Jack and I
by Roger Lyons
At one point during that difficult week when we all gathered in Fremont, I was reminded of some of the conversations I had with Jack. Sid called me on his way to Fremont asking for directions. I gave him very accurate and concise directions to Fremont from San Francisco airport. What I didn’t know at the time and didn’t put together until about three phone calls later was that Sid had landed in San Jose. If you’re completely unfamiliar with the Bay Area, you won’t be able to fully appreciate the implications of that. I know Jack would get it because he had some conversations like that with me. So, you can see the challenge he faced, day to day.
And keep in mind, Jack and I worked together for 18 years. We developed a lot of products together, and we had a certain creative process. Now, that process often started off looking less like an exchange of ideas and more like a head-on collision. We both had the unfortunate tendency, whenever we put our heads together, to get a running start. But don’t waste your time looking for the wreckage. All you’ll find is a long line of accomplishments that memorialize my relationship with Jack more than anything else could, at least on the surface.
But, as Jack liked to say, here’s the rest of the story. He’d call me with a really good idea, and anyone who knew him well had seen how exuberant he could be. Then the debate would begin, with Jack on the affirmative and me on the negative. As a formal matter, my role was to try to talk him out of it, and whatever survived that process is what we went with. That’s where Jack’s receptive qualities kicked in–tolerance, flexibiltiy, attentiveness, and I’ve been thinking about those qualities recently, I suppose, because the last things you learn to appreciate about somebody are the things you’ve always taken for granted. I remember times when–maybe I interrupted him a little too soon, or maybe I stayed on the wrong track a little too long–Jack would say in his patient, soft-spoken, non-confrontational way, for which he was so famous, “Wait a minute, Roger. Just listen to me for a minute,” and what else could I do? I’d shut up and listen.
That happened less and less in the later years because, little by little, it was in ways like that, over the years, that I think Jack rubbed off on me. It couldn’t have been easy for him, but I’d like to think–I think it’s true–that maybe I’m a more tolerant, flexible, and attentive person, not just for having known Jack, but for his having made an extraordinary effort to understand me. One of Jack’s closest friends said it best: “Jack made me a better person.” There’s no accounting that can put a value on that.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 9:50 am.
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Science v. Liebman
by Roger Lyons
If the language police were out rounding up suspected oxymorons, then the term “inexact science,” if not subject to immediate arrest, would at the very least be hauled in for questioning. No doubt, after his recent “What’s Going On Here” (The Blood-Horse, January 30, 2010, p. 491), Dan Liebman, Editor of The Blood-Horse, would be the key witness for the defense if the case were to go to trial.
Dan reasons that the new Speed Gene Test now being offered by Equinome is too exact to be useful to thoroughbred breeders. Why? Because thoroughbred breeding is “an inexact science.” Considering the formidable array of prosecution witnesses that could be lined up against him, it might be best for Dan to take the fifth.
First among them. Jim Bolger and Emmaline Hill of the company Equinome. Does it really matter much if your DNA sequencing is off a bit?
Then let’s bring in Frank Mitchell. When you’re taking structural measurements, what difference could it possibly make if the length of the horse is off by an inch or two?
Next, Andy Beyer. That track variant thing–that’s just a wild guess, isn’t it?
And, if Bill Oppenheim were to give testimony, what are the odds he would say something like this? When I order my APEX numbers from TJCIS, I just tell them to give me approximate counts. This isn’t rocket science. Fat chance.
As star witness, let’s call to the stand Ray Paulick, former Blood-Horse Editor-turned-blogger, and let’s ask him how much is at stake for a real journalist, who deals first and foremost with facts, in getting even the most incidental ones absolutely right.
Maybe after hearing Ray’s testimony Dan will want to cop a plea to a lesser offense–say, misdemeanor banality.
Never mind Dan’s offenses against language and good sense. With last year’s advertorial plug for Blood-Horse Publications’ nick rating system on his rap sheet, he’s going down this time on a major editorial hypocrisy beef. Here’s the smoking gun. Blood-Horse editorial opinion expresses unmitigated approval of its own dubiously cloned product while pooh-poohing a truly original, pioneering genetic research effort.
Bolger and Hill are indeed pioneers, and they’ve come up with a legitimate entrepreneurial angle obviously intended to enable a research program driven by curiosity–yes, a program that might one day compete with Blood-Horse Publications’ new array of pedigree advisory products. Equinome has made modest claims for its first achievement. After all, science progresses methodically, even if always tempted to over-reach as it struggles to survive in a radically commercialized melieu.
