Body and Soul: Brothers and Neighbors

The disruptions prompted by the coronavirus pandemic have messed with the Thoroughbred industry's decades-long racing, sales, and breeding schedules. However, some of us who subsist on data and are under social distancing now have some time to explore the less obvious trends that might be going on by plumbing various databases–in our case, the breeding sector.

Each year around this time we would be delving into the results of the first 2-year-old sale of the season to begin to sort out the performances of juveniles by freshman sire that might point out which of those sires are likely to wind up leading the crop–hich we would report upon for TDN. However, while we have that data from OBSMAR, the remainder of the 2-year-old sales schedule is off in the distance; so that it is likely to either overlap or surround the emergence of yearling venues.

Which gave us an idea: Why not look over the biomechanical projections we have for the freshmen of 2021–the stallions with first yearlings this year–to see which ones might be most likely to make the most noise at the sales this year.

However, this would not be an exercise in projecting which ones would succeed because the data we have on hand is only half the story. First, we analyzed more than two dozen of them with our biomechanical programs to give us a start on which ones might have the “structural goods,” so to speak, to sire efficient racehorses from a wide cross-section of mares–regardless of race records or pedigrees.

The second aspect of our studies takes place at the sales and farms where we biomechanically analyze yearlings. We have not analyzed any to date because we have a minimum age limit of 15 months for doing so. Over the years, we have reported our predictions about these stallions in this publication and others after the sales are over; so, the record is there.

However, with only half the data available, we looked at the stats for the freshmen of 2021 to see if we could come up with any hints we could pass along to our readers. Immediately, our intended focus changed because of two facts–one right out in the open and the other uncovered by one of our algorithmic programs. The first is newsworthy; the second is potentially ground shifting.

We looked at 33 stallions with reasonable commercial appeal and books that retired to Kentucky, Florida, New York, Maryland, and California in 2018. Right there on the page, we saw that six sires had at least three sons on the list, accounting for 21 of the 33 (69%):

• Candy Ride (Arg): Eagle, Gun Runner, Mastery, Unified, Valiant Minister
• Curlin: Connect, Keen Ice, Texas Ryano, Union Jackson
• Malibu Moon: Gormley, Mr. Z, Stanford
• Quality Road: Blofeld, Hootenany, Klimt
• Tapit: Cupid, Divining Rod, Mohaymen
• Unbridled's Song: Arrogate, Bird Song, Market Rally

Our jaw dropped, and then hit the ground when three others showed up with two on the list: Pioneerof the Nile (Classic Empire, Midnight Storm); Pulpit (American Freedom, Lord Nelson); War Front (Editorial, War Correspondent). That means that 27 of the 33 freshman sires of 2021 are by just nine stallions.

(Just to be fair, the other six are by D'Wildcat (Wildcat Red), Ghostzapper (Shaman Ghost), Into Mischief (Practical Joke), Lookin at Lucky (Madefromlucky), Medaglia d'Oro (Astern {Aus}) and Put It Back (Bal a Bali {Brz}).

Even though the industry doesn't look at paternal siblings as half-brothers, one would think that if they were out on the plains by themselves, the members of each group in this herd would probably consider themselves as “brothers.” They might not like each other, but half their genes came from the same source.

By our count, the only other freshman sire crop in the past decade that comes close to this kind of distribution was in 2011 when A.P. Indy (5), Awesome Again (3), Seeking the Gold (3) and Storm Cat (6) had three or more sons–that's 32% of the 53 stallions in that crop compared to the 69% of the upcoming crop. That is some spread.

After looking at this data, we set it aside to allow it to percolate in our subconscious. The next day we took the second step in our biomechanical evaluation progress in which our program compares each stallion to more than more than 1,000 sires of the past 50 years in terms of size and scope. The result is a listing of “neighbors”–proven sires (some as far back as the 1970s) who are biomechanically similar to the stallion in question.

The data tells us whether that stallion is close enough in structure to enough very good stallions from one or more eras to give us a guideline on his potential success with a group of biomechanically balanced mares. Over the years there have been several sires from different decades who have been dependable in appearing as “neighbors” in this exercise. If most were good sires, that gives us one hint. If most were inconsistent or even poor sires, that gives us another type of hint. Usually no matter what mix of sires we use to compare to the stallion in question, the neighbors are generally from a number of decades, and not many are close to more than a couple of stallions.

Not this bunch, however. A cluster of nine leading sires appear most frequently as close neighbors to eight of the freshmen of 2021: Devil's Bag, Dixie Union, Forest Wildcat, Ghostzapper, Kitten's Joy, Mr. Greeley, Scat Daddy, Shecky Greene, and Storm Cat. We have not seen this kind of symbiosis before, and it indicates to us that the breed may be moving into a more defined general phenotype than has been previously thought.

Looks like the brothers may have started to develop a neighborhood, if not another planet.

(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).