Super Saver: a Minority Report
by Roger Lyons
In a recent post on the breeding behind Super Saver, Sid Fernando sets in relief three differing approaches to identifying pedigree factors that account for that horse’s ability to win the Kentucky Derby, including my own. Nobody does the historical color as well as Frank Mitchell, but, clearly, Alan Porter’s analysis, as endorsed by Andrew Caulfield in his TDN column of May 4, is at odds with my account in regard to the factors that it emphasizes.
I realize that Andrew’s analysis has the advantage of being the standard account. Its topical structure defines the prevailing pedigree analysis, including its center-stage placement of linebreeding as the main actor. Therefore, I offer my rebuttal as a minority report.
Linebreeding certainly does have a functional relation to performance, but I emphatically disagree with the presumption that its effects must be favorable, much less decisively so, just because it happens to be found in the ancestry of a Kentucky Derby winner. To take Super Saver’s performance as evidence of the benefits of linebreeding simply begs the question of its effects and, more broadly, of its functional relation to performance. Unless the standard account can establish a statistical relation between Super Saver’s linebreeding and his performance, then its analysis might as well be founded on a non sequitur, and I believe it is.
As Sid points out, Super Saver’s family began with “a simple nick between a La Troienne daughter (Baby League) and War Admiral.” The family continued to evolve on that same basis, each daughter having had her best production by the best stallion that afforded the best simple nick. The accumulating linebreeding, involving multiple strains of La Troienne, therefore, was a systematic consequence of that series of simple nicks. More broadly, linebreeding is a systematic consequence of the pedigree model of breeding. It’s not a formula for breeding great racehorses. Rather, it’s an inevitable consequence of the process.
So, is linebreeding a cause of superior performance or just an effect of pedigree breeding? The latter is evident from the genealogical record, but inferring a causal relation to performance requires populational evidence that not even the cheerleaders for linebreeding are able to provide.
Well, then, what can be inferred about it? We know what the effect of linebreeding is in a broad sense. Its purpose and effect is to establish a generational continuity between a new individual and its ancestry. The more linebreeding a pedigree has, the more likely is the individual representing that pedigree to express the traits conferred by ancestors to which it is linebred. But, if linebreeding is so effective at reproducing the traits that constitute a great racehorse, why is it that so many horses with linebreeding similar to that of Super Saver in distant generations are just no good?
I firmly believe that the prevailing pedigree analysis–the standard account of pedigree–misunderstands the way in which linebreeding is functionally related to performance. Let me explain by analogy.
A good melody consists of two fundamental elements that oppose one another at every musical level. In order to be recognizable as such, a melody must have continuity. It must have a certain repetitive rhythm. If sung, the words must rhyme. A refrain is very much a part of what we expect of a melody along this direction of its movement. However, the continuity of good melodies is subverted at every point and at every compositional level by the element of variation moving in the opposite direction. Each measure of a melody must be continuous with the last, but different from it. The lyrics rhyme by repeating the same sound, but enunciated in different words. The refrain interrupts and contrasts with the sequence of verses. A good melody arises from the tension between continuity and variation, the latter always playing a subversive role.
Breeding a good racehorse is just like that. Linebreeding mediates generational continuity. Its function is to specialize the new individual around qualities that are conferred by the ancestors to which it is linebred. At its best, it yields a physically coherent individual. However, the new individual must also be capable of a well-rounded performance. It must have the variety of typological possibility required by the prevailing conditions of racing. That’s the job of generational variation, which operates in opposition to linebreeding.
In the same way that musical variation subverts continuity in the making of a good melody, generational variation subverts the continuity established by linebreeding. This fundamental opposition between linebreeding and generational variation is what the advocates of linebreeding don’t get.
According to the numbers I have for Maria’s Mon as a sire (and other stallions as well), A.P. Indy, Supercharger’s sire, has just such a subversive relation to his own linebreeding to La Troienne. After all, Maria’s Mon hasn’t otherwise done that well with Buckpasser (10 superior runners from 156 mares through his 2007 crop, counting the three through A.P. Indy). If you take out the seven mares in descent of A.P. Indy, then Buckpasser’s strike rate falls to 7/149.
