noholme and inheritance

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biomechanics, hyperion, milers as sires, nodouble, noholme

As Brent Fernung remarked in a response yesterday, Noholme looked quite a lot like his male-line ancestor Hyperion, a beautifully shaped and surprisingly muscular horse and one of the two or three greatest English sires of the 20th century.

Hyperion was the sire of many high-quality classic horses, but he also got a good many very fast animals like Stardust, the sire of Star Kingdom and grandsire of Noholme.

While Hyperion was absolutely top class at a mile and a half, Noholme was really more of a miler, which is a good thing for most stallions. That’s so because most horses breed to one side or the other of their own racing aptitude. A miler tends to be in the middle, tends to get fast sprinters from sprint mares, milers from miler mares, horses that stay a little farther from more classic mares.

The things that make a miler work better as a sire include most notably the ability to race the mile in top company. To do that, he has to have speed, he has to be maneuverable, he has to have guts, he has to have a decent or better cardio system, and he has to have enough physical (biomechanical) finesse to race beyond sprint distances.

In contrast, a horse who is a superior sprinter or stayer has to reproduce himself to be a success, and mostly that won’t happen.

And I believe one of the keys to the Hyperion/Noholme success story in siring lots of fast horses is that they tended to sire medium-sized (OK, small) horses with plenty of muscle for their size. That sort of chiseled block hindquarter is the engine, and on a small to medium-sized horse, it puts a lot of speed in them.

That is something close to an ideal for a really good sire, and after a couple generations of breeding a somewhat more classic type, such as Nodouble and his sons, there isn’t that granite block anymore. The result is more of a classic type, and that is the end of the speed, unless there is constant addition of very high quality.

And that is my conclusion about Nodouble. He was a more classic, scopier type of Noholme, and Nodouble was a really good sire but not a speed sire. Not really. One observer mentioned that his colts tended to look like fillies. Well, that is the tendency among the sires that tend to breed in a more classic direction. And their only hope is to generate absolutely top class because there is no racing in this country for horses who need 10 furlongs and further in this country unless they are stakes horses.

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the curious question of medaglia d’oro

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alan porter, biomechanics, head carriage, medaglia d'oro, physical proportion, sport, stride quality

In a response to my post on Medaglia d’Oro (read it here) not being limited as only a “filly sire,” the internationally recognized pedigree pundit Alan Porter wrote that he had been pondering the issue and suggested that:

My guess is that it has been a conformation issue based mostly on “legginess” and that breeders will eventually begin to breed a different type of mare (his first G1 colt is out of a mare by the short-legged Thunder Gulch).

What is the biomechanics take on this?

Evaluating Medaglia d’Oro through the lens of biomechanics raises several interesting points. Size is one of these. Several commentators (and even an astute observer or two) have mentioned how big he is, but in physical terms, Medaglia d’Oro is not especially tall. Only a smooch over 16.1 hands, he is a solid mid-sized animal, not at all out of the norm by today’s standards for bigger Thoroughbreds.

Interestingly, however, Medaglia d’Oro looked rather bigger than that when racing. He carried his head somewhat high in a dashing, catch me if you can manner, and he didn’t drop his head like an AP Indy and appear smaller when he dug in for a fight down the homestretch.

The reason for his head carriage and greater appearance of height is that Medaglia d’Oro had a slightly elevated stride (like he was meeting the rising ground in the straight at Epsom all the time). It is a type of stride that can work really well for a horse who is proportioned to use it, and Medaglia d’Oro has absolutely lovely proportions for a free-running horse with outstanding extension. He has all those properties, and he was allowed to use them to full advantage in his racing career here in the States, where he won three G1 races and more than $5.7 million.

In short, the appearance of legginess is an optical illusion.

A second point of interest from Medaglia d’Oro’s biomechanics is that he also has many of the stride and mechanical traits that suit a turf horse, and there is every reason to believe that Medaglia d’Oro would have been at least as good on that surface as on dirt.

So the success of his racers on that surface is not likely to cease … only increase, increase, increase.

