Horse running through field

What are GeoNicks?

by Roger Lyons

As the world of thoroughbred breeding becomes increasingly globalized–with the increasing movement of breeding stock between North America, Europe, and Australasia–there remains the important sense in which all racing is local. It derives from the persistent fact that the horses must gather in one place to compete.

As a market structure, globalization doesn’t change that essential fact; therefore, the ability to correlate pedigree with geography becomes all the more important, and, although More Than Ready, for example, may sire stakes winners in North America and Australasia (but not so much in Europe), do the pedigrees of his stakes-winning offspring have commonalities between geographic regions or not?

That larger question aside, you need to know, as a breeder, whether or not the cross is performing as well in your region of interest as it’s performing globally, and that’s where GeoNicks enter the picture.

GeoNicks address the important question how a given pedigree cross has performed, comparatively, in the three major racing environments–North America, Europe, and Australasia. Just as the Werk Nick Rating, as featured at WTC’s online eNicks pedigree service, measures the effectiveness of crosses within the global population of stakes winners, GeoNicks measure those same crosses within the more limited stakes populations of those three respective racing environments. Thus, GeoNicks bring a geographic perspective to the evaluation of sire-line crosses.

As a supplement to the long-established Werk Nick Rating, GeoNicks reports include the regional letter-grade rating for the cross requested, the variant on which the grade is based, and a list of the stakes winners bred from the cross–but only the winners of stakes races run in the requested region (see sample reports–North America, Europe, Australasia).

GeoNicks does not replace the global Werk Nick Rating on which the thoroughbred industry has relied for the last 20 years. Breeders, buyers, and eNicks stallion sponsors are assured that the Werk Nick Rating will continue to be the centerpiece of WTC’s online pedigree service, eNicks.com. The GeoNicks options are provided as a supplemental service, currently available at promotional pricing–only at eNicks.com.

Werk Nick Rating(R), GeoNicks(TM), and eNicks(R) are trademarks of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, Inc. Roger Lyons has been involved in the development and maintenance of WTC’s nick rating products for many years, participated in the development of GeoNicks(TM), and benefits materially from sales relating to those products.