Dissident Ancestors
by Roger Lyons
The point of my last post was, in part, to suggest that certain dissident ancestors of broodmares pose special problems for stallion selection. They’re not carrying signs and throwing rocks, but the troublemakers assert themselves so forcefully that some seemingly well bred mares will have severely limited opportunity for a good match–or none at all.
I’ll just name three ancestors on my watch list: Graustark, Halo, and Nureyev. I’m not really sure about Nureyev. Let’s call him an ancestor of interest, but one can’t afford to be squeamish when rounding up suspected dissidents. You never know where a seemingly innocent association might lead. What these three have in common is that an unusually large proportion of stallions don’t like them very much. That’s enough to warrant indefinite detention on pedigree security grounds. If they’re innocent, let them prove it.
Never mind that in the right pedigree context those ancestors can have powerfully beneficial effects. Individual merit doesn’t count for much when a pedigree security interest is at stake.
According to eCompuSire, the online pedigree intelligence asset, six stakes winners worldwide are out of mares in descent of Graustark, Halo, and Nureyev within five generations. I’m afraid that’s not enough to establish their innocence. Even the most exculpatory evidence, such as a record of stakes production, readily turns against the perpetrators. Just watch.
The dam of Treasure (Anabaa ex Treasure Queen, by Kingmambo), winner of the Prix de la Vallee d’Auge in France, has Halo as the sire of her second dam, and she has Nureyev and Graustark by virtue of Kingmambo’s dam, Miesque.
The dam of Bottega (Mineshaft ex Sun Is Up, by Sunday Silence), winner of the Criterium du Languedoc in France, has Halo as the sire of Sunday Silence, and she has Nureyev and Graustark by virtue of her second dam, Miesque.
The dam of Sunday Sunrise (Lemon Drop Kid ex Sun Is Up [same dam as Bottega], by Sunday Silence), winner of the Veteran S. in New Mexico (must impose a travel ban), has Halo as the sire of Sunday Silence and has Nureyev and Graustark by virtue of her second dam, Miesque. Furthermore, Sunday Sunrise is by a son of Kingmambo, out of Miesque.
The dam of Indigo Cat (Storm Cat ex Bluemambo, by Kingmambo), winner of the Hampton Court S. in the UK, has Halo as the sire of her second dam and Nureyev and Graustark by virtue of Kingmambo’s dam, Miesque.
The dam of Air Zipangu (El Condor Pasa ex Air Passion, by Halo), winner of the Stayer S. in Japan, has Halo as her sire, Nureyev as her broodmare sire, and Graustark as the sire line of her second dam. Not incidentally, Air Zipangu is by a son of Kingmambo, whose dam is Miesque.
The dam of Link Man (Torreador ex Western Smoke, by Among Men), winner of the Gold Medallion (G1) and other group stakes in South Africa, is the only one among the dams of these six SWs whose contribution of Halo, Graustark, and Nureyev is not controlled in some fashion by Miesque–and in one case (Sunday Sunrise) inbreeding to Miesque. If you disqualify the five because they’re all mediated by one freakishly good broodmare, then what you have left is only one SW worldwide–a G1 winner, to be sure–to testify in defense of mares descending from all three of these ancestors.
By the way, eCompuSire is what you need when you haul an ancestor in for questioning. It’s the waterboard of enhanced pedigree interrogation techniques. See subscription details at the eNicks website–Products tab. Did I not mention that I have a personal stake in that product? Wouldn’t want to breach any ethical constraints.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Friday, March 18, 2011 at 4:38 am.
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.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Friday, March 11, 2011 at 6:55 am.
Measuring Ancestor Appeal
by Roger Lyons
Recent posts about Dixieland Band and Graustark preceded their broader context, which arrives as a table, titled “Ancestor Preferences of Major US Sires.” The table covers 164 ancestors and reflects, among other things, how well or poorly individual ancestors of broodmares are playing to the contemporary stallion population. Links to three different versions of the table are provided below.
The table is very simple once you catch on to the concept. To over-simplify, there’s about a 31% chance that a stallion whose name you pick out of a hat is going to react well with Storm Cat in the ancestry of a mare and only about a 9% chance of an unfavorable reaction. That leaves about 60% that do okay with Storm Cat, but not many breeders dream of results that are okay.
If your mare is by Storm Cat, the odds are not bad that you’ll draw a suitable stallion by chance, at least in that respect. However, if her dam happens to be by Halo, with which only 13% of the stallion population react favorably against the 22% that react unfavorably, it’s more complicated. Thus do questions of compatibility arise from the layers of a mare’s ancestry.
Clearly, the breeding of some mares renders them far more flexible as to the selection of a mate than other mares. Ideally, you would want a stallion to have high stike rates with a mare’s entire ancestry. Some mares may have a range of such options, but for other mares there’s no such stallion.
Anyway, for each ancestor, I surveyed 71 proven sires to determine, first, how many of them sired foals out of at least 10 mares in some descent of the subject ancestor. Second, the qualifying sires were divided into two groups: 1) those that, from mares in some descent of the subject ancestor, had strike rates significantly above their overall records and 2) those that had significantly lower strike rates with those mares.
Here’s the legend for the resulting table:
Ancestor–the subject ancestor as represented by broodmares.