Nor has Maria’s Mon done all that well with mares in descent of Seattle Slew, another important source of La Troienne. If you take A.P. Indy out of Maria’s Mon’s strike rate of 5/46 with Seattle Slew, it drops to 2/39. In fact, all but one of those five superior runners were out of mares with Seattle Slew in tail-male descent. But, if you exclude A.P. Indy mares, the strike rate with Seattle Slew in tail-male descent is only 1/19. So, read very carefully how the standard account gets its numbers relating to the Maria’s Mon-Seattle Slew “nick,” including that restricted stakes winner thrown in for good measure, because there’s much at stake in it for the linebreeding hypothesis.
My numbers, by contrast, don’t suggest broadly favorable effects of linebreeing to La Troienne through the ancestors of A.P. Indy. What they suggest is that A.P. Indy’s influence very favorably disrupts effects of linebreeding that are otherwise not at all favorable to foals by Maria’s Mon. A.P. Indy provides a beneficial variation that combines with Maria’s Mon to yield a simple nick.
It’s quite possible, too, that Numbered Account, a key source of La Troienne also tends to subvert the La Troienne continuity. Maria’s Mon has a strike rate of 1/3 with daughters of Numbered Account through his 2007 crop, but her dam, Intriguing, otherwise has a strike rate of only 2/23. Maria’s Mon happens to work with Numbered Account, as far as can be determined, but not so much with her sire, Buckpasser, or with her dam.
As a matter of fact, the ancestors of Supercharger that have had the most favorable impact for Maria’s Mon through daughters have nothing whatever to do with La Troienne or with A.P. Indy. Maria’s Mon has a strike rate of 7/50 with daughters of Mr. Prospector, sire of Super Saver’s second dam. With daughters of Northern Dancer, sire of Super Saver’s third dam, Maria’s Mon has a strike rate of 5/34. These numbers, far from confirming that Super Saver’s performance is an effect of linebreeding, clearly suggest that it’s more likely an effect of generational variation. The influence of these important sires interdicts a linebreeding continuity that otherwise really hasn’t worked for Maria’s Mon.
In one pedigree after another, ranging across many different sires, the numbers say linebreeding is not the decisive factor. In fact, the numbers point to the ways in which atypical or variant strains subvert the effects of linebreeding. Such evidence trends toward the inference that Super Saver’s ability to win the Kentucky Derby is decisively affected, not by his linebreeding, but by the various directions in which his ancestry has deviated from its linebreeding to constitute a well-rounded individual–a horse with the speed, stamina, stoutness, and physical courage not only to withstand the rigors of training for that race, but also to win it.
We live in an era during which linebreeding has become ubiquitous in the population. All of the horses are linebred, and the functional relation of linebreeding to racing performance has already been taken too far. It’s too late to turn to the standard account for celebrations of linebreeding. In such an era, the successful breeder is the one who can identify useful variations with which to restore the residual aptitudes, the one who understands that linebreeding is the problem, not the solution.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Friday, May 7, 2010 at 12:21 pm.
Linebreeding as a Visual Gimmick
by Roger Lyons
And did I mention that pedigree interpretation that focuses on linebreeding is so boring? I won’t go so far as to say it’s gibberish, but, if it’s not, it’s the last thing you pass through before you get there. In any event, it’s fair to say the written word is not the linebreeder’s best friend. It won’t come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog (if there are any) that I have a theory about that, too.
The focus on linebreeding is part of a broad cognitive shift in human culture, which started off by way of oral tradition. Speaking and listening need no special incentives because they are both pleasurable in themselves. Then, with the rise of literacy, the transmission of culture began to take on a visual orientation organized at first by the printed page. In the course of the last century, with the rise of commercial culture, Western cognitive capacity has morphed into full-blown pictorial mode.