The Blood-Horse was born and bred during the heyday of the scientific age. For many decades it well served the mission of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association by way of a disinterested appreciation and treatment of scientific discovery, especially in the area of veterinary science. That legacy has since been consumed by hegemonic commercial ambition. What would have aroused the curiosity of previous editors is lost on what has become TOBA’s intellectually flaccid house organ.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 2:21 pm.
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Dayjur and his Daughters
By Roger Lyons
Although not one to beat the drum for inbreeding, I’m willing to relent on the occasion of the pensioning of Shadwell Farm’s Dayjur, a stallion that’s been very good value for breeders on a budget. Bred Danzig over Mr. Prospector, he was bound to be almost exclusively a sire of sprinters, regardless of the mares he got, but he did get some very good mares early on. That and his speed contribution probably both figure prominently in the early results of crossing his daughters and their daughters with certain Mr. Prospector-line stallions. Dayjur apparently has an uncanny ability to mediate inbreeding to Mr. Prospector. (Click here to view Dayjur’s Conformation photo, stats, etc)
Gone West provides only an inkling of that since he only had four mares with Dayjur in their ancestries. From the mare Top Order (Dayjur-Victoria Cross, by Spectacular Bid) he got the colt Top Cross, winner of the listed Lamplighter S. (9f-T), but that’s a little too close for comfort at 2×4 to Mr. Prospector. Gone West sons Elusive Quality and Mr. Greeley have done a lot better.
Elusive Quality has had foals out of ten mares with Dayjur in their ancestries, and three of those mares produced superior runners. Elusive City, out of Star of Paris (Dayjur-Liturgism, by Native Charger), picked up on the speed angle winning the 6f Prix Morny (G1). So did multiple listed stakes winner Princess Janie, out of Petite Princess (Dayjur-Classy Women, by Relaunch), winner of the Just Smashing S. and the Mongo Queen S., both at three and both at 6f, and Great Notion, out of Evening Primrose (Dayjur-Water Lily, by Riverman), winner of the Southwest S. at 8f.
That one-generation break in the distance of inbreeding makes a huge difference. Just ask Mr. Greeley. He’s had seven mares with Dayjur in their ancestries, and three of those mares have produced listed stakes winners by him. At two, the filly Foxy Danseur, out of Ravish Me (Wild Again-In Conference, by Dayjur), won the Sharp Cat S. at 8.5f and at three the Cascapedia S. at 7f. The filly Parisian Affair, out of Star of Paris (Dayjur-Liturgism, by Native Charger–same mare as above), won the Phoenix S. at five going 5f on turf. The filly Zona, out of Miss Gaily (Dayjur-Gaily Gaily, by Cure the Blues), won the 8f Premio Seregno.
Almost everything Dayjur touches turns to speed, which is not a bad limitation for an ancestor to offer, as is suggested by other stallions that have had good Mr. Prospector inbreds from mares in descent of Dayjur–and from precious little opportunity.
Awesome Again, whose second dam is by Mr. Prospector, has Everyday Heroes, out of Lucette (Dayjur-Thirty Zip, by Tri Jet), one of only two opportunities with mares in descent of Dayjur. Everyday Heroes won the 6f Hirsch Jacobs S. (G3).
From only three mares, E Dubai, by Mr. Prospector, has sired the 2005 colt Dubai Destination, out of Darlin (Dayjur-So Endearing, by Raise a Native). Dubai Destination won the Eillo S. at 6f.
Northern Afleet sired Nay’s Tap, a gelding out of Tapforaly (Pleasant Tap-Aly’s Daylite, by Dayjur) and winner of the Sophomore Sprint Championship S. at 6f, that from only two opportunities.
If the good filly Shadow Cast, by Smart Strike and out of Daily Special (Dayjur-Nafees, by Raja Baba), were the only representative of inbreeding to Mr. Prospector by way of a mare in descent of Dayjur, she would qualify as the wildest of flukes. Smart Strike hasn’t otherwise done his best work with mares in descent of Mr. Prospector, either. Shadow Cast, in fact, is the only superior runner by Smart Strike and out of a mare in any descent of Mr. Prospector from 57 chances, only four of which involved Dayjur. Nevertheless, she won six stakes, four of them graded, including the Personal Ensign S. (G1) at 10f. Not everything Dayjur touches turns to speed after all.
