Derby Contender Update

Updated Derby Contenders

Tier 1- These are the pedigrees I like the best, in alphabetical Order.

Bolo...still waiting to see if he tries dirt.

Dortmund...always gets the job done but some stiff competition awaits him.

Far Right...but for some bad luck he might have had a string of 3...tough guy.

International Star..totally fearless..reminds me of another little guy, Carry Back.

Khozan...stretched to a mile in 2nd start against nothing to speak of..showed he could take dirt, rate and move between horses..probably Pletcher's best of the 34 he has nominated.

The Truth or Else...been on my radar for some time but have been waiting for him to wake up...finally came alive in the Southwest...super duper pedigree. Will Borel win another one?

At the moment I feel that one of these top six has the best chance to win the Derby.

Tier 2- Very good, just a notch below the best.

Bold Conquest..deserves a chance again..looked a little short in last.

Carpe Diem...waiting for next start

Competitive Edge...waiting for him also.

Itsaknockout...showed he has the talent in only his 3rd start..needs a bit more oomph.

Upstart...don't know how he got left out...had to edit him in

War Story..trying to live up to his breeding...good try against Far Right.



Tier 3- Pedigrees are good enough if an exceptional talent.

Frosted..doesn't look like he is going to outrun his pedigree..may be a cut below

J S Bach...scratched because of fever..had impressive race..wait and see.

Tencendur...this type pedigree has been known to win the big one..

Out Crossed Pedigrees.

Mr Z has already show he is talented and game. Out crossed horses are usually very durable so he should be a factor in all his races.

Hillbilly Royalty's Southwest race wasn't bad considering he hooked up early with Mr Z, took back and tried to come again at the end..give another try.

There are some others with nice pedigrees that I'm watching but they have to get a move on to make the derby.

Go back and read my post, "Is Breeding a Crapshoot".

Now the horses that my pedigree says won't win the derby;

American Pharoah
Bayerd
Danzig Moon
Daredevil
El Kabeir
Firing Line
Lord Nelson
Ocean Knight
Ocho Ocho Ocho
Prospect Park
The Great War
Texas Red

There may be some others that may have a better shot or be eliminated but I don't see any that I have eliminated already winning the big one.

2015 Derby Pedigrees

These are my early Derby contenders rated by pedigree. Some of these may not perform up to their potential until they reach the longer distances because their pedigrees suggest that they should excel at the longer distances of the Triple Crown races. A lot of horses can get as much as 9f  but it takes special horses to go beyond that. Actually, just about any horse can go 1 1/2 miles, but how fast? What I'm talking about are horses that can go the longer distances at a high rate of speed.

I kind of grade my pedigrees and use a couple of categories to show that, even though they all have classic pedigrees, some are better than others in my opinion. With over 400 horses nominated to the Derby I have only rated the ones that have shown some talent but I'm sure there may be others that will show up.

Tier 1 has the pedigrees I like best for the classic distances. In alphabetical order;

Bolo...will probably stick to turf races.
Dortmund
Far Right
International Star
Khozan

Tier 2;
Carpe Diem
Competitive Edge
Itsaknockout
War Story

Tier 3;
Frosted
J S Bach
Upstart

I also look for out crossed horses that can turn out to be really good if the cross takes. A good example was Animal Kingdom who I liked in the Derby and turned into a world class horse.
A couple of interesting crosses this year are Mr Z and Tiznow R J and I am watching them closely.
I will update the list as the season progresses.

Is Breeding a Crapshoot?

Breeding a champion has always been considered a combination of planning and good luck. The planning is comprised of doing what is considered the logical process of mating the best to the best which is what, those in a position to do so, try to do. The luck is determined by which animals in the pedigree exert the most influence on the final result.

Since most pedigrees, especially those produced by the leading breeders, contain many champions in the ancestry, how may one determine which ones will have the most say as to what kind of offspring is produced?

When a really promising youngster appears there will be a lot of writers delving into the breeding of the horse and try to assert the prime reasons why this horse is so good. They will generally give the accomplishments of the sire, dam, dam sire and various other horses in the pedigree and state that the horse can go the distance or have a lot of speed, etc. because of the influence of particular lines or ancestors.