Understanding linebreeding is cognitively impossible unless it’s understood in pictorial form. It’s completely dependent on the visual orientation, and that’s why written descriptions of it are nearly incomprehensible.
You can say that the linebreeding consultants–you know who they are–actually throw back to oral culture because the essence of their discipline is to memorize thoroughbred ancestry in comprehensive detail going back to the origins of the stud book, kind of like tribal story tellers; but I would argue strenuously that what stands between their memories and the writing of their pedigree interpretations is a mental image they have drawn, complete with duplicated names in bold-face type. And that’s assuming they don’t actually have the pedigree printouts in front of them as they write. Their prime literary problem is to get you to look through those words to see what they see.
The current focus on linebreeding, in that sense, is a product of the visual orientation that has been gradually taking over human cognitive capacity since the origins of capitalism in the 15th century. The appeal of the visual orientation is strong because, as every advertising professional knows, pictures sell. It’s because the eye is the least intellectually discriminating of all our organs of sense. Thus, the persuasive appeal of those computer printouts of extended ancestries, their typographic features all pointing to linebreeding.
It’s a good thing for linebreeding that a picture is worth a thousand words. It doesn’t have to make sense because you can “see” the meaning in it. If you don’t instantly get the picture, then those tedious pedigree interpretations will eventually sink in by way of endless repetition of the stock topics of linebreeding–Domino-Macaroni, Nasrullah-Princequillo, Tweedledee-Tweedledum, etc., etc.
But, as I’ve tried in other ways to explain, those typographic features, taken together, constitute a grand illusion, the mirage of a winner’s circle always just out of reach. Linebreeding is now a pervasive feature of the thoroughbred population. Selling linebreeding is nothing more than selling thoroughbred pedigree–in its most generic sense–by another name. Not even the linebreeding consultants realize it’s just a visual gimmick because they don’t bother to notice that the bad runners are bred in the same image as the good ones. The difference can’t be reduced to a full-page ad for pedigree, any more than a picture can be transcribed into a thousand words.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 7:46 am.
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Pedigree Profile: American Lion
by Roger Lyons
American Lion doesn’t have linebreeding that is intense enough for full compliance with the rules of pedigree correctness (that’s PC for short), but what he has will no doubt satisfy the linebreeding pedigree consultants until the preferred kind comes along. Tiznow’s sire, Cee’s Tizzy, is bred In Reality over Northern Dancer, so, in the vernacular, he’s a “close genetic relative” of American Lion’s dam, Storm Tide. Yes, she has Northern Dancer on one side of her ancestry and In Reality on the other, but, really, it’s not that close. I mean, In Reality is the paternal great-grandsire of her second dam. That’s getting a bit fast and loose with the concept of linebreeding if you ask me.
Besides, Storm Tide’s breeding is a cross of two ancestors that contribute very favorably to Tiznow’s foals–no, not Northern Dancer and In Reality. His numbers with both those ancestors are really quite moderate, as are his numbers with Mr. Prospector. It’s understandable. Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector are both represented by a wide range of descendents. You don’t expect any stallion to work well enough with all of them that he would have a good strike rate on an aggregate basis.
What Tiznow likes in Storm Tide’s ancestry is her sire Storm Cat and her broodmare sire Carson City–and, even more to the point of what’s working for American Lion, the combination of the two. Largely by virtue of that cross, Storm Tide scores at the 99th percentile of mares that have produced foals by Tiznow through 2006, as to how well her ancestry matches what he likes in a mare. Never mind the linebreeding. That’s a red herring.
Through his 2006 crop Tiznow has sired superior runners out of four of his 18 mates with Storm Cat in their ancestries (not counting Storm Tide). Those include dual-G1 winner Folklore, dual-G2 winner Informed, G2 winner Tiz Wonderful, and listed stakes winner Tiz Now Tiz Then, the last of these being the only one whose dam did not have Storm Cat in direct male descent. This looks like a simple nick between Tiznow and Storm Cat.
