Rags to Riches

Hi Kincsem, How would you define "A well matched pedigree, the ancestors of his sire and dam matching ". Curious only, i do love to read about pedigree's. Thanks  ☺️

Here goes.

I think before I comment on Ya King Rising I should say something about the thoroughbred industry.
The first thing to remember is the vast majority of runners are moderate.
Why are they moderate?
My opinion is the breeders of the runners know little about pedigrees.

I am not blaming the sire and dam of the runner.
I blame a poor choice of sire for the mare.
By poor choice I mean the ancestors in the 3rd, 4th, 5th generation of the sire are incompatible with the ancestors in the 3rd, 4th, 5th genarations of the mare to produce correctly matched ancestors in the 4th, 5th, 6th generations of their foal.

Most flat horses (perhaps 95%) are bred to be sold as unnamed foals or unnamed yearlings.
Once an auction bid secures the horse it will be about two years before the new owner realises he has a not-so-good horse (if it ever runs).

If you are a seller at the sales your foal/yearling should (to sell) be by a sire popular at the sales this year (or at a push last year.)
How do you know which sires are/were popular?
By the number of mares that were sent to those sires last year (and the previous year).
Where do you get the numbers?
From the Weatherbys Return Of Mares published last week (very expensive to me in Ireland at Euro 115.)

From the 2024 Return Of Mares
Alkumait (105 mares); Ardad (143); Arizona (157); Baaeed (156); Bayside Boy (120); Blackbeard (158); Blue Bresil (222); Blue Point (178); Calyx (164); Camelot (136); Caturra (102); Churchill (189); Cotai Glory (173); Cracksman (155); Crystal Ocean (190; Dark Angel (151); Dee Ex Bee (130); Diamond Boy (187) ..... and that is only the first of five pages of sires.

You see Blue Point covered 178 mares.
If 2 of 178 become good runners that is enough to fill the colour advertisement next year telling mare owners that Blue Point is a good sire.
The other 176 mare owners - nobody cares.

More mares going to a small number of popular sires (many of those sires not so good) means other sires get few or no mares.
The result is fewer sires each year servicing more mares each.
In my pedigree database the number of sires peaked at 533 in 1977 and fell below 200 in the 2000s.
Of course there were more sires in the 2000s but many were sire of jumps horses and they did not end up in pedigrees as parents / grandparents as they produce no offspring.
On the Racing post website it says the 2025 Return Of Mares (due in the post on Monday) the number of sires in Britain fell from 103 to 88 (1924 to 1925) and in Ireland from 165 to 141.

How about the following statistics for contrast?
The American Stud Book 1977 shows that 3 (!!!) sires covered more that 40 mares that year (and the USA had 27,554 mares in 1977).
The average number of foals per sire was 5.23 (1974); 5.28 (1975); 5.30 (1976); 5.51 (1977).
In 2024 in Britain and Ireland 83 sires covered 100+ mares each.

Only about 1 in 200 sires at stud persist in pedigrees beyond a few generations.
Almost all current sire are soon forgotten.

More foals from one sire (let's call him SIRE A) means more sons from that one sire means more stallion sons from that one sire, and that means in future pedigrees more duplications of SIRE A in pedigrees through his stallion sons.
Too many sons of a duplicated sire in the ancestors of future horses means slow horses (male offspring only from a male).

In my data Northern Dancer (m) is 14.6 times more through sons than through daughters, a 14.6/1 sons/daughters ratio.
Many duplicated sons of a sire in the ancestors and none of his daughters is a recipe for slow.
Almost all horses running today have too many sons of duplicated sires in their ancestors in the 4th, 5th, 6th generations of their pedigree.
Only a small number have a son and daughter of a duplicated sire (needed for a good male runner.)
A filly needs two (or more) daughters of a duplicated sire in her pedigree to be a good runner.

