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TRACK SPECIFIC BREEDING – PART 2 This is why we supply our SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HORSES TO WATCH clients with "track-specific" sire lists that we continually update. What works in California might not work everywhere else and vice versa! Why dilute ratings of any sire with "abstract universalness"? Why indeed? But that’s exactly what you do by including other tracks for your home track’s sire ratings. If horses can’t do it over your home track where you are handicapping today’s race, what they are capable of doing elsewhere is of absolutely NO consequence today! Soil compositions on the East coast don’t remotely resemble any of the three Southern California tracks. We don’t "winterize" our tracks, nor do we make major soil changes from season to season. That concept alone should literally "sell" you on "track specificity" and the obvious differences of East coast dirt vs. West coast dirt. And to take it a step further, instead of being lazy at the SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HORSES TO WATCH and lumping our 3 major tracks together as one (Del Mar, Santa Anita and Hollywood), we differentiate among our 3 ovals over both surfaces! Each track and surface has it’s own numbers and winning sire statistics that we update from meet to meet. To do anything less would only turn them into "universal Southern California" ratings. You don’t need any form of "universal" ratings! Fine tuning your pedigree right down to the specific surface you are wagering upon at the moment is often the difference between cashing a ticket or ripping it up. "Track-specific" sire lists are invaluable when handicapping first time starters, shippers, or horses trying your specific dirt or your specific turf for the very first time in their careers! "Universal ratings" simply can’t offer you that essential winning information! Most pedigree rating systems in the marketplace today are very seriously flawed in addition to their non-treatment of track-specificity! For their rating purposes, these services lean more heavily to a runner’s top breeding (sire and sometimes grandsire) while almost ignoring or even negating his bottom breeding (broodmare and/or broodmare sire). The few services who actually do include bottom breeding in their overall rating systems, discount the influence on the bottom and fail to give it equal weight with the top breeding. The bottom breeding is usually only worth 25% or 50% compared to the top breeding when their final rating is calculated. Concerning the mother’s side, how could you ever prove scientifically (with empirical facts) that the dam’s sire only contributed half of his overall rating while the sire himself gets his full rating? The broodmare sire could have contributed just as much as the actual sire himself, or even more, or perhaps even less! In human terms, a perfect example could be me personally. Anyone who has met my parents have remarked how I look just like my mother! Theoretically, I should have looked ½ like Mom and ½ like Dad. Somehow or another, that didn’t work out and clearly I am my mother’s son! Quite obviously my maternal grandfather (dam’s sire) had more to do with this likeness than my actual father himself (sire) or his father (grandsire)! While I know that my father is really my father as I have older sisters 10 and 11 years my senior to verify, no one would remotely suspect that he was my Dad when we stood side by side. On the other hand, were I to show you a picture of my mother at 20 years old and myself at 20 years old while stating that she was my twin sister, you wouldn’t remotely question it! I even remarkably resemble my Mother’s dad! In my specific case, what would the "universal" rating services say if I were a horse------that I was some kind of freak of nature? Hardly! This is a very common human situation and I have plenty of friends who clearly "favor" one parent over the other. I’m sure you also see this same thing in your own friends. If that’s true with humans who are the highest form of life on this planet, why should it or better yet, how could it possibly be any different with any other living species to include the horse. If you ever needed a definition of an "inexact science", breeding is it! You would have to be literally "brain-dead" not to believe that the mother herself contributes to every one of her offsprings with every new birth in every species. Her lineage has to be thrown into the equation. This, of course, positively includes horses! Exactly how much does the bottom breeding contribute? That’s really hard to pin down to a number, as there is very little information on winning dams. And most often if there is any information, it is too small a sample to make a significant difference. Keep in mind that a specific sire might cover many broodmares in any given year, but that broodmare only has 1 offspring. Her influence is, therefore, very difficult to accurately measure. But the maternal grandsire (dam sire) has plenty to say when it comes to importance in transferring his certain abilities to future offsprings. In fact, he has as much to say as the fraternal grandsire. xxxx Part three of Track Specific Breeding follows here
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