One case does not a pattern make, but, even though Shadow Cast truly is an outlier, the good results by a variety of stallions from very small numbers of similarly inbred foals suggest that she is nonetheless part of a pattern of uncharacteristically effective inbreeding involving Dayjur.
Tesio insisted on using close inbreeding at least once per crop although very few of his crops yielded as many as two instances. Never mind that Nearco was one of those. Don’t forget that Tesio’s number one criterion for close inbreeding was that it involve the soundest individuals, and Dayjur’s record of 78% runners and 52% winners probably weighs as much in the accounting as his speed and the quality of the families he got in his early crops.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 1:03 pm.
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Affinity Schleminity!
By Roger Lyons
It seems the old eugenic notion of “purity of blood” just won’t go away. For the last couple of years one website in particular has been featuring it as the one and only theory of nicks, and with a zeal that is–well, I’ve always wanted to use this word, but didn’t have a chance until now–mythomaniacal. I’m referring to the obsession with explaining nicks in terms of the “genetic affinities” that are supposedly exploited by crossing “close genetic relatives.”
The term “genetic affinity” might not seem as crass as the term “blood affinity,” but they are close etymological relatives nonetheless, their pedigree tracing to the idea that all good things spring from pure blood. This figure of speech originally served the purpose of invidious social class comparison. Needless to say, it’s un-American. It’s also un-French. It’s even un-German. It’s English.
To the unreflective pedigree analyst, it’s all but irresistible. You take the ancestry of an individual stakes winner, and then you find individual, similarly bred ancestors of both sire and dam (don’t worry, you’ll find them if you go back far enough), and you proclaim, “That’s why this horse is a stakes winner.” This game has no rules, and it’s open to all. It works for any ancestry, and, if you repeat it enough times, then some people will be persuaded.
But here’s my main beef with that approach. It violates the dictum that tests of a theory must, in principle, have equal opportunity to confirm and to disconfirm the theory. Within an anecdotal framework the theory of genetic affinity can be confirmed till the cows come home, but such tests could not possibly disconfirm it, precisely because close genetic relationships are ubiquitous in thoroughbred pedigree.
In my last blog post I took a statistical approach to deconstructing the supposed genetic affinity between Halo and Prince John. I might have chosen any combination of the many ancestors that have been trotted out in tandem over the years as examples of “close genetic relatives.” I concluded that there’s no genetic affinity between Halo and Prince John, but the argument goes farther than that. There’s no such thing as a genetic affinity. Period.
One needn’t appeal to the supernatural or to The Catalogue of Unacceptable Ideas in order to account for nicks. I’m convinced that the relation between types and traits is all we need. Let me illustrate.
During his career, the stallion Woodman sired foals out of 54 mares that descended in some way from Better Self (by Bimelech, a son of La Troienne, and out of Bee Mac, by War Admiral), and only one of those mares produced a superior runner by him, a strike rate far below his norm.
Another son of Mr. Prospector, Gone West, sired foals out of 61 mares in some descent of Better Self, and nine of those mares produced a superior runner by him, a strike rate well above his norm.
Now, here are the premises of a simple theory based on the relation of types and traits.
1. Better Self, rarely occurring in pedigrees closer than the fourth or fifth generation of mares, is so prepotent in regard to a certain trait or set of traits that individuals in any given descent routinely express that trait or set of traits.
2. Any given stallion tends to throw offspring within a certain range of type.
3. From a performance standpoint, the trait or set of traits so persistently conferred by Better Self may accord with, or even complement, the range of type of a given stallion’s offspring (Gone West), but it may affect the offspring of another stallion (Woodman) in an extremely unfavorable way.
It’s a simple theory. No hocus pocus. No need for the mysteries of genetic affinity. This theory probably isn’t exactly right, at least not comprehensively so, but its great advantage is that it’s subject to both confirmation and disconfirmation by way of tests combining statistical observation and biomechanical analysis.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 12:31 pm.
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Having it both ways?
Unfinished business left over from my last blog post really needs to be addressed. The point of that post was to show that Alan Porter uses deceptive language in characterizing his nick rating system’s access to information relating to the measurement of opportunity. Such tactics only go so far before colliding head-on with reality, and, when used so carelessly and with such abandon, they are usually part of a larger pattern of deception. That is, they are habitual.
This is evident especially in the hypocritical nature of Alan’s stated commitment to using opportunity as a measure of the effectiveness of sire-line crosses. The pattern of duplicity is pervasive.
