Does the Dosage Index matter?
 

Just wondering what your take is.....

A.P. Indy Named Chef-de-Race
Posted: 6:58 PM ET

Steven A. Roman, Ph.D., creator of the Dosage Index, has named A.P. Indy an Intermediate/Classic Chef-de-Race. The move acknowledges the Lane’s End sire’s effect on the Thoroughbred breed, and means that descendants of A.P. Indy will have revised Dosage Index figures that reflect the stamina generally contributed by the son of Seattle Slew. The Dosage Index attempts to predict a horse’s aptitude for distance through particularly influential sires in his pedigree.

http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com...TOKEN=80788055


http://www.chef-de-race.com/main_menu.htm

It doesn't matter because you have to go too far back in the pedigree for too many horses now cause of their reluctance to add new horses to the chef-de-race list. About time they got around to adding AP Indy. Prior to this AP Indy had the same effect on your dosage as an unraced full brother would have.

Does the Dosage Index Matter?
 

No.

Well lets see here....horses out of A.P Indy where able to run before Roman gave A.P Indy such an label, I do not think they will all of a sudden be able to run further.

For those not familiar with dosage, I'll post the exact formula on how to calculate it...



Just add erratic dart tosses.

No. It doesn't matter. The next time a horse wins that doesn't qualify, they'll just revise the system again to make the horse qualify.

Dosage is absolute hackery.

It greatly delegitimizes pedigree handicapping.

Obviously i know very little about it but what exactly does a horse have to accomplish to gain the title Chef de Race?

It's an arbitrary distinction that is given seemingly randomly and the main reason that dosage is completely useless for any current horses.

The concept that you could apply mathematics to the stallions in a pedigree and gain a reasonable approximation of what sort of horse you will have I think is plausible. The way they go about it though is completely wrong.

Sort of what was alluded to here.....after his horse's win big races going long they get added. Frankly, it the ultimate redboarder's guide.

Dosage is an anachronism now that people have become more sophisticated and legitimate techniques ( like speed figures ) are widespread for analyzing a horse's talent.

Look at you two love birds co-existing so peacefully.

Sniper... the way they go about it is wrong..... how?

BTW..... how is it the ultimate redboarders guide?

Not that it matters but which stallion(s)should be and are not?

Again, I've just never really understood the big picture. Assumed it didn't matter but it's easy to make an assumption (even if it's correct) with next to no information.....

Because it revises opinions after the race to tell you why a horse won.

I predict that Giacamo will not become a chef-de-race.
I predict.

Many will argue that excluding the quality of the mares from the process makes them inherently flawed but I think they could work even just focusing on the stallions. The main problem is that you are either in or out. If you are in you are weighted exactly the same as every other horse that is in. If you are out you don't count at all in determining the dosage. There is no in between. So as of yesterday any offspring of AP Indy was getting no dosage points for him. Now today they get a whole influx of points from him. If you are by a son of AP Indy then you weren't getting points for your sire or points for your grandsire either while AP Indy wasn't a chef-de-race. There are a lot of well bred horses out there these days that you have to go back 3 or 4 generations just to find a single chef-de-race. So their entire dosage index is calculated while completely ignoring everything in their pedigree in the last two to three generations. That is about as stupid of a concept as you can get.

Thanks for your insight everyone.

I've repented and have changed my evil ways..... :p

Same thing happened with Strike the Gold. If I remember right, Alydar at the time wasn't on the chef list. Then, PRESTO, he was. Not that he shouldn't have been added though. I don't know much about what it takes to make the list but I know Alydar belongs. But the point is that he wasn't up to that point so therefore, STG didn't qualify.

Also, as Sniper was getting at, it doesn't make sense to say that a horse should be thrown out because he doesn't qualify when his sire hasn't even had enough crops to race to know what kind of sire he will be? What if Empire Maker sires the next five Derby winners? He still won't be on the list at that point and the dosage people will tell you that his horses don't qualify.

