Pedigree Query

Our group is discussing which sires to use this year. Some saw Mr Sekiguchi in person, and think he is worth a shot at $5,000.

My initial response, coming from a handicapping background I suppose, was "NO!" The guy was a dud on the track, unsound, cheap speed, no stamina, and on and on.

They disagreed, feeling that his race career was cut short by an flukey injury, not unsoundness. I just can't imagine a horse being sound, no matter what someone paid for him, and only racing twice as a three year old twice and twice as a four year old. To me that screams the horse had some serious issues.

I started to make the argument that there have not been any successful sires who didn't have black type. But then I realized I didn't really know if that was true or not. I think I came to that conclusion from a conversation I had with one of the Ashford stud employees.

I was at Ashford shortly after The Green Monkey had made I think his second start, and it was becoming obvious he was no world beater. I asked the lad if he thought The Green Monkey would just be retired to stud rather than continue to try to race. The lad told me that unless The Green Monkey somehow managed to get some black type, there was no way he would become a stud. "Horses without black type just don't make good sires."

I know there may be exceptions with unraced horses. But once a horse shows he can't withstand training, or is just plain slow, or has no natural talent, I would think using him as sire, regardless of his pedigree, would be risky.

The reason some in the group would like to use him this year, with more than one mare, is because they are quite sure his stud fee will sky-rocket in the next few years, and this would be our only chance to afford him. I just don't see that happening.

So my question is whether or not there have been any sires that had no black type, but did go on to be great sires commanding huge fees.

And feel free to comment on what you think of Mr Sekiguchi, pro or con. I am pretty sure I am going to lose this battle, but I might like info for one last stand. Or perhaps I can become convinced that giving him a shot isn't such a bad idea.

And for what it is worth, the mares we might use with him do match up well, but with his pedigree, I think many mares would match up well on paper. These mares look to be worth using a sire in the $5,000-$7,500 price range. They have previously been bred to; Golden Gear, Cactus Ridge, and Van Nistelrooy, for one, the other; Slew City Slew, Black Minnaloushe, Van Nistelrooy and Aluvial ( I was also against Aluvial since he was unraced, but lost that one too.)

Thanks for any input you may have.

winningcolors1988 wrote:So my question is whether or not there have been any sires that had no black type, but did go on to be great sires commanding huge fees.

Danzig retired without blacktype. Vice Regent retired without blacktype, and he was a tremendous sire in Canada.

What are your goals? Do you race in a regional market or plan on selling the foal?
I do not agree with your statement that good sires all have black type. I am more concerned with the female side of the stallions pedigree and prefer great bottoms in the stallions pedigree. I also believe very strongly in biomechanics and think that conformational matches are highly important in a mating. Certain stallions will produce a higher probability of great foals because their genes produce a tighter concentration of exceptional physical attributes in their foal crops. These stallions--when introduced to a mare pool that matches his type well----will produce outstanding results. It is never just the stallion---successful matings also rely heavily on the mares the stallion has covered.
I would look at Distorted Humor as an example of a stallion that throws many exceptional foals. I have said for many years on this forum that he is a unbelievable stallion and he is close to fulfilling my predictions. In two more years he will be the top stallion in the world. I believe one of the reasons he is so exceptional is because he throws a very high concentration of exceptional phenotypes(as well as genotypes I would guess) and because he suits the genotypes of the generic mares he is covering so well---he outperforms other stallions with those same mares. Because he improves his mares so consistently it makes him an outstanding sire. The biomechanics of his foals are generally far superior to foals from other stallions. That is one reason I think the female family is so important---generally the great female families throw exceptional genotypes/phenotypes which greatly improves these mares chance of success. The results of the breeding equation are far more important to me than the race record of the stallion. Farms that tell you otherwise are drinking their own Kool Aid. By the way---what would you expect them to tell you----look at their stallion rosters!
I always look for stallions that outperform their mares, regardless of the black type they earned------I want a stallion that generally improves all of his mares---as my mares are not of the highest quality. I can't afford the top end of the market.
I would advise you to define your goals, then find the best stallion in your plan that meets those goals, I am never afraid to breed to a stallion with a proven record of improving his mares even without much of a racing record..... There are many reasons why black type may never have been earned and it certainly isn't always the fault of the horse. It is much more important for me to find good stallions (defined by me as those capbable of improving the mares they cover) while physically producing healthy, athletic, and strong racing types. This is much more important to me than black type. If you can define your goals a little bit for me I would be glad to give you a few examples of what I like for your mare/s.
Based upon the limited information I have on your mares I would certainly opt for proven results from a stallion before I would look at first year or unproven stallions. My only exception would be with a young filly (first foal or second) that had a nice race career and you plan on selling the foal. Then I would look at an unproven or freshman sire,,,otherwise go with the proven stallions. There are too many good ones which are very reasonably priced to go any other way. Just my humble opinions but good luck with whatever you decide.

