Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

Best to the best and hope for the best

David Thiselton
The breeding method that has seen the thoroughbred rise from a match between three original Arabian Stallions and 74 foundation mares of English and Oriental blood was based on a theory of “breed the best to the best and hope for the best”.
Today, despite breeding methods becoming more scientific, there are those who still advocate the simple “best to the best” match.
A look at the pedigrees involved in the first Grade 1 race of the Cape Sizzling Summer Season, the Avontuur Estate Cape Fillies Guineas, goes a long way to displaying that blood comes through at the racecourse.
Of the 18 runners carded eight are by South African Champion sires with the balance by sires from the top echelon with the possible exception of the "unfashionable" imported Irish-bred stallion Almushtarak.
The dams of the 18 horses are also largely bred in the purple.
The top buyers at the sales can afford to choose a top pedigree and the conformation and presence to match.
However, those on a lesser budget usually have two choices.
The first is to go on the conformation, presence and the walking movement of the lesser pedigreed horses.
The second is to choose a well-bred horse with obvious faults and attempt to work around those faults on the training track.
However, there have been plenty of pedigreed examples that go to the other extreme, including the US$10,2 million Snaafi Dancer, who was so bad he never raced and was then found to be infertile.
That horse was bought by Sheik Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai, and his brothers.
They have bought four of the five most expensive yearlings ever sold but have the poorest return on investment of all the major buyers.
Robert Sangster and John Magnier had a better record and with the help of the legendary trainer Vincent O’Brien and a team of Irish sales spotters built up what is today the most successful stud operation in history, Coolmore, with their policy of only buying yearlings that had stallion potential. The horses they pinpointed had to have immaculate breeding.
However, D. Wayne Lukas, who is America’s most successful ever trainer, reversed the common trend, ignoring pedigree at the sales and concentrating on conformation, presence and movement alone.
He did, however, attend the major sales and reckoned that any horse making it there would have to be well bred anyway.
Lukas had a 1-10 rating system that nobody but he understood.
Some reckon him to be the most successful of all the major buyers and one analyst in the 1990’s estimated his returns to be in the region of US$37 million profit.
Barry Irwin’s Team Valor syndication operation, that buys horses from around the world including South Africa, has made a profit in virtually every one of their 17 years or so of existence. Pedigree is also far down the list of Irwin and his team’s selection criteria.
However, a recent survey by The American Thoroughbred Review done on 23 horses most likely selected for their conformation rather than their catalogue page, showed a trend of paltry returns.
It would seem therefore that not many have the eye or the instinct of Lukas and Irwin and pedigree should probably still be the most important of the average buyers’ sales selection criteria.

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