As I sat down to compose this post, I decided I would just go to his website and use his latest post as an example, whatever it might be. I knew it wouldn’t matter because they’re all the same. It happened to be an entry about the More Than Ready-Meadowlake cross (“Halo Effect”), and it’s very typical of the stuff he does all the time. Everybody knows that Alan’s big thing is to tie up the loose ends of ancestors that share a close genetic relationship–in this case Halo (More Than Ready’s paternal grandsire) and Prince John (Meadowlake’s tail-male great-grandsire).
As everybody also knows, Alan and his partner Byron Rogers are principals in a nick rating service whose main selling point is that it uses opportunity against which to measure the effectiveness of sire-line crosses–this, despite the fact that Jack Werk, Sid Fernando, Bill Oppenheim, and I (and probably others I don’t know about) have said for years in print and online that opportunity at that level is meaningless.
The reason is that, when dealing with descendents of sire lines and broodmare sire lines, there’s no way to control for the quality of breeding stock. In that case, when you reduce opportunity to “the number of times the cross has been tried” (let’s call it N for short), you are bound to end up with a wild discrepency between the two. Never mind Alan’s naive, but calculated, use of the term “true opportunity.”
Given a commitment like that, it’s surprising that, in making his point about the Halo-Prince John effect as it relates to More Than Ready, Alan never mentions how many of More Than Ready’s mates actually had Prince John in their ancestries. This is all the more surprising in view of the fact that the question of opportunity has its greatest relevance when it relates to the mates of a particular stallion because, in that case, the stallion himself controls to a great extent for the quality of mares. Thus, in that situation N is much more representative of actual opportunity. Why does Alan abandon his commitment to opportunity in such circumstances?
In my small consulting business that’s exactly the kind of information I use all of the time. For example, my database for More Than Ready shows that through his 2006 crop (I add the latest three-year-old crop in the middle of the year) he’d sired foals out of 87 individual mares with Prince John in their ancestries (North America only), and some of those mares had produced multiple foals by him. To date, ONLY three of those mares have produced a stakes winner by More Than Ready.
By the test of statistical significance I use, that’s an abysmal strike rate, relative to More Than Ready’s overall record. Alan is simply wrong about the More Than Ready-Prince John connection. Well, what about the greater Halo-Prince John effect that’s really at stake in his post?
I checked the performance with Prince John by other sires with Halo in their ancestries. Street Cry is the only one whose strike rate with mares in some descent of Prince John was significantly higher than his overall record. Fusaichi Pegasus, Giant’s Causeway, Pine Bluff, Rahy, Saint Ballado, and Victory Gallop all had SW strike rates that only just warranted their opportunity. The rest of them for which I”ve kept figures–Devil’s Bag, Harlan’s Holiday, Silver Ghost, and Van Nistelrooy–had SW frequencies with Prince John that fall significantly below opportunity, relative to their overall quality as sires. Conclusion: there is no broad, performance-enhancing affinity between Halo and Prince John.
A proper consideration of opportunity would have prevented Alan from misleading his readers. Unfortunately, while insisting upon the need for a measure of opportunity when its use is dubious at best, he completely ignores it when it would have the most relevance. He constantly reminds us that he has access to vast database resources, which leaves only one explanation. His commitment to the question of opportunity varies, not with the matter of its relevance, but with what it is he’s selling at the time.
NOTE: The above references to SW strke rates for individual stallions with mares in any descent of Prince John are partially derived from source material obtained from The Jockey Club Information Services, and I thank my lucky stars for policies on the part of that organization enabling small businesses like mine to participate in the thoroughbred industry in a way that’s meaningful and cost-effective.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 12:03 pm.
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Alan: Jack has no choice
By Roger Lyons
I couldn’t presume to account for the latest histrionics coming from the Porter-Rogers pillbox (“An Opportunistic Approach?”) , but I can only suppose their nick rating service isn’t going as well as they expected–this, based only in part on the fact that Jack calls me every other day or so with exuberant reports of how many new eNicks accounts have been opened since the day before yesterday, not to mention the new stallion enrollments, which are posted for all to see.
Apart from the overall tenor of spitefulness and mean-spiritedness that pervades Alan’s remarks about Jack and myself–and, yes, he makes it personal (words like “stupid,” “disingenuous,” etc.)–there is something even more deeply troubling and of much broader interest than the venom he spews in that post, which, after all, he and Byron have done before and without much effect.