Sires–the number of stallions (from among the 71) that sired 10 or more foals with mares representing the ancestor.
Approve–the number from the “Sires” group with significantly higher-than-average strike rates.
Approve%–the percentage of “Sires” with significantly higher-than-average strike rates.
Disapprove–the number from the “Sires” group with significantly lower-than-average strike rates.
Disapprove%–the percentage of “Sires” with significantly lower-than-average strike rates.
There are three versions of the table, one listing 164 ancestors by “Approve%” rank to show them in order of the frequency of high strike rates by the stallion sample; another listing them by “Disapprove%” rank to reflect the downside risk; and then an alphabetical listing so you can have fun looking them up individually.
Bear in mind, the survey includes only US sires. Danzig’s approval rating of only 14% and disapproval rating of 23% would be vastly different based on a survey of European or Australasian sires. Nevertheless, Danzig is a problem for a lot of US stallions.
I’ll comment further on this table in future posts, beginning with the reason why Native Dancer’s approval rating is the lowest in the list.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 7:04 am.
Graustark’s Hard Edge
by Roger Lyons
A rough measure of an ancestor’s relevance in the contemporary broodmare population can be taken from how well proven stallions, as a group, are doing with mares that descend from that ancestor. I mentioned this approach a couple of posts back in regard to the influence of Dixieland Band, and I’m driven back to it by the intriguing case of Warrior’s Reward (Medaglia D’Oro-For All You Do, by Seeking the Gold), winner of the 2010 Carter H. (G1) and now standing at Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky for $15,000, first foals eagerly anticipated in 2012.
Note that Warrior’s Reward’s third dam is by Graustark (1963 Ribot-Flower Bowl, by Alibhai), an ancestor whose influence was quite extreme a decade ago. We know this because back then an unusually large proportion of the stallion population had serious trouble with mares in some descent of Graustark. Since then, his effects have been tempered by generational distance. That’s evident in that only around 18% have serious problems now, as against the 16% whose records actually benefit from his influence.
He’s already gravitating toward the vanishing point that awaits him at the margin of effective pedigree space. Nevertheless, Graustark still has profound effects in many cases, and Warrior’s Reward is probably one of them. His dam is one of five with a superior runner by Medaglia D’oro from the 25 that produced a foal by him and had Graustark in their ancestries. Graustark is hard to process, but Medaglia D’Oro has the knack.
What’s interesting is that, although about 30% of Medaglia D’Oro’s SWs win stakes at two, three of the five whose dams have Graustark in their ancestries, including Warrior’s Reward, didn’t win a stakes until age four. That could have something to do with the size and bone mass associated with Graustark.
Despite the stallion population’s problem with processing Graustark, his full brother, His Majesty (1968), continues to enjoy the approval of about 30% of the stallion population, one of the highest among major ancestors, with only about 14% disapproval. That’s the reverse of where Graustark was a decade ago, and in that time His Majesty’s effect has shown no sign of abating, maybe because His Majesty’s stud career started six years after that of Graustark.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Wednesday, February 9, 2011 at 7:28 pm.
Ice Box and the Graustark Jinx
by Roger Lyons
Pulpit gets a superior runner out of about every 11th mare that produces at least one foal by him, which is not as good a strike rate as is expected of the very best stallions. This is due in great part to Pulpit’s extremely low strike rates with certain important ancestors of his mates. One of those is Graustark, which, by the way, is nemesis to a lot of stallions.
And the word “nemesis” is meant here to be understood in its mythic sense, fully loaded with as much determinism as it can carry. Maybe it takes an ancestor like Graustark to remind us that a horse’s pedigree is its fate. Graustark is one of those ancestors that asserts his influence routinely and persistently across multiple generational divides, despite ordinary inducements to variation. This can be inferred from the abysmal strike rates some stallions have with mares in descent of Graustark, including Pulpit.
Whatever traits are implicated must disagree profoundly with Pulpit’s idea about what his offspring should be like. Through his 2007 crop, he’s gone through 54 mares with Graustark in their ancestries, and Spice Island, the dam of Ice Box, is the only one of them that has managed to produce a superior runner by Pulpit. Spice Island is by Tabasco Cat, whose broodmare sire is Sauce Boat, by Key to the Mint, by Graustark. That’s how far Graustark’s influence has to descend in order to affect Ice Box adversely.
Spice Island’s ancestry is otherwise loaded with ancestors highly favorable to Pulpit. He has a strike rate of 7/43 with Tabasco Cat’s sire, Storm Cat. Ice Box’ second dam is by Alysheba, with whose sire, Alydar, Pulpit has the phenomenal strike rate of 10/43. With Speak John, sire of his third dam, Pulpit’s strike rate is 2/13. Moreover, the numbers in the background of those ancestors are so strong that, in spite of Graustark’s theoretically negative impact, Spice Island scores in the 96th percentile of mares that have produced foals by Pulpit, as determined by an aggregation of strike rates with all ancestors within six generations of each mare.
Graustark lurks in the shadows of ancestors that have had highly positive effects on Pulpit’s stud record. Therefore, whatever limitations Ice Box might have as a racehorse, especially insofar as they distinguish him from Pulpit’s more typical runners, are most likely attributable to Graustark’s influence. However, if it has anything to do with his distinctive closing style, it might actually be an advantage in a race like the Belmont.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 9:59 am.