What qualifies a Chef to become a Chef ?

[louis finochio]

What has a stallion to do to be crowned a Chef ?

I have checked the stats for the late stallion Pretense and I did not find his stats to be in chef territory.

[jagger]

Great question, Lou. I've been wondering that myself for some time. Also, what are the qualifiers for a Reines?

[madelyn]

I'm not at all sure what Steve Roman's requirements are for the chef designation.. but interestingly, I recently had correspondence with Ellen Parker regarding the reigne designation. I had inquired if Vale had been considered for reigne designation. Her response was that the family is quite stout, and looks pretty well peppered up, but until Rocking Trick (or another male descendant) "makes it" there is not a really good stallion under Vale. She was not impressed by Vacarme. She also said that South American blacktype is not considered at all, unless it is validated (equalled) with a performance in the US.

[parlo]

Well, let me try a start to answer this question, although chef-de-race seem to be much less considered in European breeding that in the US.

The honour “chef-de-race” was first given by Mr. Vuillier in the 1920ties, who found that most of the leading races-horses of that time had some typical ancestors - all of them but one (Pocahontas) were sires. He made these horses key-indicators of his dosage-system.

The Italian Franco Varola updated the list of names given by Vuillier in the late 1950ties and developed the “functional aptitude”categorisation of the ancestors as Brilliant – Intermediate – Classic – Solid – Professional as an expression of the (im-) balance of speed- and stamina-influences in a horse.

Steve Roman updated the lists of names given by his predecessors. As Vuillier and Varola gave their mark “chef-de-race” foremost intuitional, Roman says, he sampled his names by statistical research. A “chef-de-race” must not be a leading sire or the sire of many stakes-winners, but the sire must transmit a certain trait on the scale of the speed-stamina-aptitudes in such a dominant way, that you can’t imagine the contemporary breed without him.

I’ll give an example from German tb-breeding, although the sire mentioned (Big Shuffle) is not “officially” a chef-de-race-sire:

German tb-breeding is traditionally oriented to stamina and late-maturity. On contrary the imported sire Big Shuffle is a dominant source of precociousness and speed, but has almost no winning offsprings on distances beyond 9f. In our sprint-races up to 7f and in the 2yo-races you can often find more than 2 offsprings of Big Shuffle (last autumn we had a listed race over 7f with 7 of 14 runners by BS), but no one in races beyond 10f. So Big Shuffle would be a “brilliant” chef-de-race in the New Dosage-System by Steve Roman.

[LaTroienne]

http://www.chef-de-race.com/dosage/review.htm

Maybe this helps?

[louis finochio]

Thanks La T: That is what I was looking for, I have looked up the stallion Pretense and I would not have elevated Pretense to Chef status.

Pretense has stats far below the norm for those designated Chefs.