Freshman Sires
by TFTribe on Sep 8, 2011 8:49 PM EDT
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PrintOne of the best ways for smaller breeders/owners to get a stallion that has a great record on the track, great bloodlines, and is estimated to be capable of being a good sire is to take advantage of them early. That's why the Freshman Sire Ranking is actually crucially important. We know so many of the sires out there due to their fabulous successes of their progeny on the track. But how do you evaluate them? How do you know what their progeny will do? Well, I don't know, but I know who to ask.
There are two major categories of Freshman sire earnings: 1-North American; 2-International. The problem is that it is very difficult to really discern which rankings are counting what stuff. There are two major rankings, Bloodhorse and Thoroughbred Times (or actually there are two major rankings that I really look at, I'm sure there are countless others). I'm going to use Bloodhorse for discussion purposes.
Now, to present my bias. I am a huge fan of trying to get in on a freshman sire in the first two years of their breeding. You can get a great horse on the cheap. What may go for 25k by their 3rd or 4th year is probably in the 5-8k range insofar as stud fees are concerned. Understanding what the sire will really put on the foal is always a question as Mr. Prospector has a dosage profile that indicates sprinter, which he was, but he put out champions at every distance with any crossings for decades. So it really is a gamble.
The other huge advantage is that most big time stallions will only breed to select mares, usually based on their pedigree and the Nicking that the cross produced. (I discussed Nicks here, briefly). You better have an A+ Nick once the stallion is established. But at first, they'll usually breed to almost anything, trying to get a big Stakes Winner in that first crop.
So back to the rankings. How do you determine which ones are successful once they do get that first crop of 2yos to the track? I've found this tricky in the past, cause there are some that hit big, some that have lots of runners, some that have no SWs, but tons of claimers. So let's look at the top 6:
**From Bloodhorse.com
So right off the top you see Hat Trick (JPN) has a huge winner. Great right? Nope, not in my opinion. He's had one real winner out of 69 foals. Doesn't mean he won't see more than the nine he current has running make it to the track, but as of right now, he doesn't make the cut.
Lawyer Ron colicked and died, so he's, unfortunately, irrelevant.
That leaves Scat Daddy, Hard Spun, and Flashy Bull. I love Scat Daddy and Flashy Bull. Mostly because we've got a SD on the farm and I've got a FB foal on the way. But you see they've each got SWs, though SD has 4 Stakes Horses. 4 Stakes Horses of 44 runners is a great %. They both have high averages which aren't skewed completely by the SW horses they've sired, which gives a better picture of overall quality of the foals. But they do both have SWs, which is the big determinant of the capability of a stallion to produce high ceiling progeny. These two deserve their places atop the rankings.
But Hard Spun takes the crown despite his lowly #2 Ranking. High average, lots of runners already, 2 Stakes horses, 1 SW, 13 repeat winners from 36 total runners, thus far, is great. As the rest of his 136 foals make it to the track, expect his numbers to skyrocket from his progeny's successes. I'd be willing to
Now how do you predict which stallions will top this list? Beats me. That's what bloodstock agents are for. But it makes for great speculation and discussion.
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Hard Spun
I was just noticing the other day how well Hard Spun is doing is year. I always liked him when he was running, mainly due his ability at different distances and surfaces. Nice to see that translate to the breeding shed.
"A bad day at the track is better than a good day at the office."
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I Loved Hard Spun...
on the track. I have always paid a lot of attention to Freshman sires rankings from Bloodhorse, especially in winter handicapping contest.
I really like your owner’s perspective. Something I would really be interested in is this: how much does it really cost to own a racehorse? I have always thought that people that spend fortunes on single horses are wrong-headed. I would rather have lots of arrows in the air, meaning, say I had a million to throw at the game. I am quite sure, I would take exactly the approach you are advocating in this post and buy several horses with these kinds of pedigrees with that money, not just one. But then, I would have to stable them, and I am sure some of them would have to win to keep the whole thing going. So really, what does it cost?
Now is the time boys to make a big noise.
No matter what the people say,
For there is naught to fear, the gang's all here,
So hail West Virginia, hail.
Incidentally....
I just checked Pedigreesonline.com and saw Princequillo is in Hard Spun’s line, five generations back in the form of Princequillo’s son, and past Horse of the Year, Round Table. I would think that Hard Spun’s progeny, paired with some other large-heart female would have a nice shot at superhorse status.
Now is the time boys to make a big noise.
No matter what the people say,
For there is naught to fear, the gang's all here,
So hail West Virginia, hail.
