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.
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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