*******************************************************************************************************************************

Ka Ying Rising (g) (2020)

The duplicated ancestors in his pedigree, and the sex of the offspring of those duplicated ancestors are

IN HIS SIRE
Try My Best (1975) (m) producing a son Last Tycoon (m)
Round Table (1954) (m) a grandparent of Sir Tristram (1971) (m)
Northern Dancer (1961) (m) producing a son Danzig (m)
Sir Ivor (1965) (m) a parent of Sir Tristram (1971) (m)
Sir Tristram (1971) (m) producing a son Grosvenor (m)

IN HIS DAM
Try My Best (1975) (m) producing a daughter Daffodil Fields (f)
Northern Dancer (1961) (m) producing a daughter Dance Number (f)
Sir Tristram (1971) (m) producing a daughter Her Dynasty (f)
Buckpasser (1963) (m) a grandparent of Try My Best (1975) (m)

If you examine the above carefully you can see that Ka Ying Rising has three sire duplication groups
1) son & daughter of Try My Best (m)
2) two sons and two daughters of Sir Ivor (m)
3) son & daughter of Sir Tristram (m)
support horse Buckpasser (m) [to the Try my Best (m) duplication]
support horse Round Table (m) [to the Sir Tristram (m) duplication]

Of course there are many other sires in the pedigree of Ka Ying Rising that are not duplicated:
Mill Reef; Pakistan; Secretariat; Brigadier Gerard; Mr Prospector; Troy; Ahonoora; Raise A Native; Sovereign Edition and the sire of this list.
A sire twice or more in a pedigree (i.e. duplicated) must have more influence.
I underlined the sires that seldom have much influence in pedigrees (although they may have been excellent runners - there IS a difference).


In section 7.3 of my website [Pedigree 5] I show a typical 21st century pedigree.
The horse is A Chance To Be Me (2015) (f) who was rated 36.
She has one duplication group in her ancestors, five sons of sire Northern Dancer (1961) (m).
The correct duplication groups for a good filly are (a) two or more daughters of a duplicated sire, (b) and/or son and daughter of a duplicated dam, (c) and/or full siblings, all those preferaby in the 4th, 5th, 6th generations (and not in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd generations.)
A really top class filly would have (a)+(b)+(c) and often one or more of (a)(b)(c) more than once.

Ka Ying Rising has three groups of the correct duplications needed for a good male runner [son & daughter of a duplicated sire] and one of those groups is large (two sons and two daughters.)
In addition support horses to the three duplication groups are elsewhere in the ancestors and that increases the benefit.

You will notice my analysis does not say that the sire (Shameexpress) of Ka Ying Rising "was a good sire" or "he stamps his stock".
I do not say there "is a lot of black type on the dam line" or "his dam comes from a good family".
That is bloddstock agent speak that is i have never seen supported by statistics.
I also do not have anything to say about Ya King Rising conformation "he is a good physical" or "he has a lovely free-swinging walk".

Agree or diasgree but more often than not good horses have good ingredients, and by that I mean duplicated ancestors in the 4th, 5th, 6th and earlier generations OF THE RIGHT TYPE (see my website.)

Hi Kincsem, thank you very much for the detailed reply! It's much appreciated.
I will work my way through the information and data on your website, it's a very interesting view/angle i had not hear off before now.
I have been considering getting involved of late, and reading this make's me pause for a moment and ensure i have as many angles covered as possible before/If i do.
Very sorry to hear about you’re mare and foal, sometimes i forget how difficult it is to get them to the racetrack, even the slow ones.
Thanks again

@kincsem
Thank you for your post 28.10.2025 15.14, it is a very interesting, informative and insightful read

I liked: The first thing to remember is the vast majority of runners are moderate  and Once an auction bid secures the horse it will be about two years before the new owner realises he has a not-so-good horse (if it ever runs).

I cannot for the life of me understand the economics of being a racehorse owner in the UK. To my simple brain, some of the prices paid in the recent yearling sales were totally beyond my financial understanding.
Same in this weeks HIT sale which I have been following.
But what do I know?
Have a good day

Btw, yearling sales prices (in Gns):


1.6m

525k

1.1m

575k