Horse running through field

Dancing Rain ‘Not Guilty’ in Oaks Win

by Roger Lyons

If the expression “stole the race” is worth using at all, then it needs to be used less often than it is. First of all, stealing a race must involve an element of guile. A horse goes off at 20-1–kind of like Dancing Rain (Danehill Dancer-Rain Flower, by Indian Ridge, by Ahonoora) in the 12-furlong Epsom Oaks (G1)–and gets an easy lead. The soon-to-be losing jockeys are not that concerned, even though they’d prefer an “honest pace,” because they think she’ll be finished in any event by the time they’re coming off the turn. The soon-to-be winning jockey knows better, and that’s the con.

But, as W.C. Fields said, “you can’t cheat an honest man,” which in this context means that Dancing Rain could have stolen the Epsom Oaks only if there had been another filly (a mark) in the race better than she was. If the best horse wins, it’s not stealing, no matter how the race is run.

Anyone who thinks, as the T.V. analysts do, that there are just two kinds of horses, the front-runners and the closers, might well think Dancing Rain stole the Oaks. Because two horses were running more or less side by side in the lead during the early fractions of the Preakness, lots of people thought it was a speed duel. They entirely missed the point that one of those two horses–namely, Shackleford–is a stayer. Apparently, the concept of a horse that stays, that controls the pace and carries its speed around two turns, is too complex for network coverage.

Dancing Rain’s ability to show speed that stays is easy to figure out. The offspring of both Danehill Dancer (her sire) and Indian Ridge (her broodmare sire) have a mode (most frequently occurring) stakes-winning distance of eight furlongs, and in both cases it’s a strong mode. Dancing Rain’s speed carries because her second dam is by Alleged, the mode stakes-winning distance of whose offspring is, by a very large margin, 12 furlongs.

Not just any speed and stamina can combine effectively to yield a stayer, but this does. Danehill Dancer has a superior-runner strike rate of 7/42 with mares that have Alleged in their ancestries, and he has a strike rate of 6/28 when Alleged descends through a daughter, as in this case.

That daughter, Rose of Jericho, figures in the ancestry of another stakes winner by Danehill Dancer and in a revealing way. Dual-listed stakes winner Deauville Vision is out of a mare by Epsom Derby winner, Dr Devious. Like Indian Ridge, Dr Devious is by Ahonoora, but his dam is Rose of Jericho. So, Dancing Rain’s dam is a three-quarters sister to Deauville Vision’s broodmare sire. It’s the Ahonoora-Alleged sire-line cross through the same daughter of Alleged. Deauville Vision won listed stakes in Ireland at eight furlongs and 10 furlongs, at ages four and six, respectively.

Her pedigree says Dancing Rain is a stayer, and stayers don’t steal races. What could be more honest than a horse that goes to the front and stays there?

The Politics of Pedigree

by Roger Lyons

The recent series of posts relating to the table of ancestor preferences suggests that different ancestors have different roles and relations with respect to the stallion population. Maybe it’s time for a more schematic rendering of that variety.

Franco Varola famously placed the variety of touchstone sires (chefs de race) on a typological spectrum, using the analogy of the left and right wings (the dominant liberal and conservative ideological commitments) of the English-style parliament. His dosage analysis focused on the functional relations of the different types. However, his typology didn’t address the question of compatibility between individual ancestors. Could Varola’s analogy lead to a way of characterizing individual ancestors on that basis? Let’s give it a whirl.

Two structural changes are required.

First, our shift of emphasis means that we’re no longer subject to parliamentary rules. Out here in the street there’s a broader ideological spectrum, including radicals and anarchists, and, as the autocrat of your thoroughbred breeding operation, you ignore them at your peril. As we’ll see, it’s important that we sequence the four major ideological commitments in this way: radical, liberal, conservative, anarchist.

Second, the linear structure used by Varola won’t do. We need a structure that reflects the way in which the four ideological commitments relate to one another. So, the solution is to place them on a clock, with the radical at twelve o’clock, the liberal at three o’clock, the conservative at six o’clock, and the anarchist at nine o’clock. The question of compatibility is addressed by placement of ancestors on the clock, relative to one another and respective of their “ideological” commitments.

The radical, at twelve o’clock, is the easiest type, thanks to Varola, who familiarized us with “the Phalaris revolution.” Clearly, the radical is an incipient figure in Varola’s analysis and a pivotal one. As change-makers go, Native Dancer would be a prime representative of the radical commitment, but not the extremist that Phalaris was. The advantage of our compatibility clock is that we can place Native Dancer at around one o’clock if that seems right–the radical commitment shading into the liberal. Appropriately, the radical is diametrically opposed to the conservative, at six o’clock.

Accordingly, the liberal is opposed to the anarchist. Why? One might associate Mr. Prospector and Northern Dancer with the liberal commitment, whose distinction is that it defines the mainstream of the population at any given time and in any given place. The liberal knows how to conform and expects the same, gets along best with other liberals. For that reason, the liberal has a tendency to be complacent about the company it seeks and needs to be revitalized continually by radical and conservative associations. The liberal has no use for anarchy and will give it no quarter.

The conservative can get along with the liberal just fine if often on contrasting terms and might tea party on the anarchic side, but the conservative can’t abide a radical. I’m inclined to think Varola’s pure types, such as Bold Ruler and Double Jay on the left and Vaguely Noble and Alleged on the right, could all be considered conservative in their way. Unlike the radical, who wants to start something new, the conservative wants to preserve something long established, regardless of Varolan type. Remember, our clock doesn’t stop with what an ancestor contributes. Its hours mark where an ancestor is likely to fit successfully in the population.

The anarchist, at nine o’clock, opposes the liberal mainstream any way it must, just wants its distinctiveness to be respected. The survival of the anarchist is always under threat. Largely because anarchists don’t play well together, their best hope lies in alliances with either the radical or the conservative elements, at twelve o’clock and six o’clock, respectively. Graustark is almost certainly an anarchist, and I suspect Halo of leaning libertarian.

There, I think that winds up the compatibility clock enough to get its wheels turning.