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.
Native Dancer at the Vanishing Point
by Roger Lyons
Native Dancer has reached a genetic vanishing point in the sense that his influence is so pervasive that his contribution can no longer be contrasted in any significant way with the mainstream of the population. This is evident from the table accompanying my last post, which shows that in no instance do the strike rates of US stallions with mares in some descent of Native Dancer exceed their overall records. That is, no “contemporary” US stallion has a statistically measurable preference for mares in descent of Native Dancer. Keep in mind, though, that it’s because the broodmare population is so largely defined by Native Dancer. It’s like the air they breathe.
Moreover, only two stallions–Diesis and Dixieland Band–(that the table rather loosely defines as contemporary) fall below their normal strike rates when crossed with mares in some descent of Native Dancer, and they are both deceased. They were bred quite differently from one another with respect to Native Dancer–Diesis, by Sharpen Up, by Atan, by Native Dancer, and Dixieland Band, by Northern Dancer, out of Natalma, by Native Dancer.
Reasons can no doubt be given for why they had trouble with mares in descent of Native Dancer, but the fact that they did so has always had more practical import than the reasons why. More interesting here is that their aversion to mares in descent of Native Dancer and their shared birth year of 1980 renders their stud records especially useful as measures of the proliferation of Native Dancer’s influence.
Consider what it could mean that both of these stallions had significantly higher strike rates with mares born prior to 1985 than with mares born after that year.
Dixieland Band got superior runners from 50 of 435 individual mares born prior to 1985, for 11.5%; but, of the 644 mares born after 1984, 51 produced superior runners by him, for only 7.9%. Furthermore, only 23 of the 396 mares born after 1989 produced superior runners by him, for only 5.8%. As Native Dancer’s influence spread throughout the later population cohorts, Dixieland Band’s strike rate with those mares declined. Of the 219 mares with Northern Dancer in their ancestries, only 10 produced a superior runner, and he was barely in range of his average with mares in descent of Mr. Prospector.
Diesis’ stud record reflects the same broad pattern. While 48 of 343 mares born prior to 1985 produced superior runners by him, or 14%, only 28 of 453 (6.2%) born after 1984 did so. Of the 277 mares born after 1989, only 10 (3.6%) produced superior runners by him. Diesis got a superior runner from only one of 64 mares with Mr. Prospector in their ancestries, and he was barely in range of his average with mares in descent of Northern Dancer.
With each successive broodmare population cohort, in which crosses of Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector assured a rapid accumulation of Native Dancer influence, the strike rates of Dixieland Band and Diesis declined. It seems warrantable to conclude that Native Dancer’s proliferation in the broodmare population had a more profound effect on their stud records than could possibly be attributed to a decline in viability due to increasing age.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 6:48 am.
Is Fly Down Up to the Belmont?
by Roger Lyons
When Frank Mitchell wrote about the classic breeding of Devil May Care here, I thought I might be in big trouble. I had already taken the position here that, while you can never rule out the possibility that a runner might be exceptional to its breeding, Devil May Care is not really bred to get the Derby distance.
The main problem is that she’s inbred 3×4 to Mr. Prospector. That’s a reasonable generational distance, but it still tags a runner as specialized for best efforts at distances of less than nine furlongs. That’s a norm that, like all norms, admits of exceptions, depending on other pedigree factors, such as the sire, the family, etc., and Devil May Care had already won the Bonnie Miss S. (G2) at nine furlongs. Still, . . . .
It’s now clear that Frank has a different view of close inbreeding to Mr. Prospector than I do because he’s just written here about how Fly Down’s (Mineshaft-Queen Randi, by Fly So Free) breeding puts the Belmont S. “well within his range.” Frank, once again, I must beg to differ.
Mineshaft has had 12 stakes winners, including Fly Down, that count when assessing his capability as a sire in matters pedigree. Five of those stakes winners have been inbred 3×4 to Mr. Prospector. It’s true that Cool Coal Man won both the Fountain of Youth S. (G2) and the Albert the Great S. at nine furlongs, but none of the other four have broken the 8.5-furlong barrier, and three of them never won a stakes beyond a mile.
Fly Down is Mineshaft’s sixth Mr. Prospector-inbred stakes winner, but not at 3×4. He has the added disadvantage, at least with respect to distance limitations, of being inbred 3×3, which is a huge difference.
Inbreeding and linebreeding, depending on the intensity, mean specialization around the capacities inherited from those repeated ancestors and their descendents. The increasing specialization in the population since the middle of the 20th century has almost certainly been a result of the increasing accumulation of linebreeding. Yes, some of this specialization favors the classic horse, but most of it does not.
So, Frank, if Fly Down wins the Belmont, I’ll take my hat off to you, but I won’t eat it because I remember all too well watching Volponi, another Mr. Prospector inbred, run away with the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 12:26 pm.
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