Question for TRUE NICKS

[Barcaldine]

I came across a colt named PELEE ISLAND, which was bred by Jack Werk.

He's by Repent out of a Storm Cat line mare. Since Repent stood in Florida for most of his life, and Storm Cat line mares are in good supply, I thought Werk surely must have found a A nicking between their offspring.

When I plugged the names into TRUE NICKS here's what it generated:

http://truenicks.com/free-reports/hypot ... oMode=True

A "No Rating."

Can someone from the company explain this designation on what should be a fairly common cross?

And perhaps answer the question why Werk would plan such a mating for himself?

[madelyn]

Perhaps Mr. Werk used another method to analyze the mating?

[louis finochio]

Repent has a low soundness figure. JW must have missed it.

[brogers]

Baracaldine

Putting on my TrueNicks hat for a second, Pelee Island is an interesting example.

Using the Jockey Club database the algorithm goes back to doing the calculation on Sovereign Dancer, his sons and grandsons, when mated to mares by Storm Bird and his sons and grandsons. We had a statistician look at this and his recommendation was not to go back any further in the generations as the results would be pretty meaningless (recess to norm and not give any useful data).

Even with this wide net cast, there are just 54 foals that are bred on this cross, 37 have raced, and only 1 SW. If you think about the fact that we are talking about Sovereign Dancer, Loius Quartorze, Repent, Conte di Savoya, Miracle Heights, Sendawar, etc as stallions and the plethora of sons and grandsons of Storm Bird, the cross has a very low number of horses. Usually when we see a NR, there are either very, very low numbers (i.e less than 20) or a lot of numbers (100's) but just one stakes winner.

The TrueNicks algorithm will not calculate a rating unless there are two stakes winners out of unique mares. It doesn't make a calculation if there is only one stakes winner as we do not think that this is a representation of what is happening. Basing a decision on just one stakes winner, or indeed two stakes winners out of the same mare is a recipe for disaster. As the algorithm had reached the limitations of how far it will go back, and there was not two stakes winners out of unique mares on this rule or any rule prior, it returned a No Rating. We would rather inform breeders that the mating has been tried without sufficient successful examples, rather than giving a letter grade.

I hope this helps.