As the first weekend in May approaches and the Derby preps are in full swing, the lineages of the last few years of runners began to intrigue me. My question was specifically if there was a particular cross that appeared more often than others between Sires and Broodmare Sires. What I learned was that getting a horse that

1. grew up quick enough,
2. was lucky enough to amass enough earnings, and
3. was able to compete at that high of a level

was just as much about luck as it is about pedigree. For every AP Indy you see, you get a Roy or a Cuvee or a Yonaguska. Not that they're bad stallions, but they're not the cornerstones of the breed.

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As Matt noted yesterday, there is a HUUUUGE disparity between European and American bred horses on the turf right now. Personally, I think this is due two the two different foci that North Americans and Europeans have. Traditionally, we (Americans) are aiming for our Classics, the vast majority of which are on dirt/synthetic (for the duration of this article, I'll just say dirt when I really mean non-turf). You can see the current list of North American Graded Stakes here. Secondly, EVERY MAJOR EUROPEAN RACE IS ON THE TURF. That makes it pretty easy to focus on that. Add in the fact that North American racing keeps focusing on shorter and shorter distances and you end up with a different class of horse in Europe that runs long and on the lawn, and subsequently produces mediocre Europeans that can still dominate their weaker American counterparts. Mediocre in this case is defined as a good Allowance-type horse, which is by no measure actually mediocre. But when talking about dropping in class from stakes in Europe, you're still looking at a horse that is just as good as the "elite" talent in North America. So while it isn't dropping that far, you begin including a large number of racehorses pretty quickly.

Much more analysis after the jump.

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Take this to Vegas immediately. This is the end all be all of 2012 Freshman Sire Predictions. Now finding a futures pool for this might be a little tough, but I'm sure someone downtown will take your bet.

Now, I've broken out the entire list of stallions that entered stud in 2009, and using the sales data for yearlings in 2011 (i.e. the horses that will be 2yos this year) I've estimated which stallions are putting out the most quality and also the most horses. Quality is measured by median sales figures for the given year.

You want to find data that is difficult to find? Try finding to total number of foals that Curlin and Tiz Wonderful had in 2010. If a stallion isn't listed your stallion on the Thoroughbred Times' Stallion Directory, then forget about it. Even the Stallion Register won't even tell you (unless you pay for an Equineline service: 200 bucks+ for a partial account). So I've had to estimate for Curlin and Tiz and I settled on 90 as a fair estimate based on what the other high end stallions had.

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With the end of the 2011 Racing season (and the birthday of every Northern Hemisphere-born thoroughbred [HAPPY BIRTHDAY!]), we start to more seriously look at the 2012 calendar of events. But before we completely move on to Derby Preps and the foaling/breeding season, I wanted to take a quick look at the 2011 final stallion rankings.

Top three (all information is from the Thoroughbred Times): Giant's Causeway ($12,308,291); Distorted Humor ($10,784,110); Tapit ($10,579,412).

Not a lot of surprises, but one thing I wanted to take a closer look at was to look at efficiency (measured by earnings/starter) and to try to measure how consistent sires are (by tossing out the extreme outliers, which is easily accomplished by tossing the leading earner for any stallion, if they've won over a million dollars and redoing adjusted earnings/ starter). That is not perfect, as ANY runner with over a million in earnings in a year is clearly an outlier industry-wide, but by throwing out the extreme performer (and that one happens to be the most readily accessible; I do have a job) I think you can gain a clearer picture of many stallions' returns on investment, since runners with the lion's share of earnings for their stallion (i.e. Animal Kingdom and Havre de Grace) are tossed from the Adjusted Earnings.

Most efficient stallions of the top 25: Tapit, Distorted Humor, Speightstown, Smart Strike, Indian Charlie

Most consistent stallions of the top 25: Tapit, Ghostzapper, Speightstown, Medaglia d'Oro, Indian Charlie

Distorted Humor drops with consistency due to Drosselmeyer's victory in the Classic. 2.7 million of his 2.9 million in earnings is from one race. Granted, it's the most important race in the country, but the average breeder isn't shooting for classic champions, just good quality winners.

Smart Strike drops due to the exclusion of My Miss Aurelia. Again, 1.08 of her 1.3 million are from one race. Not penalizing, just trying to adjust for freaks of nature.

In my opinion, so many of the raw numbers thrown out there for stallions (and breeding in general) come with zero context and absolutely no benchmark to which you can compare them. Currencies are different the world over, the demand is different, the conditions are different. There are so many variables that trying to distill dollars and starters, and GSWs, and champions, etc, into something useful for the common person, like myself, is nearly impossible. I think a lot of this goes back to Matt's article about stats and data. I think a lot of the data is kept purposely from the general public in order to enhance different sectors of the industry. Perfect information (or close to it) would do irreparable harm to the parimutuel system in just about the same way as perfect information about stallions would lead to many a stallion barn going out of business. Both ends of the industry are a gambling man's game.

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