Alan pounces on a recent post at Jack’s “Who’s Hot” blog, in which Jack correctly and appropriately distinguishes his eNicks nick rating system from Alan’s on the issue of measurement. Jack’s post was occasioned by Bill Oppenheim’s Jan. 6, 2010 TDN column, in which Bill expresses skepticism about basing assessments of breeding methods on the number of times the method has been tried, or “opportunity,” which is what Alan’s nick rating system does. Jack joins Bill in opposing that approach, with the following:
“They’ve been using it as their main selling point and knocking WTC’s eNicks system because we don’t do it that way. Well, there’s a reason why we don’t. They just haven’t figured it out yet.”
Alan sees his opportunity and strikes, thus: “to be able to truly assess opportunity, one has to have access to comprehensive database of known foals, runners or starters, and their results, such as the database of the Jockey Club Information Services. . . .” Alan is building his argument: that the only reason why Jack agrees with Bill is that it serves vested interests. After all, Jack doesn’t have access to the JCIS database, but, surely, Alan doesn’t mean Jack couldn’t have access to the JCIS database if he thought he needed it. Read on.
Alan goes on to say:
“They don’t do things the same way because, they don’t have access to a database that gives them all foals and starters bred on a cross. Thus, they are forced to make a virtue out of a necessity.”
Forced? Well, as Alan knows, TOBA allows its publication, The Blood-Horse, to refuse Jack’s advertising even though that doesn’t conform very neatly with the TOBA mission statement. In that sense, Jack’s company is “forced” to advertise elsewhere. As it turns out, though, a lot of advertising The Blood-Horse would gladly accept is also going elsewhere.
But my impression has always been that, unlike The Blood-Horse, JCIS is willing to be everybody’s strategic partner, and understandably so. The very legitimacy of The Jockey Club–as proprietor of the official registry and source of breeding information–is at stake in offering equitable terms of access for all. Yet, Alan seems to be suggesting that his nick rating service has some form of exclusive use of that information. How else could he be so sure that Jack doesn’t really have a choice? If Alan is right, then it’s a concern for everyone.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 10:18 am.
More about the 2005 yearling study
After reading email responses to my study of Triple Plus yearlings in the 2005 Keeneland September Sale, which I reported in my last blog entry and which has been quoted in WTC ads, I knew that some clarification of the meaning of that study was called for. Sarah Wells writes:
“As a former mathematics teacher, I must question the validity of using the entity that created or significantly contributed to a particular statistic (rating) to verify that same statistic (rating).”
Quite right, Sarah. In that study I used current figures to identify the 281 Triple Plus yearlings in the sale and then summarized their subsequent performance. The performance of some of those 2005 yearlings did, in fact, contribute to those Triple Plus ratings, and their contributions had mostly favorable effects on the percentages of winners, stakes winners, graded stakes winners, etc. found in that group.
This means you should not expect the Triple Plus yearlings in the 2009 Keeneland September Sale to do as well as the Triple Plus yearlings in the 2005 sale. That is not going to happen, precisely because, as Sarah’s email suggests, those 2009 yearlings have not had a chance to contribute to the current Triple Plus ratings.
What Sarah says in her email pertains only to studies that are predictive in purpose. Put another way, what she says is that it’s nonsense to suppose that you can predict something that’s already happened. It’s like past-post betting. However, no studies that WTC has presented, no ads that it has published have ever represented its nick rating as a predictive instrument. What WTC has claimed and what I have argued on WTC’s behalf is not that its nick rating system is effective at predicting future performance, but rather that its system is effective at reflecting past performance. That is implicit in my observation that current Triple Plus ratings “captured” ten of the G1 winners that came out of that sale.
If I had been trying to find out how effectively the Triple Plus predicts performance, then the study I designed would be deeply flawed, but that is not what I was trying to do. I was trying to find out how effectively it identifies crosses that have worked in the past, including the subsequent performance of the yearlings in that sale.
That is not to say that Sarah’s criticism is misguided. Not at all. She would rather have a measure that predicts the future than have one that reflects the past, and so would I. It’s just that nick ratings don’t do that, at least not in the purely statistical sense Sarah has in mind. It’s not their job.
I would stipulate that the form of the study I designed might have contributed to the misunderstanding. The same design might be used to measure predictive power, except that the Triple Plus yearlings would have been identified four years prior to the survey of their subsequent performance. That would seem a fine thing, but it is not what a nick rating is supposed to do or can do.
