Sire stakes winning percentage

[vineyridge]

I’m reading Edward Bowen’s “Dynasties” on stallions, and one stat that he most often quotes for the sires he’s talking about is the percentage of Stakes Winners. Some, like Bold Ruler, were staggeringly effective with over 20% SW to foals (or runners, not sure which). Even sires that were good but not great had SW percentages of 9, 10, and 11 percent. Horses like What a Pleasure, Bold Bidder and Raja Baba were all in that range. As were Seattle Slew at 9% and AP Indy at 11%. Bold Ruler was apparently limited to 35 foals per year.

Then you come to the modern era of Big Books, and even the so- called best sires (AP Indy and Slew are big book era sires IMO) don’t seem to be able to crack a ceiling of 11% (except Storm Cat who in 2000 was at 15%). This year, Galileo is at 11.78% Black Type SWs. Tapit is at 7.2%, Dubawi is at 11.24%, Uncle Mo is at 11.03%, and War Front is at 11.38%. The 4 mentioned are the only sires to break 10%. The vast majority of the top 100 sires have BTSWs of less than 5%.

This seems somehow wrong in some way. The stats that Bowen gives are for SWs, but the current sire list numbers are for BT Stakes winners. That seems to me to make the stats not comparable if the new ones don’t include all stakes winners.

So is the definite difference in the size of modern books or in the numbers making up the statistics that are online? Or are none of the modern sires as good as the middle level sires of the past?

[Shammy_Davis]

One thing that is obvious today is that international buyers place more weight on North American graded stakes than the varying value and class of overnight stakes wins. Blacktype comes from both but a stakes wins at Turfway or Charles Town is not equal to a stakes win at Keeneland or Belmont. I know from surfing the net that international markets are very suspicious of our blacktyping and with good reason. It was some time ago that I read Dynasties but you should remember that Northern Dancer and Bold Ruler were sires in the same time frame and their progeny performed well on international shores too. That was proof enough for the international buyers then. Today, our high end market is primarily international but those markets are also highly invested in their own sires. I think the GSW characterization is to insure class to the international market.

[vineyridge]

Bowen gives a figure of 17% for Roberto, and he was certainly international. HTR was 14%. The decline in the percentages is certainly mysterious.

Are they losing quality in the quest for quantity?

[Shammy_Davis]

I don’t know how you make a comparison. Times, in decades, have dramatically changed.

http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/auld-lang-syne-a-look-at-racing-new-years-past/

It does appear that the racehorse of today is no dramatic improvement over those following WWII. They are certainly not challenged to carry established weights.

It is projected that the 2017 foal crop will be smaller. Maybe in a few years or decades a valid comparison can be made based on that, but I am doubtful. Too many variables to assess.

http://www.paulickreport.com/news/bloodstock/jockey-club-projecting-2017-foal-crop-22500/

[gotpaints]

Though I assume there are more stakes (I don’t have numbers in front of me for back then so I could be totally wrong), could it also be that there are more stallions with bigger books so there’s more competition? I haven’t researched it at all but it’s obviously harder to get higher percentages when you have 280 runners, even if 20 of them win stakes (Tapit’s numbers right now).

Galileo having such a low percentage does confuse me though because he owns Ireland and his books are fairly small for who he is/where he stands (the number of mares bred I saw for him a few years ago was at something like 168 compared to another stallion [national hunt] from the farm who bred well over 300).

As to if the quality of top stallions is comparable to middle market types of past years, could that also come down to the competition and more of the top mares going to a variety of stallions? I live with the belief that stallions can improve mares but they can only improve claimer producers so much so maybe getting 10 of those “eh” mares and a smaller percentage of truly good producers hurts them as well.

[Linny]

Bigger books reduces the overall quality of mares bred. If the top 10 stallions were only covering 40 mares a year, as was the norm when ND entered stud, you could assume that they would draw the best 400 mares or close to it. (I understand that quantifying mares is harder than stallions but bear with me.) It would be unlikely that one of those sires would cover a mare outside what might be considered the top quintile of all available mares.
Now the top 10 sires are probably covering 150 to 200 mares, more if they shuttle. Now the top 10 sires are covering as many as 2000 or more mares. To reach that expanded pool, those sires must, by definition be covering many less “select” mares. Sure they are getting the elite 400 from prior decades, but what about the rest? It must have an impact on the stats.

ETA: I also think that breeding for a catalog page rather than a runner may have hurt too. A far higher percentage of horses are bred for the market than in the days of BR and ND (who was one of the prime driving forces behind the international market.) When breeders were looking to get a successful runner who would then return to the farm to add to the glory of the breeding program, percentages were higher.

[gumtree]

Before big books became acceptable and than the norm, 10% was the bench mark.

Since big books that number has been adjusted to around 7%.

[vineyridge]

Question: Could the number of breedings affect the quality of the sperm? With smaller books wouldn’t the number of sperm per ejaculation be higher and possibly include “better” sperm? Giving a higher probability that a good one would merge with the egg?

[gotpaints]

I’ve actually talked to someone at Gluck about the number of breedings affecting the quality of sperm in the past and they said that it can affect the fertility but not the quality of DNA passed to the foal (ala, it may be harder to get mares pregnant but shouldn’t affect how talented those foals are). Interestingly, they also passed me a study that said shuttle stallions have better pregnancy rates vs. those who just breed for a few months a year. I would have assumed it was the opposite.