He’s also sired superior runners out of two of five mates that had Carson City in their ancestries. Those two were G1 winner Bullsbay, out of a mare by Carson City’s son, Lord Carson, and listed stakes winner Lady Chace, out of a mare by Carson City. This looks like a simple nick between Tiznow and Carson City.
It’s not incidental, though, that these two simple nicks add up to some seriously potent speed. The numbers suggest, in fact, that Storm Tide’s cross might be an extreme expression of a broader pedigree context involving Storm Cat and other strains of Mr. Prospector. It happens that the dams of Folklore and Tiz Wonderful are both bred Storm Cat line over Mr. Prospector line, the same broad sire-line cross as the dam of American Lion. Tiz Now Tiz Then is out of a mare by Seeking the Gold, and his second dam is by Storm Cat. Thus, even though Tiznow’s numbers with Mr. Prospector generally are only average, from nine mates of Tiznow bred from crosses of Storm Cat and Mr. Prospector, three produced superior runners by him, not counting American Lion. Speed is the common denominator of that sire-line combination. Note, too that Tiz Wonderful is out of a mare by Hennessy, an especially speed-oriented strain of Storm Cat.
I’m not going to keep up the pretense that In Reality doesn’t figure in this at all. After all, Folklore’s third dam is by In Reality, which almost certainly contributes to the speed delivered by Folklore’s dam. That’s far from saying, though, that, as a function of linebreeding, it invokes an abstruse blood affinity. It’s just a very effective method of inbreeding that very effectively reinforces speed. This is further supported by G2 winners Bear Now and Tizfiz, two of Tiznow’s four superior runners with In Reality in their ancestries. Both are out of mares whose dams are by speed influence Crafty Prospector, whose broodmare sire is In Reality.
I have a theory about Tiznow, which might be wrong, and, if it is, somebody who knows better should correct me on it. The reason why so many of the Tiznows–American Lion, for example– like to be on the front, or close to it, is not that Tiznow is a natural sire of speed. If that were the case, he would get some sprinters. His value lies elsewhere. The key is that his big horses get their speed from their dams, and Tiznow’s job, which he does extremely well, is to carry that speed farther than you’d otherwise expect it to go. That’s why American Lion is one horse that’s not going to stop in deep stretch at Churchill Downs on Saturday.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 7:18 am.
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All the Horses are Linebred
by Roger Lyons
Now I’ve heard everything. I didn’t get this at some obscure website specializing in pedigree correctness (PC for short, please) that hardly anybody reads. No, it came from none other than a Blood-Horse pedigree column, a publication that–well, obviously, I still read it.
It goes like this. The reason why La Troienne is such an important influence is that her sire, Teddy, traces four generations back to Ormonde, and her second dam, Lady of Pedigree, is by a sire whose second dam is Ornament, a full sister to Ormonde. In other words, she’s linebred through full siblings. That’s around the twelfth generation of contemporary horses, and, when mares with La Troienne are crossed with stallions whose pedigrees contain these two ancestors, we’re told, the foals will light up the tote boards.
Yes, good horses all have linebreeding within 12 generations, but so do all of the bad horses. The reason they’re all linebred is that they are all products of pedigree. You carve out a population of horses, define a range of performance that favors those horses, close the book around their ancestries, and call it pedigree. Then, 200 years later all of the descendents of those horses are linebred, especially as defined in broad strokes by its advocates.
Besides its role in signifying commercial value, pedigree is a set of rules enforced by the Jockey Club, and ubiquitous linebreeding is an historical consequence of the enforcement of those rules. The advocates of linebreeding conclude that it facilitates the breeding of good horses, but that is generally not what rules are about. Rather, rules pose a challenge to the playing of the game.
Suppose there were no rule in the game of basketball that says you have to dribble the ball, that you can’t just tuck it under your arm and saunter down court. Basketball would be much more boring and tedious than it is. The rules are meant to challenge the players, to make the game harder to play and more interesting to watch.
