an idea about sires
 

just had a thought, while reading an article about kip deville going to the japan cup.

has anyone in the breeding business considered supplementing a good runner so that said runner will continue to race, which has to be the best type of advertising for a sire already in the shed?

kiplings best progeny is kip deville, other than him kipling hasn't sired much at all. so i would think it's in kiplings (and his stud farms) best interest to keep kip deville on the track.
so, take street boss for instance-what if darley was to supplement a horses racing career so that he'll keep running (and presumably winning) so that he and others by street cry would offer up a huge racing resume for their old man-would this be feasible? now, obviously a stud farm can't offer up the 10k stud fee x's 100 to pay off an owner, but wouldn't assumed purse winnings along with some green from a farm be enough to encourage an owner to perhaps attempt to keep a horse in training at four?
or is this idea not feasible at all?
it just seems that in the 'good old days' that a farm would run the offspring of their big sire, so as to prove their sire had the goods, and to draw more mares to the sire. of course now it's turned into winning a few races so you can try to make a sire out of the sons of a sire. of course, times have changed with commercial operations-but wouldn't it also be in a farms best interest to keep top colts on the track?? then they don't have as much competition for their sires line.
or is this just a waste of thought??

Seems to me that back in the days of old, more farms actually owned the good offspring of the stallions they stood and it benefitted them by keeping the offspring on the track. Too many hands in the cookie jar for that nowadays ...

yeah, i know.

it's just that many think horses should be around longer, but no one seems able or willing to come up with incentives to actually keep horses on the track. obviously you have to make racing more lucrative-right now purses can't compete with potential stud fees.
i was just throwing it out there...

Actually for the mares Kipling has had hes done very well

Well, after all, Kipling is a half to Court Vision.

One horse is not going to help much for a stallion like Kipling. Everyone just assumes Kip Deville is a fluke. Kipling is really a pretty good regional stallion that doesnt need to be in KY. I really dont know when the "good old days" of stallions would be if not now in the age of 100+ mare books.

Street Cry is standing for $150k, he doesnt need much help anymore.

While Kipling isnt one of the six figure studs, Kip did help him double his fee and I would think that is very good for an Ok breed.

I agree that it would be great if more horses raced as 4 yo's. I think part of the reason horses are retired at 3 is risk of injury not necessarily racing expenses.

Wouldn't it have been great to see Street Sense and Hard Spun compete with Curlin this past year?

Hard Spun would have had to race between 7 and 9f's. Hard Spun might have been an elite turf mile?

I would see a campaign that included the Carter, the Met Mile, Stephen Foster, Whitney..., - he might have found a weak 10f stakes to win, too, like the Hawthorne Gold Cup (which is G2 for a reason). The racing program these days is geared for 9f horses (Donn stealing the thunder of the GP Hcp, Mass Cap, Monmouth's big hcp reduced to 9f). Hard Spun was a tough and talented racehorse who could have made a lot of $$, if allowed to. But Hard Spun also may be the last really good racehorse sired by Danzig and could make more cash covering 150 mares.

And yes, I think he would turf pretty well - his mum was talented on turf - but there is far more money on dirt.

Just go ahead and write your checks if you feel so strong about your sires .

The Breeders Cup was supposed to be such an incentive. You didn't win it this year, you could come back at try to win next year, supposedly. But that was in the era of 40 mare books, so that even a $50K stud fee (only a couple of stallions had a published fee higher than that in 1984) was on a par with the purse money that could be won. No one imagined 150 foal crops.

Why has Smarty Jones' stud fee been listed as private? Isn't it a bit early in his stud career for that? Is there a problem or are they trying to limit the quality and quantitiy of mares, which I thought happenened anyway.

I was going to post and ask the same question- can someone who knows more about breeding than I (which would be almost anyone here!) explain what "private fee" can mean (I imagine there can be more than one reason), and why a horse would be listed that way? Smarty's runners seem to be doing okay, not outstanding.