And third, Medaglia d’Oro is a sport. He ain’t like El Prado (and certainly isn’t a typical Sadler’s Wells or Northern Dancer). Neither is he Bailjumper (nor his sire Damascus). Although Medaglia d’Oro is really well proportioned and obviously highly talented as an athlete, he is similar to a surprisingly modest percentage of the broodmare population because his proportions fit his needs, not those of the “typical” Northern Dancer, Damascus, or Mr. Prospector critters. He will match some of them but not so many that it pays to go shooting in the dark.

In breeding to him, the best path to take would be to measure the mare, get a hard evaluation of her mechanical properties, and see how well she fits him. Then questions of pedigree, racing class, and economics will fill out the rest of the assessment.

bloodstock selection: differing perspectives

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aptitude, audley farm, biomechanics, bob baffert, conformation, dosage, franco varola, herd dynamic, keeneland, kerry thomas, lemhi go, northern dancer, nw management, quiet american, raise a native, rare beauty, smarty jones, thomas herding technique, typology

In selecting broodmares and mating them to stallions, there are almost as many opinions as there are buyers. Really promising physiques attract my attention, especially when allied with good racing performance. I tend to evaluate this in terms of biomechanical quality. (There are several posts on this blog regarding biomechanics available to read from last month.)

Kerry Thomas, who has developed Thomas Herding Technique, uses equine psychology and behavior characteristics to evaluate prospects. Read more about Thomas and his approach here, which also includes a 10-minute video with trainer Bob Baffert.

Another line of evaluation is deep pedigree theory and study, such as that used by Franco Varola, developer of the typology of Thoroughbred aptitudes that he described using dosage. I wrote about Varola just a few days ago (here) and was thrilled to find that Varola, as consultant to breeder Audley Farm, was involved in the production of both a mare that I own and her half-sister, whom Thomas selected as an outstanding foundation mare at the recently concluded Keeneland November sale.

The primary attraction in my purchase of G2 winner Lemhi Go was her racing class, which was quite high, allied with her pedigree. She carries no Raise a Native, and her only Northern Dancer is through that stallion’s son Giboulee, sire of Lemhi Go’s dam Midnight Rapture. Not surprisingly for a high-class racemare, Lemhi Go is a scopey mare with quality and presence. She also has a smooth, lengthy walk that is lovely to watch.

In evaluating her half-sister Rare Beauty at Keeneland, Thomas noted that Rare Beauty “was in a class by herself” as a broodmare. Thomas makes his observations purely by eye, watching horses alone or in company with others. Using the horse’s own actions to gain insight about its attitudes, he said that Rare Beauty was “the most emotionally sound, mentally prepared, highest herd dynamic mare of the sale.”

Makes her sound like a crackerjack, right? Well, she was one impressive specimen. Standing 16.3 hands, Rare Beauty was typical of her sire, Quiet American. She was quite big all over, very ruggedly made with strong bone and tendons, and well-conformed.

She has a high wither, great length through the body, and a good eye. I suspect that her stature and commanding presence caught Thomas’s eye. His summation was that “Rare Beauty’s inner character and behavioral dynamics (both Group Herd Dynamic and Individual Herd Dynamic) far exceeded her peers.”

In foal to Kentucky Derby winner Smarty Jones, the mare sold for $20,000 to NW Management, agent.

biomechanics: changing norms

Tags

biomechanical analysis, biomechanics, danzig, distorted humor, dr. fager, fappiano, mr. prospector, native dancer, raise a native, secretariat, Unbridled's Song

Just as Secretariat found the norms of the breed unsuited to his excellent traits, other stallions with championship qualities have found themselves needing mates with different traits.

One of the reasons for some stallions needing mares with traits that are difficult to find is that the mares most likely to possess them are from the same lines as the stallion. The noted vet Dr. Bishop suggested that the thing to do with Secretariat was to mate him with his own daughters. This was never done, in part because we think of such matings from the human perspective as incestuous. Also, unless the mares were chosen for good qualities and lack of faults, the results would tend not to be very useful.