Malibu Moon, Staff Writer etc are and were successful sires

What about some of the former Country Life stallions: Allens Prospect, Carnivalay and Citidancer...don't believe they had black type earnings prior to their retirement (though I could be wrong).

In California, Tribal Rule. Smokester didn't have any black type. Cee's Tizzy never won a stakes but he was stakes placed. Unusual Heat didn't win a stakes in North America and was in fact a claiming horse here.

When looking at first year stallions the odds are against you anyway. When breeding to 1st year stallions your goal is pretty much defined as sales profit and not so much the foal will be a race horse. Though if the foal can run nobody will complain.

Looking at the KY 5-7.5 range there are 4 new sires:

Mr. Sekiguchi
Noble Causeway
Spellbinder
Will He Shine

So ask yourself, if there are 100 breeders that will breed to a first year sire how many of those breeders would choose Mr. Sekiguchi? How will the stallion's connections and farm support him? You shouldn't care if the foal has any ability at all and if you do, then breeding to a first year sire should be the question, not whether the sire had any ability himself.

Van Nistelrooy turned out to be a good bet for you. You were smarter than I and when I was inquiring the farm was even offering some price break on his fee. 25K now. Wow.

Rokeby Forever wrote:[Danzig retired without blacktype. Vice Regent retired without blacktype, and he was a tremendous sire in Canada.

I am glad I asked first. Danzig definitely fit’s the category of a great sire.

bcassidy wrote:What are your goals? Do you race in a regional market or plan on selling the foal?
.......I would certainly opt for proven results from a stallion before I would look at first year or unproven stallions. My only exception would be with a young filly (first foal or second) that had a nice race career and you plan on selling the foal. Then I would look at an unproven or freshman sire,,,otherwise go with the proven stallions. There are too many good ones which are very reasonably priced to go any other way. Just my humble opinions but good luck with whatever you decide.

After reading your response, I think now I asked the wrong question. You hit on the key when you ask what are goals are. When we first started, the goal was to breed to race. But now that we have several foals from the mares we have had the longest, some in the group would like to sell some of them so we don’t have so many in training all at once. So without formally changing the goals, some are leaning that direction and suggesting sires that will likely have more commercial appeal. But we haven’t changed our mares, so really that really doesn’t make much sense.

In the past, we used a mixture of proven sires, and newer sires. Our better mares went with the higher priced proven sires. ( higher priced for us meaning $10,000-$15,000.) I think our best one so far was a Mutakddim out of our El Prado mare. But somewhere along the way we switched to using more of the newer sires.

So without realizing it, I think my problem with Mr Sekiguchi wasn’t so much his lack of a race record, it was that he was unproven. This year what we are looking at so far is a majority of unproven sires, and I guess that is what I am most uncomfortable with. Our mares do need sires who can improve them, so it makes sense to use ones that have shown they can do that.

I think another reason we have gotten off track from our original plan is that in the past few years we felt we had success when we chose a new sire who went on to become one of the leading freshman sires. It was exciting to follow the young Posse’s, Harlan Holiday’s, and Van Nistelrooys, and hope ours would have similar success. And if we had better mares, and intended to sell, then having used those sires at the low prices we got, might have equaled success. But as it is, we are still a year away from knowing what we really have. And I think some are caught up in wanting to chose a new sire who will become a leading freshman sire, thinking that automatically means we did well.