Predicting Sire Success
I too am fascinated with trying to predict which freshmen stallions will be the Next Big Thing and, like most, I fail miserably each and every year. I’m not sure about one point, and perhaps I misunderstood, but it seems to me that freshmen stallions tend to be OVERpriced at the beginning of their careers rather than cheap. There have been several recent examples, but Ghostzapper’s $200k fee comes to mind most vividly (he’s at 20 now). I think we tend to put the most weight on race performance and pedigree, and that’s probably where it should be. But for every Tiznow that outruns his pedigree on the track and in the breeding shed, there are 10 Smarty Joneses who don’t, and I think Big Brown is going to be one of the latter. And Empire Maker is one who had both factors and has been shipped off to Japan, among many others. I think nowadays you have to really look at the farm and who is supporting the young stallion. Scat Daddy is off to a good start and Coolmore’s model is to price them reasonably, get a lot of mares to them and hope he hits. They have a lot of good mares to go around. Darley is similar – the best mares in the world and they breed the horse a lot – Hard Spun has 143 2 year olds. They made Street Cry that way. Claiborne has a great young sire in War Front, but they take the approach of getting him the very best mares and limit his book to about a hundred, hopefully increasing his prepotency and the value of his foals. Which approach is “best”? Based on the past decade, you’d have to say the big book theory is “best” because Ashford and Darley have made a lot more stallions than Claiborne, who has had several failures during the decade. For my money, I think Winstar does the best job at mixing those theories and making stallions. I would have never picked Distorted Humor or Tiznow to be as good as they’ve been. Speightstown I had high hopes for, and it looks like he’ll make it. But, Winstar has three young ones (2nd crop) right now and its iffy that all are going to make it. To prove the difficulty of predicting it, it looks like Bellamy Road may be their next star. Would anyone have picked this son of Concerto over Bluegrass Cat? I sure didn’t. Maybe they’ll both make it, and if they do, damned if I can tell you why.
Great point
Ashford is really good about pushing as many dates for a stallion as possible. That’s how FuPeg was Stallion of the year last year (in terms of total progeny earnings). I personally look for efficiency when evaluating a sire. I want as small a deviation from average as possible, even if that means I’m not likely to get a Triple Crown Winner. But I’m a small time player on the scene. Efficiency is difficult to measure, and I still haven’t nailed it down to make it a science (which is impossible, but I’ll keep trying).
I think what you’re pointing at is how well run the huge breeding operations are, which directly relates to getting the most out of a stallion while you can. Ashford is extremely good at bundling in order to get multiple mares (that are qualified by success on the track and/or pedigree) to the best matched stallions. They do a good job selling as many dates as possible to mares they think fit the mold for a successful foal. Darley is much the same. By doing this, you’re right, they maximize the opportunity for that stallion to get big hitting foals as SWs and making a successful stallion. In contrast, you get Smarty Jones, who, while the Philadelphia papers would disagree, is an abject bust as a sire, no matter how many mares you see in a season.
Claiborne is nowhere near as well managed (not to say they’re incompetent, but just not as good as the very best). When you try to be as specific as possible in selecting the next generation, you end up missing out on a lot. That’s not to say that you should breed every stallion to every mare that comes along. Clearly if you are going to breed to Dynaformer for 150k, you better be prepared to have a turf horse, so your mare should be bred accordingly and the breeding farm has a responbility to the shareholders of the stallion to maximize their profits by ensuring the best possible offspring. A dirt only pedigree isn’t maximizing you potential. Limiting the number of dates of a stallion is good for auction value, but not necessarily
The difficulty in predicting success that translates from the track to the shed is tough. The best example is the king of all sires, Mr. Prospector. He excelled at 6f on the track, but has sired champions at every distance from 6f to the 12f of the Belmont Stakes. MP was a fast sprinter who won 7 of 14 starts, but his genes far surpassed anything he could have ever dreamed of accomplishing on the track.
The reason that horses like Ghostzapper (GREAT EXAMPLE!) go for so much money is because they are famous. I keep coming back to that point that whether it be jockeys (like Calvin Borel), horses on the track (like Uncle Mo) or in the breeding shed (ie Big Brown), being famous far reduces the return on your investment. In the case of the shed, it’s a huge gamble, where a $6 WPS bet, ain’t no thing. I would NEVER breed to a horse coming off of a huge year. Curlin may never sire a single worthwhile foal. He may be the best broodmare sire ever. But he is an enormous gamble, even as the winningest runner of all time. There are no certainties, and you really need to ask bloodstock agents how they think runners will shape up. I do have to say, the ones I know were dead on about Scat Daddy and Flashy Bull (who were both very reasonably priced) thus far, so clearly they’re very very good at their jobs…
by TFTribe on Oct 12, 2011 12:13 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
And One More Big Factor
Clearly the management of the stallions’ early books is a huge factor, and another that we failed to mention is both important and much easier to analyze and that is speed. The pundits and traditionalists like to say that a horse is precocious, but let’s say it with a one dollar word – the horse is fast. To be the champion freshmen sire the simple math of the race length and field size of two year old races dictate that he has to throw a lot of speed. No matter what the age of the runners, if they are going one turn under a mile, hey, you have to be fast to get the win, there’s no time or room for a big closing kick. So, sprinters tend to do well in the freshmen sire standings. Witness Posse a couple of years ago. The Mr P comparison is particularly useful in analyzing which of the stallions who get off to a fast start will continue on. Distorted Humor, Tiznow, Street Cry and Tapit were champion freshmen sires who have gone on to huge success, because they sire horses that excel at a variety of distances other than the distance that the sire himself excelled at, as you pointed out about Mr. P. Why? Well, that’s the hundred million dollar question.
Interestingly, in 2007 Johannesberg, standing at Ashford for a reasonable fee, was the second leading freshmen sire behind Street Cry. His leading earner? Scat Daddy.
We can kick this conversation over here.
I took a look at the current rankings of juvenile sires right there. I completely agree though. I’ve taken the stance here before that while a significant percentage of the handicapping population wants to eliminate 5-6f races, Juveniles need those distances to get their first races in as young 2yos. Speed will dominate, but in addition to that, foals that develop faster (and therefore may be better suited to the classic distances by their 3yo campaign) will be faster at that age relative to their peers.
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