@skydy Thanks. Have you read the book of subject? It looks good, and Iāll try to get it when Iām done working.
Re: the article
I have always thought it was crazy that the most popular stallions are the first and second year (unproven) horses. While they āhave yet to do anything wrongā they also have yet to do anything right.
I can see why sellers have convinced themselves that they are mitigating their risk by breeding to the new stallions, but what I have never understood is why buyers are then willing to assume that risk themselves by purchasing the offspring of unproven horses when they have other, perhaps better, choices.
No , I havenāt read the book. I just saw the article yesterday. 
It seemed to me that āriskā in TB breeding was only part of the book,so I probably wonāt read it in itās entirety. Iāll check the library though, to see.
Ah, I must be a bigger nerd.
Me too, because I just ordered the book! 
Sounds very interesting.
Unfortunately I donāt see this trend changing. The transition from an industry that was dominated by owner-breeders to one where a much higher percentage of the players are commercial breeders, or agents and pinhookers (who are in turn working with result-oriented clients), forces them to look at stallions from a purely commercial perspective.
he whole game has shifted so much to sales-ring performance, it almost seems like race results are seen as validation of sales prices and commercial appeal. Back in the day a stallion that got plenty of good but not spectacular runners stuck around and was owned or patronized by owner-breeders and smaller breeders - and sometimes sired a few truly significant horses along the way. Horses like Al Hattab, Carson City, Crafty Prospector, Smartenā¦
IME, breeding farms aggressively market their new stallions. So when looking at who breeders chose to breed to, a lot is based on the deal offered by the farm standing the stallion. And the more foals there are, the more the hype and availability for buyers, and the farms buy back at inflated prices creating a false market. Iām certainly not an economist, but thatās how things rolled from my experience.
We loved the foals our ownersā mares threw by a particular stallion who wasnāt very fancy or hot, but we had a heck of a time getting the stud farm to agree to let us breed mares to that stallion after his first year or two. They kept pushing their new studs and offering all these deals and weāre like, nope. We had to twist their arm practically to let us breed to the established one we liked rather than take a ādealā on new ones we werenāt interested in.
Beginning at 4:50 in this video there is a short discussion related to this conversation, by a representative of Darley, though this is a stallion with a very successful race record. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvQQBzD5oBw
Are you taking notes? I just downloaded the book and Iām almost embarrassed to admit Iām taking notes!!!
I just got it the other day and plan to read it on a trip Iām taking over New Yearās. Your post is making me even more excited to get started!
I was actually kind of disappointed in the horse breeding chapter. The first 6 chapters were pretty good, although nothing life altering. Perhaps I wonāt by any more lottery tickets.
The book sounds somewhat similar to a few others that grabbed the attention of my economics/statistics oriented brainā¦ āFreakonomicsāĀ and āBlink.āĀ