A prime example of the fallacy of dosage was Strike The Gold. He had a dosage of about 9.00 ruining Roman's bogus record of no horse winning the Derby with a dosage of over 4 since 1929. What does Roman do? He immediately upgrades STG's sire Alydar's status in his chef de race charts and "Bingo" Strike The Gold has a dosage of 2.70

I remember being caught up in the Roman theory of dual qualifiers ( dosage of 4 or less and being 116 or higher on the 2 year old experimental highweight) as the only horses that could win the Derby. His shining moment was the '90 Derby when Unbridled, Summer Squall, and Pleasant Tap were the only three duallies in the race. The tri paid about $1600 with Tap at 50/1

I think that at some point in the '80s it may have had some merit, but everytime a sire is upgraded, it lowers the overall dosage numbers. It seems today that almost all contenders fit within the guidelines when years ago not that many did.

Pedigree can matter.
Dosage does not.
In terms of looking at a race like the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, or any race where all of the horses are trying a distance for the first time, analyzing a horse's pedigree can be a useful handicapping tool.
Reducing this process to a single number - especially when using an absurd system like dosage - just doesn't make sense.
The AP Indy example is perfect. I am pretty sure people gave Rags a good shot to win last year's Belmont in part because of her sire. He doesn't need some special designation to let us know that AP Indy's are more likely than most to do well at 10f and beyond.

haha, never thought of it that way but that is precisely what it is.

I don't really think it's any kind of redboarding guide - it's just misguided nonsense.

I guess Strike the Gold was the horse who was over the dosage limit - but was brought under after his Derby win when they made Alydar a chef-de-race.

I don't exactly think it was an act of redboarding for them to finally give there silly rating to a great distance sire like Alydar.

I can't imagine how idiotic a better would have had to have been to discredit Strike The Gold's chances of seeing out a classic distance because he had a high dosage.

Strike the Gold's younger full brother was 19-6-3-2 and made $244K in route races - and was 8-1-2-0 and made $24K in sprint races.

I don't really buy that they redboard - it's just a very half baked way of judging a horses likely development and distance preferences

Uh, there are no horses "out of" A.P. Indy.

Was it ever really alive?

DrugS, I am with Cardus on this one. While I greatly respect your knowledge of the game and your handicapping abilities, I think the dual qualifier and especially dosage index had merit when handicapping the Derby...once upon a time. No longer. Roman has just done too much tweaking to his chef-de-race list in an effort to make sure it holds true that it is now useless.

Are these #'s AS OF the Derby, or right now?

The Dosage is about as ridiculous as the guy who told me Funny Cide couldn't win the Derby "because he was a New York Bred"

Indeed. Dosage is just about as useful as those always useless Derby "angles."

Does it matter??? Yes and no- just like any other handicapping factor. If you take the time to really understand the process and use it, it can assist in the overall picture. People citing specific examples of why it doesn't matter are glossing over the larger picture. Would those of you quick to downplay the validity of the dosage index as a handicapping factor consider speed figures important? Of course they are, but they are only one component of an infinate puzzle that handicapping horse races is.

Using your puzzle example I would say that speed figs are a very important piece in the real 1000 piece puzzle that is handicapping. Meanwhile, the dosage index is a piece in a one of those 8-piece childrens' puzzles that has nothing at all to do with solving the bigger puzzle.

The dosage is basically a point ratio - of speed points versus stamina points - and it relys only on the most prominant names of stallions through the pedigree.

In my opinion, it's nothing than a simple one glance guide, assigning a naked number to rate the speed versus stamina of pedigree - many of the ratings are tremendously flawed - and anyone with even the most moderate understanding of a pedigree could make a better judgement than the dosage number.

I look at thousands and thousands of pedigrees every year - and I can honestly say not once recently have I bothered to look at a dosage.

Understand...but isn't a tool underutilized by the masses what creates an overlay? I'm not going to tell you I look at Dosage Indexes often, but pedigree analysis is a legitimate factor and DI's can often point you in the right direction, same as Tomlinson's or other figures created to place a numerical value on a horse's suitability to specific distances/surfaces. As discussed, most here don't need Dr.Roman to tell them AP Indy's are more inclined to handle routes or Lee Tomlinsin to tell you Danehill's are good on the turf, but when you are dealing with more obscure first generation sires, I think their work is helpful.

I think for the few horses out there that have older sires and broodmare sires that have already been categorized as chef-de-races they could be used as a tool. That is an extremely small percent though and way too many people that use them try and apply them to everyone. It would be like if Beyer figures were only useful at 7 furlongs on cushion track yet everyone used them for all distances on all surfaces.