After spending the past three years on geegeez almost exclusively looking at pace angles, I am branching out into a different ‘sphere’ today, namely sires / damsires, writes Dave Renham. The plan is to write a series of articles on this topic in an attempt to give geegeez punters an edge over the general betting fraternity.

First off, a quick 101: sires are the fathers of the respective horses, and they can have a significant influence on their offspring. Damsires are the fathers of the respective mothers of the horse – maternal grandfather, if you will – and these, too, can have a bearing, though it is generally considered that this further generation influence is less strong. In this series of articles we will examine whether this is true or not and, if it is, where we ought to focus our attention.

The cost of buying a racehorse can vary greatly, from thousands of pounds to millions. Age, equine conformation (physicality) and, most importantly, pedigree (horses’ lineage / ancestry) influence the price. Normally the better the pedigree the more expensive the horse.

Let me share a human example where lineage / ancestry seems to be having a strong influence. The young American golf sisters, Nelly and Jessica Korda, are taking the LPGA tour by storm. Their father is Petr Korda, a Grand Slam tennis champion in the 90s, while their mother is Regina Rajchrtova, a top 30 tennis player back in the same era. Good ‘stock’ certainly counts there.

Returning to racing, and for this first article I will be concentrating solely on sires. The data is taken from the period 1^st January 2016 through to 31^st December 2020 (five full years) and all profit/loss has been calculated to Industry Starting Price. For the vast majority of the article I have used the Geegeez Query Tool.

Firstly, let us look at the sires with the highest strike rates in all races during the period of study (minimum 400 runs). I am only including sires that are likely to have a significant number of runners this season:

 

As the table clearly shows, backing sires ‘blind’ is not a great option (duh). Just one sire, Farrh, has made a profit to SP with all his runners in the past five full seasons. Obviously we should be able to beat Starting Price returns in the real world, but it does show that we have to dig a lot deeper when analysing sires. And all those of us who like to get our hands dirty in the data say amen to that!

In order to try and profit from sire data, one sound strategy is to look at individual sires in more detail to try and spot patterns, strengths and weaknesses. I am going to look at a few in that context where I have unearthed some hopefully useful angles.

Teofilo

Teofilo, a son of Galileo, won at Group 1 level twice as a 2yo and was unbeaten in that first season racing (5 from 5). Unfortunately, he got injured and never raced again. However, he has been successful as a sire and has passed on some strong traits of which we should be aware.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he has a good record with 2yo runners, boasting a strike rate of 16.84% during the study period. However, we can break the data down further to give us interesting comparisons, as the graph below shows:

As can be seen, male juveniles comfortably outperform females, runners win more often at 7f or more than over shorter distances, and Teofilo-sired runners much prefer the turf to the sand. Combining those factors - male 2yos over 7f or more on the turf (2016-2020) - saw 65 runners qualify with 17 winning (SR 26.15%) for a very healthy profit of £66.53 (ROI +102.35).

No Nay Never

No Nay Never is a relatively new kid on the block with 2021 being only his fourth season as a sire. As a racehorse, No Nay Never was a Group 1 winning sprinter and hence it may come as no surprise that his progeny are showing a liking for shorter distances.

Horses sired by No Nay Never win about 3 times more often over 5-6f than they do when racing over a mile or further.

Casamento

Casamento proved as a two-year-old in 2010 he was one of the best colts of his generation when finishing second in the Group 1 National Stakes before going onto win the Group 2Beresford Stakes and finally in that year the Group 1 Racing Post Trophy over a mile. As a sire his runners are typically far better suited to longer distances: his runners are twice as likely to win at 1 mile 3 furlongs or more, as compared to sprint trips of 5f to 6f. The graph below shows this neatly:

Sadly, we'll not be seeing many more of Casamento's progeny as he passed away in February 2020.

Big Bad Bob

The sire Big Bad Bob caught my eye due to some relatively unusual findings. I noticed that his record as a sire was superior when racing left-handed compared to when racing right-handed. Famously Desert Orchid was far better going right-handed than left, and we often hear trainers allude to a directional preference, so I know certain horses do have this type of trait; maybe some sires do, too. Essentially, Big Bad Bob’s strike rate when racing left-handed (around at least one bend in a race) is 1.5 times greater than when racing right-handed.

In addition to this I analysed all of his runners in more detail and found that of those that raced left-handed, 41% of them managed to win at least one race going in that direction. For all his runners that raced right handed only 19% of these managed to win a race going that way round. Now these stats may have happened by chance, but 41% versus 19% is too big a gap for me to believe that it was entirely down to luck.

Big Bad Bob also displays a distance bias similar to Casamento. The bias is not quite as strong towards longer distances but it is still significant. Horses over racing at 1m 1f or more have by far the best record.

Swiss Spirit

Swiss Spirit is a relatively new sire with 2017 seeing his first runners on the racecourse. He was a decent sprinter when he raced winning at Group 3 level and twice finishing runner up in Group 2 events. It is interesting to note, though, that as a sire his sprinters have performed no better than his 7f to 1 mile runners. In fact, in strike rate terms they have been slightly inferior. However, there is one huge deviation that is extremely interesting. That is his record with male runners compared to female runners. I think this is best illustrated in a table rather than a graph:

As you can see there is a significant disparity in strike rates and naturally this impacts the profit/loss returns. Backing all male runners blind would have lost you just under 16p in the £ to SP compared with 59p in the £ if you backed all of his female runners. The A/E values show a strong correlation, too.

 

Dawn Approach

Dawn Approach was a top notch miler during his career and as a 3yo won the 2000 Guineas and the St James’s Palace Stakes. Unbeaten as a 2yo he ended up winning 8 of his 12 career starts.

Like Swiss Spirit, Dawn Approach sired his first crop of runners to race in 2017. Also like Swiss Spirit his male runners have to date outperformed his female runners by nearly double in terms of strike rate (male win SR% 11.76%; female win SR% 6.56%). However, it is the pace angle I find most interesting.

Below is a graph comparing the win strike rate of Dawn Approach against the strike rate of all sires when looking at different run styles: front runners (leaders); horses that track the pace (prominent); and horses that race mid-division or towards the back (Mid Div / Held Up).

The progeny of Dawn Approach have been very successful when taking an early lead, but really struggle when racing from off the pace (Mid Div / Held Up). To illustrate this further I have looked at all the horses that have taken an early lead and examined their record in more detail. 65 horses have led early in at least one race and 25 of them have gone on to win at least once (38.46%). Compare this to all horses that have showed the running style of racing off the pace. Of these horses, 112 displayed this running style at least once and only 13 managed to win when racing in this way (11.60%).

Horses do have preferred running styles due to a variety of factors (some don’t like crowding for example, while others seem to thrive when racing in a pack), and hence it could make sense that certain pace traits may be passed on by individual sires.

I hope this piece has whetted your appetite for this new phase of my geegeez research sharing. In my second article I will reveal another collection of interesting data and stats. In the meantime, if you're interested in doing your own digging, both the geegeez Query Tool and the Profiler tab within the racecards offer a treasure trove of insights and are very easy to use.

- DR