I would be interested in your suggestions for our mares. The goal would be to breed to race. I don’t think our mares would work for anything else. Or perhaps if one or two did look like they could sell, maybe treat those differently. Ideally the sire would be one who creates a bit of excitement, in that we do sell shares of the foals, and a more exciting sire does tend to sell out more quickly. But that isn’t that important in that the shares we sell are small, and to people who just want to be involved in racing in a small way. They don’t expect to make money, just have some fun. We don’t mark the shares up or charge any management fees. We aren’t trying to make money from the sell of the shares. We offer them just so other people can get involved in racing. We are based in Kentucky, and feel the more people involved in racing, even in a small way, the better for the industry. Generally by the time the foal starts training, they are sold out just from word of mouth. Our goal would be to have them race on the Kentucky circuit. But if they don’t make it there, there are several lower level tracks nearby that we use.

These are the mares:

Miswakin-Run to Reign

El Prado-Coplean’sluckyjet

Kris S-Crown Silver

Dayjur-E Hagins

Jade Hunter-Run to Reign

Jade Hunter- Semilita

Lucky North-Semilita

Arch -Legit

I appreciate any suggestions you might have. Those involved in this group are in it for the learning experience. We attend breeding seminars, talk to breeding analysts, do our own research, then share what we have learned. You initial comments make me think this year would be a good time to sit down and restate our goals, as I realize now we aren’t all on the same page. It shows in the sires we are looking at. And we would probably be wise to have someone experienced in conformation take a look at our mares to show us what we should be looking for in a sire as well. Now that we have had a few crops from several of the mares, we should have a better idea of what we need to focus on, and that should take priority over trying predict who the next leading sire will be.

Thanks so much for your comments. You have given me a lot to think about. I didn’t realize had strayed from our original goals as much as we had.

(On preview, I see there were some additional responses while I was typing this...thanks, and I will respond to those in a bit....)

Rokeby Forever wrote:

winningcolors1988 wrote:So my question is whether or not there have been any sires that had no black type, but did go on to be great sires commanding huge fees.

Danzig retired without blacktype. Vice Regent retired without blacktype, and he was a tremendous sire in Canada.

Yeah and who were they both by?

Northern Dancer was the only sire in HISTORY to get truly significant sires that never tasted victory in a Stakes.

-llbean

Thanks to all for mentioning all those sucessful sires who didn't have such impressive race records. I can see now I have been putting too much emphasis on that. And especially with the proven sires, once they show they can produce, their race record really doesn't matter. ( Similar to handicapping two year old races. For the babies, you don't have much else to go on but the breeding and the trainer, so the breeding is given quite a bit of weight. But by the time the horse is running is stakes races for older horses, it would be silly to consider the breeding at all, his past performances are what should be considered.) Seems pretty obvious to me now, but I somehow lost sight of that.

habitat wrote:When looking at first year stallions the odds are against you anyway. When breeding to 1st year stallions your goal is pretty much defined as sales profit and not so much the foal will be a race horse. Though if the foal can run nobody will complain.

Looking at the KY 5-7.5 range there are 4 new sires:

Mr. Sekiguchi
Noble Causeway
Spellbinder
Will He Shine

So ask yourself, if there are 100 breeders that will breed to a first year sire how many of those breeders would choose Mr. Sekiguchi? How will the stallion's connections and farm support him? You shouldn't care if the foal has any ability at all and if you do, then breeding to a first year sire should be the question, not whether the sire had any ability himself.

Van Nistelrooy turned out to be a good bet for you. You were smarter than I and when I was inquiring the farm was even offering some price break on his fee. 25K now. Wow.

Your points also clear up some things for me. When we went with Van Nistlelrooy and Powerscourt, we were swayed thinking the farm would promote them. With Powerscourt we had been looking for a son of Sadler's Wells to go with our Miswaki mare, and jumped at the chance. We thought that one might have some commercial appeal, but were fine to keep him to race.

And to be honest, Van Nistelrooy was one we were only mildly interested in when we went to look at him. We were going to use one or two new sires, and weren't sure he was the best bet. But when we saw him in person, we all agreed he was the one.