There are some, like myself, who try to predict beforehand, which horses have the most potential to be really good. They will normally refer to the very good ones in the pedigree and say that because of these horses this or that particular foal should be really good. The problem with that is that a case can be made for an awful lot of horses that are bred every year but damned few live up to their pedigree.

For instance, there are over four hundred foals nominated to the KY Derby this year but only twenty will make it to the gate and there will only be one winner. If one looks at the pedigrees of the 400+ that are nominated, champions will be found all through these pedigrees. It would seem to be logical to assume that all those horses can't have an equal influence on the product of the mating in question. A lot of pedigree talk has been generated by the fact of the Raise A Native sire line being very successful producing Ky Derby winners. This factor should be tempered by the fact that roughly 50% of the nominees are of that line which would mean one only has about two hundred horses to choose from. Only about 25% have one of my patterns and less than that sport my two dominate Derby patterns.

I have devoted myself to the study of pedigrees for over 50 years and found a lot of unanswered questions. For instance, why is it that so many highly regarded stallions fail to produce champions like themselves? How is it that unraced mares or those that have failed to distinguish themselves on the race track are able to foal champions? If the sire is so important, as most would have you believe, why is it that in the past 75 years there have been only 4 sires that have produced more than one Ky Derby winner? And of these 4 there were two, Sir Gallahad and Bull Lea, who did it when there were less than seven thousand foals born in the year. Sixty years ago the breeding industry was dominated by the few farms that had really good horses to breed from and the owners of the top stallions were very particular as to the mares that could be serviced. The last stallion to sire two Derby winners was Maria's Mon in 2001 and 1010 and that was after a gap of 22 years following Bold Bidder who did it in 1974 and 1979.

I decided many years ago that breeding the best to the best may have been a good starting point in the beginning but when as many as 35,000 horses have been bred in a single year, although the numbers are down to about 20,000 this year, probably because of economic considerations, trying to decide what horses are going to have the most influence in a pedigree would be a monumental task considering that there are 62 horses in a 5 generation pedigree.

When I first started to study pedigrees it came to me that the study of pedigrees, as far as I could determine, wasn't researched the way most science is. I couldn't figure out how one could point to certain horses in a pedigree and say, that because of this or that particular horse, the foal should or shouldn't have any particular abilities.

It is my belief that the mares are the conduit by which the abilities of the sires are passed on to the succeeding generations. However, with so many mares being in a pedigree, how would one begin to tell which ones would pass on who's genes. As to the dams of derby winners and a lot of other great horses, there are many, many mares that were unraced or lightly raced and had done very little on the track but were able to produce great horses.

After years of study I began to notice patterns emerging from the chaos. The way the females in a pedigree are aligned with one another seems to have a huge influence on the talent of the offspring. I believe that when the mares are in proper alignment they create a free flowing conduit of the genes of the good sires in the ancestry.

I finally settled on four basic patterns that looked to produce an awful lot of very good horses. Of these four patterns there were two that were dominate and were more noticeable in Derby winners. In the last 26 years, since 1988, 14 derby winners have had one of my 2 patterns. This cuts the odds of being on the right horse considerably. And, we must also realize that, even if every horse had exactly the same pedigree, some would be better than others.

There are also the horses with no discernible patterns to consider. These are horses with a lot of random ancestors and we can find a whole bunch of these so there are bound to be some that turn out to be good. But, I find that horses with a Heinz "57" pedigree that are really good are a very small percentage of the total bred.

I also don't find it odd that of the nominees trained by Baffert and Pletcher there are an abnormal number that have pedigrees containing my two best patterns. Perhaps this is the result of very good planning on the part of those who have bred these horses

I will soon be blogging the horses that I think have the best chance to get the Derby distance and longer. I plan to resume my newsletter where I will give my pedigree picks every week for the races leading up to the Triple Crown. If interested in subscribing to the newsletter send me an e mail.
Backstretch

backstretch33@gmail.com