Another tack, in Secretariat’s case, would have been to use mares by Nasrullah, Bold Ruler, Princequillo, or one of the better Bold Ruler or Nasrullah sons. These horses tended to gravitate toward the stride type, and doing something like, while eccentric, would have created a sort of miniature “breed center” around Secretariat and might possibly have worked.

When considering the concept of the “center of the breed” in biomechanical terms, it sounds as if the norms of the breed are a static center, but there does appear to be evidence that the norms can drift, or perhaps even realign to form a somewhat different and more specialized center of the breed.

Particularly with regard to the preferred stock of the commercial market of the last 20 years, the change has been toward both a larger horse and one with a bigger hip (both wider and longer) and longer hind cannon. These are the traits especially associated with Native Dancer, Raise a Native, Fappiano, and Dr. Fager.

These are horses with extraordinary speed, but they were not purely sprinters and did not get their speed simply by muscle mass and rapid acceleration.

And if we think about Fappiano, in particular, most would agree that the outstanding sire son of Mr. Prospector combined some traits that were fairly atypical of Mr. Prospector, but that were more typical of Native Dancer and Raise a Native, with the best qualities of Dr. Fager.

This recombination of traits is the essence of the breed-shaping stallion who literally can remake the breed, or a portion of it, in his own image. For many outstanding racehorses, being atypical has been the death of their prospects of consistent success at stud. But this has not been the case for the power type of horse with the Native Dancer hip and the big frame of a Dr. Fager or Fappiano.

On the contrary, they have prospered because there are enough of this type out there to help one another as mates. As the number of high-quality horses has increased over the past 30 years or so, the opportunity for stallions to find suitable mates, even by chance, has likewise increased.

And breeders have every reason to use this type of mare and stallion in their matings because this tall Quarter Horse type has become the preferred commercial prospect, both at the yearling sales and especially at the auctions of 2-year-olds in training.

And as a result of this growth in popularity, some of the types or “populations” of horses that were not common enough to dominate the breed in earlier decades are now coming to have a larger influence on the breed.

The looming struggle for influence among different types of racehorses will be focused on the relative pressures in breeding and racing to retain the typey, muscular, medium-sized horse typical of Type I or to replace that with the larger, rangier, power-centered horse.

Unbridled’s Song, grandson of Fappiano through the outstanding sire Unbridled, is the prototype of the big power horse, and there could hardly be a more popular sire and physical profile, especially for the commercial breeder and buyer. On the other hand, Distorted Humor is the heir to Danzig, Mr. Prospector, and others of the Type I center.

 

biomechanics: its practical use

Tags

biomechanical analysis, biomechanics, stride characteristics

Measuring a horse is the first step in biomechanical analysis, which is a fancy term for using mathematics and physics to understand how a racehorse’s physical traits increase or restrict its potential on the racetrack.

[It is worth mentioning that all this analysis is only on potential. Character of the horse, its training regimen, strength of its immune system, physical sturdiness, racing environment, handlers, and pure luck all are factors that also restrict or increase the prospects for any horse to reach its potential. And it is obvious that even among the horses who receive nothing but the best, a notable percentage do not show all they are capable of due to one or more of these reasons (for example, Danzig).]

The second step in the process is running the raw physical measurements through a computer program and database that help to quantify the animal’s merits and place it in a context with other racehorses.

The best-balanced horses, in regard to their mechanical traits of power, stride capacity, and body weight, are graded as Type I. Those with a modest imbalance (or increased specialization as you want to think of it) are Type II, and those who are truly specialized for one mechanical characteristic are S (stride), E or W (light or heavy weight), or P (power).

And third, the animal is then assessed in terms of its traits and mechanics for the use that an owner wants to make of it.

The last point is very important because particular traits will suit a horse to race on a particular surface or at a preferred distance and not others.

The beginning of this process seems simple enough, and many horsemen have watched as a man or woman with a tape has measured one of their horses at the sales. The measurements typically assess the length of the neck, shoulder, legs, back, and body, as well as the girth, which relates to the horse’s body mass.

The most common reason to measure a horse is to assess the animal’s potential as an athlete, but biomechanics also plays a role in selecting breeding stock.

