I know the other people are looking at other evidence and coming to different conclusions-- hence my story about the deaf frog and the scientists, and Chris' Mark Twain quote.

For years BloodHorse and other publications published stats on "broodmare sires"-- sires of the dams of runners. Three who topped the lists for a while were Buckpasser, Secretariat, and Spectacular Bid. Quick, let's all go out and buy broodmares by those stallions!

Well, maybe not.

Basically, the way the breeding industry works is this-- the top 1-2% or so of male breeding candidates get bred, since they can be bred many times a year, while females can only have one foal, and the top 50% (that's a seat of the pants estimate) are bred. This means that there is a FAR greater disparity between a top broodmare candidate (top 1%) and a poor one (50th percentile), than between a top stallion (top tenth of one percent) and a "poor" one (still in the top 2% of all male prospects). Which means in turn that the mare is far more important than the sire-- while stallions pass on characteristics (hence our profiles), all the major ones are capable of producing good runners IF THEY GET THE GOOD MARES. Some more so than others, but most can get some good ones IF THEY GET THE CHANCE.

None of which is lost on the smart Kentucky people-- like Seth Hancock at Claiborne, where the three aforementioned stallions stood. So what they do is pack the top commercial stallions book the first few years with absolute blue chip mares, to get them off to a good start with some big runners early. Except you know what? Sometimes it works, and sometimes, as in the case of those three, it doesn't work-- they produced a few good ones, but in general didn't do well considering the level of mares they got.

Cut to years later. All of a sudden, good runners start showing up out of mares sired by those stallions. Know why? Because those unbelievable female families the stallions were bred to were kicking in. Those 3 stallions had nothing to do with it.

Then there was the famous Mr. Prospector/Northern Dancer cross that produced so many stake winners. See if you can figure out why that one happened.

If it were all a question of measuring wins, nobody would need figures at all in handicapping. We make figures to accurately assess performance because we recognize that lots of other things can affect chances of winning. Just like the inability to hear someone telling him to jump is not the only thing that might hold a frog back.



TGJB