And it is still too early to tell, but our Powerscourt colt and Van Nistelrooy filly are the standouts of that year's crop. We had thought by now, the mare of the Van Nistelrooy would have had two winners, her first foal is the winner of two, and is still racing, and the mare of the Powerscourt would have had her first winner from her first foal. But due to just plain horrible luck, that won't be happening.

So in putting all this together, it seems our goal would be to breed to race, but should we have one that we could make a nice profit on by selling, we would.

Is that a workable goal? Or would those two ideas work against each other?

There is a big difference between unraced, and no blacktype. Danzig showed some talent, if not brilliance. The odds are just stacked against an unraced sire, and history proves, my guess, at least 95% of the time that unraced stallion will not make it.

Winningcolors,

In the Storm Cat line put Mr. Sekiguchi against Cat Thief, Stormin Fever, and Tactical Cat. All had progeny earnings in excess of 3 million. Unknown vs 3+ million. If either of the three proving stallions (they are still proving themselves) have other big horses you could stand to gain just as much from a sales perspective, but if that doesn't happen you still have a foal to sell at the going rate or you have a foal that has a chance at being a runner. Better choices for a breed to race goal with a sell some philosophy.

There may be times when your choices are such that you need to look at a first year sire, but with storm cat line I dont think you need to.

winningcolors---your thoughts are very well stated and I agree with almost all of your reassessment.
Here are just a few additional comments. As much as we would all love to own one of the foals by a hot young stallion, if the mare that produced the foal is only so so I wouldn't expect to see much upside for the foal by that terrific new stallion because the quality of the mare will be factored into the equation. Hot young stallions can't improve every mare they cover and racing ability of the mare as well as conformational faults in the foal (especially the same faults exhibited by the mare) will be factored into the value of the foal. Hot Stallion x mediocre mare may still yield mediocre foal.
that is why the mare is so important in the first place and you don't want to overbreed the mare. The rule I subscribe to is one third the value of the mare is the price you should be willing to pay for the stud fee. But the catch to that equation is that the price of the stud fee should never be more than the one third value of the mare. I really like finding stallions that are considerably less than that value and I think that is additional profit to factor into the finances just because you can spend 7,500 doesn't mean you have to or should---you just wouldn't want to spend more than that. Of coarse shipping, state of registry, breeders awards, etc are very important factors to consider in your decision making.
I try to produce the best athlete I can for the money. In a breed to race program it is very easy to find stallions that are great value beween 2-10k. I rarely have to spend more than that to get to a very good proven stallion. In kentucky Wagon Limit is 2,500, in WV Limit Out is 1,500 etc.
Sometimes people buy mares and then look for stallions--- but I will often find stallions I like and then buy a reasonably priced mare for that stallion or a mare already in foal to the stallion I like. You don't have to go the mare first route.
I couldn't tell from the list of mares how many you had. You seem to list the stallion first and then a horse or mare name.
Please just give me the mare's name and or her year of birth or sires name. That would be more helpful to me.

bcassidy wrote:Sometimes people buy mares and then look for stallions--- but I will often find stallions I like and then buy a reasonably priced mare for that stallion or a mare already in foal to the stallion I like. You don't have to go the mare first route.

Mr Cassidy - that might be the single most intelligent thought I have ever read on Pedigree Query.

I think you need to find out what kind of ability Mr. Sekiguchi possessed and why he didn't earn black type.

Alibhai and Fairy King made 1 start (unplaced) between them and became highly successful sires. Alibhai displayed extreme talent on the training track before bowing both tendons. I don't know about Fairy King but he is full brother to Sadler's Wells. Malibu Moon displayed extreme talent breaking his maiden. Some people think he is in fact the most talented son of A P Indy.

Another major consideration with unaccomplished stallions is the farm that stands them, and what kind of support can be expected from the owners. Danzig stood at Claiborne, Vice Regent at Windfields. The owners had the financial clout , top quality mares, and client base to support the stallion with. Enough said!

On the con side, I think your partner expects the stallion to hit big because he is a Storm Cat son from A P Indy's family. A P Indy's dam has already produced two very expensive colts by Storm Cat that didn't do much on the track, Norway and Tiger Ridge. Neither has done much in the stud either. I believe Norway has died, and Tiger Ridge has been sold and exported.