That’s exactly what linebreeding is in today’s thoroughbred racing and breeding environment. Racing and breeding without linebreeding would be like golf without the rough, sand traps, and water hazards. It would be like tennis without a net, like basketball without dribbling. Linebreeding and those pedigree patterns that are trotted out ad nauseum are the rough, sand traps, and water hazards of thoroughbred breeding.
If those distant ancestors of La Troienne were the key to Distorted Humor’s response to certain of her strains, then he would have a similar response to any expression of La Troienne’s influence. As I showed in a previous post, however, that is not the case. It’s not about some distant blood affinity. It’s about the variety of ways in which different descendents of La Troienne express her influence in regard to specific traits. By way of generational variation, some of those descendents contribute La Troienne’s influence in ways that are favorable to foals by Distorted Humor. Others contribute it in ways that are unfavorable to his foals, and those same ancestors interact with other stallions differently.
Any specific method of linebreeding will have harmful effects in a lot of pedigree contexts. Those who look at the twelfth generation and assume that everything they find there has some absolute value never notice the problems that have sprung up along the way, such as the negative effect mares in descent of Better Self (by Bimelech, a son of La Troienne) have on Distorted Humor’s foals, which I pointed out previously. Above all, no method of linebreeding has value in and of itself. Whether a method is beneficial or harmful depends on its pedigree context.
Jack Werk’s clients valued his advice so highly because he understood what so many pedigree consultants don’t get–to the extent that rules are in force, the onus is on making moves in the game. The hard part is to hit the jump shot off the dribble, to come up with a Lookin at Lucky amid the hazards of linebreeding.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:56 am.
What Linebreeding Really Is
by Roger Lyons
Most people think of inbreeding and linebreeding as two different things–inbreeding as a duplication of ancestors within four generations and linebreeding as a duplication of ancestors outside of that generational distance. Consequently, inbreeding is considered more intense than linebreeding because it involves less generational distance from the new individual.
What geneticists mean by linebreeding, however, has nothing to do with generational distance, and I know Blood-Horse pedigree columnist Les Brinsfield will back me up on this. It’s formed by the cross of two or more ancestors that share relatives on both sides of their ancestries. It’s what’s sometimes called crossing close genetic relatives. The generational distance of these ancestors from the new individual is irrelevant. The most intense form of linebreeding, in fact, consists in breeding a mare to her full brother. Clearly, linebreeding is a specialized form of inbreeding.
Well, then, if that’s what linebreeding really is, why is it that you can go to commercial breeding sites all over the internet and find it defined incorrectly–as a function of generational distance?
First, it’s important to understand that pedigree has no place in the science of inheritance. It has nothing whatever to do with genetics or its terminology. It was created out of whole cloth in the middle of the industrial revolution as part of an institutional structure for the new pure-breeding model. This was a time, don’t forget, when naturalists all over Europe, including Charles Darwin well into the 19th century, were preoccupied with exploring the biological frontiers of hybrid breeding–of crossing different varieties.
Besides wanting to see how weird a pigeon could look, they were interested in where to draw the lines between species. They had spirited debates in the Royal Academy about whether species difference should be inferred from the infertility of offspring, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, the inability of manifestly differing parents to reproduce at all. Hybrid breeding of English racehorses had been the dominant approach earlier in the 18th century, but the new pedigree breeding was at best tangential to prevailing, early 19th-century scientific interest.
At mid-century when Darwin was focused on how species adapt to their environments, the English Jockey Club had its hands full trying to adapt the racing environment to unanticipated changes in the population of pedigreed horses–and in such a way as to sustain the pretense that the horses were actually getting better in some absolute sense. Meanwhile, successive generations of horsemen since the first half of the 19th century have complained that the horses are not what they used to be, and they’ve been right all along.