Just for Sarah, I recently rolled the WTC system back to its 2005 form and applied the Triple Plus technology, but not to see how well it could predict outcomes. I already know a nick rating system can’t do that. The only purpose that exercise can have is to see how well the 2005 ratings reflect performance on the basis of an incomplete record. What I found is that the 2005 Triple Plus rating captures runners and winners just about as effectively as the 2009 Triple Plus rating does. It does 50-60% as well at reflecting stakes performance at all levels, but that is hardly surprising. The 2009 system does better than the 2005 system only because it is reflecting a more complete record. What neither system reflects can in any way be regarded as prediction.
Now, when I say that a nick rating system doesn’t predict the future, I only mean that it doesn’t do so in a systematic way. Breeders and buyers use nick ratings because they expect the future to repeat the past, and so it does. Why is it that human beings, both as societies and as individuals, will declare with absolute assurance, “I’ll never make that mistake again,” and then continue to repeat the same mistake over and over? It’s not just that we are inattentive to the past, as the maxim has it, but also that the new situations unfolding before us don’t look the same as they did before. There is a maxim for this, too: “You cannot step into the same river twice.” The problem is that, by the time thoroughbred performance gets round to repeating itself, circumstances have changed.
Consider the following cases:
In 2005, the Tiznow-Storm Cat cross would have been a Triple Plus if we’d had it back then. In the 2005 Keeneland September sale there were five yearlings bred from that cross, including G2 winners Informed and Tiz Wonderful, along with two other winners. If you’d bought all of those Triple Plus Tiznows, you’d look like a genius. In 2009, it’s an even stronger Triple Plus, and it’s probably going to be a Triple Plus for a long time to come. That seems a great thing to know.
The only problem is that the 2008 Keeneland September sale offered 20 yearlings bred from that cross. Buyers at that sale stepped into an entirely different river. There is no way that 40% of those 20 Triple Plus yearlings are going to be G2 winners. In that sense, the Triple Plus rating is far from predictive, but, if you had to draw one of the 60 Tiznows in that sale out of a hat, you couldn’t help hoping that it would be one of the 20 that were produced by Storm Cat-line mares.
In 2005 the A.P. Indy-Mr. Prospector cross would have been rated Triple Plus, based on 32 stakes winners bred from the cross, including eight G1 winners and six G2 winners. It’s important to note, though, that 25 (78%) of those stakes winners were by A.P. Indy himself. By contrast, of the 31 Triple Plus 2005 yearlings representing that cross, only 7 (23%) were by A.P. Indy himself, the rest sired by various sons. The difference between the breeding of those Triple Plus yearlings and the breeding of the stakes winners on which the Triple Plus rating was based approaches the level of an apples-and-oranges sort of difference.
Statistical prediction simply cannot be done reliably on that basis, and, again, I’m referring to the kind of prediction Sarah has in mind: prediction by statistical inference. It happens, in fact, that the A.P. Indy-Mr. Prospector cross is not rated Triple Plus in 2009, in some significant measure because of the subsequent performance of those 2005 yearlings as a group. A nick rating system just can’t know which are apples and which are oranges until the fruit ripens.
As real as nicks are, they don’t go in all generational directions. A.P. Indy line has established solid Triple Plus ratings with certain branches of Mr. Prospector line, based in part on the performance of sons–and I mean certain sons–of A.P. Indy, not all. Nick ratings are always necessarily behind the curve of the population, so much so that they do not make reliable predictions.
So, all I wanted was to find out how well the new Triple Plus rating captures the best of past performance, and what I discovered is astonishing. It’s one thing to say that a vastly higher proportion of A nicks are found among stakes winners than among pedigrees in the general population. That’s been the standard claim for a nick rating up to now, but that 2005 yearling study sets a different standard. No nick rating that I know of has ever been up to that rigorous a test of its ability to associate sire-line crosses with a history of very high performance.
Prior to the development of the Triple Plus, no nick rating could have identified a Keeneland September sample that contained 18.8% stakes winners, much less a sample of 281 that contained ten G1 winners. When it comes to profiling high-performance crosses, the Triple Plus plays a game for which no other publicly available pedigree rating could even take the field.
That’s what I meant to convey. As for the future, well, that’s anybody’s guess, but for my money, I’ll take what’s worked in the past, based on the best measure of it that’s ever been taken.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 7:30 am.
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