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.
Pedigree Profile: Super Saver
by Roger Lyons
Super Saver is not the first runner his dam, Supercharger, has had by Maria’s Mon. There was a 2003 gelding named Hedge Fund that ran 48 times, won four races, was second 13 times, and was third four times. He won just over $144,000–a useful runner, effective only as a sprinter.
My point in mentioning Hedge Fund is this. My statistical profiles at this time of year take into account the dams of foals by a stallion through last year’s three-year-old crop (2006). I add the dams of current-year three-year-olds as a group around mid-year because by then many of the offspring have had a chance to race. However, Super Saver’s dam is included as the producer of a superior runner even though Super Saver is a current three-year-old. That’s because Supercharger is represented by a runner born prior to 2007.
Super Saver’s dam takes Maria’s Mon to a record of 2/4 with A.P. Indy mares. Forget about how many foals there were. It’s the number of mares that matters. No matter how many foals a mare produced by Maria’s Mon, the question is whether or not at least one of them was a superior runner, and Super Saver certainly is. The other A.P. Indy mare that produced a superior runner by Maria’s Mon is Flirtatious, dam of Wait a While, which won three G1 stakes and five G2 stakes. You could safely say it’s the nick.
You could say it’s linebreeding involving the genetic relationships organized by Raise a Native and Buckpasser, but not as safely. Maria’s Mon’s sire is by Wavering Monarch, bred on a Raise a Native-Buckpasser cross. Supercharger is inbred to Buckpasser and is out of a mare by Mr. Prospector. That’s definitely linebreeding, but the numbers say Maria’s Mon is only 5/66 with mares that cross Raise a Native and Buckpasser, and that is just average for Maria’s Mon.
Besides, Maria’s Mon’s numbers with both Raise a Native (16/256 through males) and Buckpasser (7/97 through females) lack lustre. He does much better with Northern Dancer through females, at 5/27, and Supercharger’s second dam is by Northern Dancer. That could be an important factor, but it doesn’t point to the linebreeding.
On that basis, Supercharger ranks at the 93rd percentile of mares that had foals by Maria’s Mon through his 2006 crop, as determined by a formula that evaluates strike rates with the individual mares’ ancestors. Indpendently of the Buckpasser thing, it’s a good profile. But there is also a blip in the numbers relating to the position of Buckpasser as the sire of her third dam, Numbered Account.
Maria’s Mon sired foals out of nine Buckpasser-line mares, and not a single one produced a superior runner. and the same goes for the 13 mares whose dams were from Buckpasser line. However, two of the ten mares whose second dams were by Buckpasser mares produced superior runners–that is, foals inbred to Buckpasser 4×4 through their third dams, including Latent Heat, winner of the Malibu S (G1). Then there is Supercharger herself, which is one of eight mares that produced foals inbred to Buckpasser 4×5 through their fourth dams, including Super Saver. These two positions of Buckpasser as a sire in the female line have a combined strike rate of 3/18 for Maria’s Mon, against a strike rate of 5/103 in all other positions combined (including the multiple occurrences through mares inbred to Buckpasser, as in the case of Supercharger).
For Maria’s Mon, no other placement of Buckpasser in the ancestry of his mates comes close to this, and overall Buckpasser has a strike rate at the low end of Maria’s Mon’s average. Nevertheless, the numbers suggest Buckpasser could be a highly favorable factor for Maria’s Mon as the sire of the third or fourth dam of a mare. In fact, both Super Saver and his dam are inbred to Buckpasser through their female line.
Sometimes it’s the nick. Often it’s an ancestor with no special genetic relation to the sire. Sometimes it’s a very discretely defined method of inbreeding. Sometimes it’s even linebreeding, but, frankly, not very often.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Sunday, April 25, 2010 at 9:24 am.