Historically, the emergence of pedigree is understandable only from the standpoint of its commercial utility. Its form of development has been oriented, first and foremost, toward limiting the size and regulating the commercial value of living populations. The changing conditions of racing that at any given time reflect the thoroughbred population’s capacity for performance, the forms of genetic representation, typographical conventions, statistical formulations, cataloguing styles, pedigree analysis, and the terminology in which thoroughbred horses are discussed all comprise the system of signifying practices we call pedigree.
What does it all signify? It very convincingly signifies commercial value even if it’s not that good at predicting performance.
The new sense of pedigree, as represented by the English Stud Book, had much to do with the emerging industrial values of efficiency and scale, but it was also a form of commercial packaging. For the most part, science is welcomed to the party only at times when commerce has run so far afoul of biology that something needs to be fixed.
It’s not surprising, then, that linebreeding would be understood one way in a system of practices whose purpose is to represent its measurable effects and quite another way in a system whose purpose is to invest it with commercial value. Accordingly, linebreeding is a salient technique in the packaging of pedigree. Because inbreeding has a bad name in the world at large, commercial breeders, whether of dogs, cattle, whatever, don’t want to say the animals they’re selling are inbred. Instead, they say their animals are linebred, and they’re careful to make sure the breeding fits the definition that’s been especially adapted to the commercial interest in pedigree. It’s really just inbreeding packaged to sell.
To their credit, thoroughbred breeders are not so squeamish about inbreeding, but the commercial motives underlying pedigree so forcefully distort language and sense that the perception of linebreeding as a specialized–and often more intense–form of inbreeding has been almost hopelessly suppressed.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Saturday, April 17, 2010 at 11:00 am.
Pedigree Profile: Lookin at Lucky
by Roger Lyons
Lookin at Lucky (Smart Strike–Private Feeling, by Belong to Me) is out of a mare whose genealogical profile as a mate for Smart Strike currently ranks her at the 96th percentile among mares that have produced foals by him through his 2006 crop. This percentile rank is based on an aggregation of Smart Strike’s rate of production of superior runners from mares representing individual ancestors of the subject mare–in this case, Private Feeling. Basically, the purpose of the profile is to measure how well the ancestry of the subject mare matches up with Smart Strike based on the preferences he has shown. If a given ancestor has proven significantly favorable to Smart Strike relative to opportunity, it contributes positively to the aggregate profile and percentile rank. An ancestor that has proven significantly unfavorable negatively affects the profile and percentile rank.
No knowledgeable observer would be surprised that a stallion by Mr. Prospector would have a relatively low strike rate with mares contributing Raise a Native. The redeeming factor for Smart Strike is that his strike rate with mares contributing Northern Dancer has generally been slightly above average. It happens , though, that Smart Strike has an exceptionally favorable response to Private Feeling’s specific expression of these two important ancestors.
Her sire, Belong to Me, is bred from a Danzig (Northern Dancer)–Exclusive Native (Raise a Native) sire-line cross. Through his 2006 crop Smart Strike has sired foals out of four mares by Belong to Me, and two of those mares produced superior runners by him, including Papa Clem, winner of the Arkansas Derby (G2) and San Fernando S. (G2), and Striking Tomisue, winner of the Wayward Lass S. Lookin at Lucky’s dam is Smart Strike’s third mate by Belong to Me to produce a superior runner by him. In short, it’s a nick.
When Werk Thoroughbred Consultants first recommended this mating, however, the Smart Strike–Belong to Me nick was not yet established. Get that story here.
As is typical of a broodmare sire that crosses well with a particular stallion, Smart Strike’s numbers with ancestors in the background of Belong to Me are very solid. Through male strains of Danzig, he has a strike rate of 6/45 through 2006 and has three additional superior runners from his 2007 crop, including Lookin at Lucky, of course; On Verra, runner up in last year’s Prix Marcel Boussac (G1); and Zanzibari, winner of last year’s Prix de Cabourg. Smart Strike’s overall record with Danzig, including female strains, is reflected in his strike rate of 11/76 with Pas de Nom, notable predominantly as the dam of Danzig. He is 9/79 with Hail to Reason, sire of Belong to Me’s second dam, through female strains and has a strike rate of 3/12 with No Fiddling, Belong to Me’s third dam.