And, since this blog is focused more on breeding, that is the tack taken in the posts on this topic in the coming days.

ok, i told ya so: pollard’s vision

Tags

biomechanics, carson city, dixieland band, pollard's vision

Plenty of reasonable breeders liked Pollard’s Vision when he went to stud, yielding a hefty first crop of 93 2yos. He was a Carson City who excelled at a mile or slightly longer, improved at 3, and had sufficient toughness to win two Derbys (Illinois and Lone Star), finish second or third in four more (Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana), and earn $1,430,311 in three seasons of racing.

He was a heck of a nice horse, he was a solid recommendation to breeders on many levels, and did I ever catch the dickens when people saw his foals. ‘Nobody liked them, everybody hated them, Pollard’s Vision (and I) ought to eat a bug and die.’

Well, as it happened, a good many of the foals by Pollard’s Vision weren’t show horse pretty, and some of them weren’t fantasy sales horse correct, and some of the others weren’t especially big.

Which brings me to the most active factor in the pedigree and genetics of Pollard’s Vision: Northern Dancer through his omnipresent son Dixieland Band, the broodmare sire of Pollard’s Vision.

Biomechanically, Pollard’s Vision is nearly a clone of Dixieland Band. That is how Pollard’s Vision raced, that is how he looks (well-balanced, not real fancy), and that is how he is performing at stud.

Things got so bad before the despised offspring of Pollard’s Vision got to the races that those of us who had recommended him to breeders needed to keep a low profile. Folks could be unappreciative, etc.

Well, I’m out of the foxholes now. And about time.

The first crop of Pollard’s Vision struck black type first in Europe with the colt Air Crew, and since then three fillies have won stakes all over the country, including the G1 Oak Leaf Stakes last weekend (Blind Luck).

At present, the bay son of Carson City who looks like a Northern Dancer stands at the head of the freshman sire list for 2009, and he is looking prettier and grander by the day.

With this improvement in the fortunes of Pollard’s Vision, those of us who recommended him seem to have been forgiven, even if breeders had to give away their yearlings (Blind Luck sold for $11,000, for instance).

And if someone receives a tasty filet de crow wrapped in black, it wasn’t sent by me.  No, it was somebody else.

spotlight on boundary

Tags

biomechanics, boundary, claiborne farm, danzig

Although a pensioner at Claiborne Farm, where he was born and raised and stood at stud, Boundary is an interesting horse in terms of pedigree and physique because he combines several elements that are important for understanding the mechanics of a racehorse in terms of its pedigree.

 

On pedigree, many observers might have expected Boundary to have some classic potential, at least over European courses at the mile. And overall, his physique is more classic than typically “sprinter,” with the implication of limitation in distance.

 

Boundary proved on the racecourse that he was a very good racehorse, although never in the hunt as a classic contender, and as a sire, he contributed a useful amount of power and speed to most matings, as well as adding quality to his offspring.

 

Boundary was one of many good sons of top sire Danzig, who sired champions and classic winners, racers who showed top class at 2 and beyond, and a variety of horses who found their best form at distances from five furlongs to a mile and a half or beyond. Clearly, a sprint specialist like Boundary was on the shorter end of that spectrum of performance, but like the top European sprinter Dayjur, Boundary was a very fast horse.

 

Boundary had a high cruising speed because of his advantages of power behind the saddle. He is very strong through the loins, across his gluteal and hamstring muscles in his hindquarters, and in his gaskin. The power from these strong and well-developed muscles allowed the horse to stretch out effectively and use his stride to advantage early. And his stride is a factor from his back and body length. He has an acceptably short back and gets his body length from the depth and angle of his shoulder and hip.

 

Despite his muscle mass behind, however, Boundary is not gross or coarse. He is a sprinter with the quality of a miler, showing a good expression, top line, and length through the body. He has the balance and muscularity to show immense speed, and on type, he should have run farther than six or seven furlongs effectively.

 

Perhaps that helps this sire in producing runners who can succeed a bit outside the sprint boundaries. The most famous of these is 2008 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown, who has all the best qualities of Boundary, allied with a dash of finesse that allowed him to stretch out to 10 furlongs successfully.

