Apex Up Close

Last week we looked at the top 50 sires with 200+ year-starters ('runners') 2008-2014 by the signature APEX A Runner Index. This week we'd like to look at three more Top 50's, as well as sires with first foals 2010 (4-year-olds of 2014) and 2011 (3-year-olds of 2014). As we mentioned last week, when you look at the quantity of A Runners since 2008, Coolmore's Galileo is really in a class of his own, with 149 A Runners (keep in mind one horse can be counted as a separate A...

Finding a racehorse that makes money is a challenge. By our calculations, only 8% of all the runners in North America in 2013 earned $53,500 or more ($53,492, to be precise). Recent studies show that it takes about $50,000, if not more, to have a horse in training at the major tracks for a year. So we have a rule of thumb, which is that a horse has to qualify as an ABC Runner-- to be among the top 8% of runners--in order to for us to call it a...

At the end of 2006, a total of 1,156 sires which stood or had stood in North America, Europe, and Japan qualified for APEX ratings, meaning, basically, that they had 10 or more 3-year-olds in the last year covered (in that case, foals of 2003 and 3-year-olds of 2006). By midyear 2014--The Jockey Club Information Systems (TJCIS) ran the data on July 8--the number of sires which qualified was down to a record low of 821. By that measure, there has been a 30% decline in the viable 'commercial' stallion...

I know all this data isn=t the easiest to sort out, in fact, I even forgot and said in my column yesterday there are 13 APEX indexes, when actually there are 17: A, B, and C Runners for three regions (North America, 'Europe' [GB/ Ireland, France, Germany], and Japan) plus for all three regions combined (that=s 12), plus ABC Index for all combined, plus ABC Age Ratings for 2-, 3-, 4-year-olds, and 5-year-olds and up).

Of the 937 sires which were assigned APEX ratings at the end of 2013 (meaning they had 10 or more 3-year-olds in 2013), there are 501 sires which stand or stood in North America or 'Europe' (England, Ireland, France, or Germany) and which had 200 or more year-starters (denoted 'runners', though in this case a horse is counted as one runner each year it races) from 2007 to 2013.

Three sires with 200+ year-starters recorded APEX (Annual Progeny Earnings IndeX) A Runner Index (ARI) figures of 4.00 or higher for the seven-year period 2007-2013, according to data provided to us through the end of 2013 by The Jockey Club Information Systems (TJCIS).

'Saturday' horses. That's what the commercial market is all about. Horses that can run at the big tracks, on the big days, in the big races. There are various ways of tallying sires' performances in this respect; our way, as you know, is earnings-based. The top 8% of earners in each jurisdiction we cover, each year (or part of a year, when we run the mid-year statistics), are classified as 'ABC Runners= (specifically, A's=top 2%; B's=next 2%; C's=next 4%); these are the 'Saturday' horses.