Smart Strike’s record with the ancestry of Lookin at Lucky’s second dam, Regal Feeling (Clever Trick–Sharp Belle, by Native Charger) is not nearly as conclusive, mainly for lack of opportunity. He’s had opportunity with only seven mares with Clever Trick through female strains and no superior runners to show for it, other than Lookin at Lucky. However, the background numbers suggest potential, given more opportunity. With Clever Trick’s sire, Icecapade, he’s 2/20 and with Native Charger 1/6, which is good enough.
One peculiarity of Private Feeling’s ancestry is that she’s inbred to Northern Dancer 3×4 through a male strain (Danzig) and a female strain (Sleek Dancer, Private Feeling’s third dam). Some pedigree analysts regard inbreeding through sex-opposite strains as an absolute pedigree value, but the numbers show that many stallions respond differently to male and female strains of certain ancestors, including Northern Dancer. It happens that Smart Strike has the fairly good strike rate of 4/24 with female strains, but only an average 46/384 with male strains. Accordingly, with mares inbred to Northern Dancer through mixed-sex strains his strike rate is only 1/17, not counting Lookin at Lucky or any of the opportunity in his 2007 crop. For Smart Strike, sex-opposite strains of Northern Dancer generally collide with one another, but not in this case.
He has a strike rate of 6/46 with mares inbred to Northern Dancer through all-male strains, but that’s deceptive because in all six cases Danzig was one of the strains. So, on the whole, Private Feeling’s Northern Dancer influence can be deemed highly favorable to Smart Strike only because of Northern Dancer’s descent through Danzig and a female strain. It’s not because they’re sex-opposite strains. It’s because, despite his preference for female strains, he just happens to like Danzig especially well.
Another issue is that Private Feeling has five strains of Native Dancer within six generations, two through males (Raise a Native and Native Charger) and three through females (Natalma, the dam of Northern Dancer in two cases and Shenanigans, the dam of Icecapade in one case). As in the case of Northern Dancer, Smart Strike responds differently to Native Dancer depending on the sex of the strains. With female strains of Native Dancer he has the significantly favorable response of 47/359, and, remember, Private Feeling has three female strains. This makes sense in that Northern Dancer confers a female strain of Native Dancer while Raise a Native confers a male strain. Accordingly, with male strains Smart Strike has a strike rate of only 7/128. Of course, in Private Feeling’s case this response is conditioned by Native Dancer’s descent through male strains to which Smark Strike has proven amenable. So, overall, Private Feeling’s Native Dancer load leans very heavily in Smart Strike’s favor.
I should add, too, that the breeding of Belong to Me’s dam, Belonging, broadly reflects Smart Strike’s Raise a Native–Turn-to sire-line cross and, therefore, constitutes a linebreeding pattern. Smart Strike’s strike rate with mares that return to him that pattern, including all its possible forms, is 5/65, just a bit below his average, not bad at all. There can be no doubt that linebreeding can serve to mediate type, but, among superior runners, the numbers only very rarely warrant a pedigree interpretation that casts it as a decisive factor. At best, linebreeding has only limited functional relevance in Lookin at Lucky’s pedigree context.
The linebreeding of Lookin at Lucky is one thing, but the linebreeding of his dam, with her build-up of Native Dancer, is quite another. Much of that is favorable to Smart Strike, but mainly because of the specific ancestors through which it is expressed. In no way could a build-up of Native Dancer in the ancestry of a mare otherwise be taken as an encouraging factor for Smart Strike. It all depends on how that build-up is expressed, and Smart Strike is extremely particular about that. Private Feeling’s distinctive expression happens to suit Smart Strike especially well, but there are lots of ways it would go wrong for most other stallions.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:06 am.
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