 

Prior to Big Brown, the best of the Boundarys were English highweight juvenile Minardi, a G1 winner at 2 who placed in the Irish 2,000 Guineas over a mile at 3; the sprinting G1 winner Pomeroy; and the G1-placed She’s Classy (Hollywood Starlet) and Roxelana (Acorn).

 

Their natural speed and generally well-balanced body type have made the Boundary stock popular at the sales, with Minardi selling for $1.65 million as a yearling at the Keeneland September auction. Horsemen appreciated the look of his early foals to such a degree that Boundary became quite a talking horse even as an unproven sire.

 

No doubt a part of the reason for the appealing looks of his offspring is that Boundary matches well with a rather wide spectrum of mares to produce a speedy and athletic-looking foal. Biomechanically, this is what I would expect from Boundary, who fit a wide variety of mares to produce good racing prospects. Although very fast, Boundary was not overburdened with power, and a quick, good-bodied mare from the lines of Mr. Prospector or Northern Dancer was the type that most suited him by reproducing his own best qualities.

spotlight on silver deputy

Tags

biomechanics, Brookdale Farm, Rob Whiteley, Silver Deputy

One of the most consistent stallions in Kentucky over the years has been Silver Deputy. Rob Whiteley, owner of Liberation Farm, noted once that “few stallions have been as good to as many breeders as Silver Deputy.”

Whiteley, in his role as director of operations for Foxfield Farm, planned the mating for Silver Deputy’s first superstar, champion Silverbulletday.

The fleet bay filly was one of the many reasons that Silver Deputy became one of the most successful sons of his sire, Deputy Minister.

Both stood at Brookdale Farm outside Versailles, Ky., and were immensely important stallions for class and quality.

One of the factors that marked the influence of Silver Deputy is the level of balance that he imparted to his offspring. Biomechanically, balance is the relation of qualities that allow a racehorse to move efficiently.

And Silver Deputy possessed the mechanical traits that allowed him to cross well with a wide variety of mares.

Based on a biomechanical profile done by DataTrack International, a consulting firm that evaluates the biomechanics of horses and their prospects as racers and breeding stock, Silver Deputy falls just shy of being a Type I stallion, which includes sires that are an outstanding match with virtually every type of mare. Type I stallions, such as Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector, possess the ideal balance of stride, power, and weight.

What puts Silver Deputy so near the center of the breed is his extraordinary balance of stride and power. Being ever so light in weight is the only factor that makes Silver Deputy fall in to the Type II category. While weight is not considered a factor that makes horses faster, effective biomechanics requires the weight of muscle and a moderate amount of fat to produce the energy that allows racehorses to move quickly and maintain speed over a distance.

The racehorse must also be able to use its energy efficiently through a good combination of stride and power, the mechanical components that make a horse athletically gifted. In Silver Deputy, stride and power are perfectly balanced.

A stallion that blends well with a mare is a sire who produces foals with a balance of power, stride, and weight, even though the mares he’s bred to may have shorter strides than his own or have greater or lesser power. Because Silver Deputy possesses this excellent balance of qualities, if mated to a robust mare with a choppy, pounding stride who couldn’t withstand much training because of her weight and poor action, the resulting foal might have a longer and smoother stride, be relatively lighter weight, and so be able to maintain power. These improvements give the foal a better chance of racing effectively.

Silver Deputy proved early in his stud career that he had the ability to bring out the best in his mates. During his first season at Windfields Farm in Ontario, where he stood for $2,500 Canadian, Silver Deputy was booked to a group of modestly successful mares with a collective comparable index of 1.53. The comparable index indicates how good a mare is as a producer, with 1.00 being the average. One of those mares was Lady d’Arbanville, who had won just over $8,000 as a racehorse and whose best runner out of eight foals at the time she was first bred to Silver Deputy had been the winner of nearly $22,000. The mating to Silver Deputy produced Deputy Jane West, Canada’s champion juvenile filly in 1992 and champion 3-year-old filly the following season.

Horses with this level of balance and quality are hard to find. They are wonderful for the breeder to use. Pensioned for the 2009 breeding season, Silver Deputy will be missed.