was retired later that summer after injuring a suspensory in a workout. A strongly made dark bay, Indian Charlie was successful while standing in Kentucky with a less than commercial pedigree. He became well worthy of an eventual $70,000 stud fee in 2011 and sired four champions before he died of cancer at the age of 16 that year. He left behind a number of sons, several of them promising or accomplished, but the one for which he will be remembered is Uncle Mo.

Now, go back to that thought we asked you to hold. In our article last month about Super Saver, we referred to a biomechanical program we utilize which compares various measurements of a stallion to those of several hundred successful sires who were born as early as the 1950s to see which ones are similar in size and scope to that sire. We referred to those that were similar as being in “clusters.” What we were looking for at that point was whether there were instances where the same sires appeared in the clusters of various stallions in the Super Saver sire line because pedigree assessments over six generations of sires were only part of the story.

What prompted us to apply the same program to our current task is when we looked at the generally inheritable biomechanical measurements of the branch of the Caro line that began with Siberian Express, we noticed a sharp difference in the size of those two with the latter not only being larger but also having apparently passed most of those measurement sizes on to In Excess, Indian Charlie, Uncle Mo, and the latter’s first three sons with foals of racing age.

We then took those measurements to the next step to determine if there were similarities in clusters among those eight stallions. What we discovered was–in our experience–quite remarkable: Caro was in a cluster that has him closest in size and scope to Stormy Atlantic, Time for a Change, Grand Slam, Lear Fan, A.P. Indy, and Wild Rush. None of those sires appeared in the clusters of the other eight stallions, but every one of those stallions, except one, was in a cluster that included those closest to Siberian Express: Tiznow, Buckpasser, Unbridled, Quality Road, and Royal Academy. Other duplicates included First Samurai and Capote and two of them are in clusters that include In Excess, Indian Charlie, and/or Uncle Mo.

That these clusters are so similar indicates that members of this tribe descending from Siberian Express are of a distinctive “type.” We have rarely seen this kind of data before and, at this point, even though we are hesitant to name one of them as the progenitor of a line, we do know attention must be paid.

Bob Fierro is a partner with Jay Kilgore and Frank Mitchell in DataTrack International, biomechanical consultants and developers of BreezeFigs. He can be reached at bbfq@earthlink.net.

The post Body & Soul: Don’t Look Now… Well, Maybe We’d Better appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post