It's an interesting idea to propose- but I think there's just no way, with 100+ books that racing could ever make it more lucrative than breeding, and since racing runs on gambling dollars, not fan dollars, there's no reason for racing to care. Plus, the breeding market seems to run on what will sell- I remember Chuck (I think it was Chuck) saying months ago he didn't think Big Brown's fee would be as high as some predicted on account of him being by Boundary. I know a trainer (I can't remember which one) once said, "I don't care who he's by; I care who he can run by," but with so many breeding to sell, not race, they care more who he's by. So even with one big runner, how much will it really help the sire? Real Quiet has had a couple of big horses, but it doesn't make him a hot sire. And it's so expensive to keep a horse in training- I imagine simple marketing might be cheaper. And, on top of that, it seems to me like the breeding side is really susceptible to what I think of as, "new shiny"- always looking for the next big thing, rather than giving due to long-term sires who turn out runners year after year, but maybe not world-class ones. Sires who were top runners seem to get their best chances before any of their foals see the track.

Of course, as I've said, I know next to nothing about breeding, so I may be totally wrong. ;)

I really think the only way to see horses racing at 4 is for the Jockey Club to pass rules that racing thoroughbreds must be sired by horses who are at least 5 years old. That, or limit stallion books. And the breeding market has such control I don't think it'll ever happen. If the Jockey Club could figure out ways to make money from older runners (merchandising, whatever), they'd have motive to, but there isn't any reason to.

Which doesn't make me happy about it, either, Danzig. I'd love to see more of the 3-year-old stars run at 4, too.

funny that you mentioned big brown. just saw his fee--$65k.

so many sires imo who are much more attractive, for less than that.

I agree with you there, but then we're not commercial breeders.

Chart on the freshman sire standings:

http://www.thoroughbredtimes.com/bre...sire-list.aspx

Tapit's fee took a huge jump this year- from 12.5k to 35k.

I'm no breeding expert obviously, but I still can't for the life of me find a reason to send a mare to Big Brown over Hard Spun($50 K I believe).

Never going to happen. It's easy for folks to make rules about other people's horses but the cost of upkeep is too high to force benching and what if the horse gets hurt at age 2? It could be argued it's good to keep them out of the gene pool but it's not always soundness, sometimes it's a freak accident. Big Brown's insurance premium, as I understood it, was $3 million. Say they could get no more races out of him so he didn't run at age 4 but they had to continue to pay insurance, bills, etc. All you end up doing is pushing people out of the business. It means only the wealthier folks can afford to keep up in the sport. Between people wanting to keep them off the track at age 2 and others wanting them to have to wait longer to breed, well it's too financially difficult and instead of improving fan excitement, the industry falls apart from within. Lets also not forget the idea that you can't force someone to keep their horse on the track. They might decide the only way to make money is to keep pushing them so they can get purses, rather than let them lay up to get over battle scars and not make any money. I mean if they can't sell to breed in the US, they're gonna find a way to do it somehow. Might sell overseas where they don't have those rules and voila, our best are sent out of the country without a moment's notice. They might just start leasing to Japan, Australia or South America until they're 5 but that's best case scenario. I don't think it's wrong to take breeders into account here. No breeders, no horse.

And as I said, I didn't see it ever happening, either. I think you missed what I was saying- it doesn't have anything to do with racing at 2 (I still don't get why non-racing fans are wailing about that- did they not read [i]Seabiscuit?[i]:)). I also doubt owners with a horse with serious stallion potential are going to push the horse and risk injury. Absolutely you're right that they might just lay the horse up for 2 years, but then they have to risk the horse being forgotten, so that's a decision they'd have to make.

And yes, it's a genuine possibility they'd go to South American, Japan, whatever, but those horses wouldn't be able to race in the US, so would it be worth it to the breeders? I don't know.

I agree with you- keeping the commercial breeding industry happy is the name of the game for the Jockey Club (why else would they not permit artificial insemination, if not to keep stud farms in business?). But the point of the thread, I believe, was, what would be a workable incentive to keep the top horses on the track? In my opinion, though, as I said, I think this will never happen, the only way to do it would be to restrict breeding age to 5 and up. It has nothing to do with breeding a sounder horse, only to do with "what would keep them on the track at 4?"

I think we saw a good example this year with Curlin- I was, as a fan, delighted Jackson brought him back, but I really doubt he would have had the legal issues surrounding him been cleared up last year.

So, Merlinsky, what do you think would keep horses on the track at 4? As a defender of the breeding industry, if your assignment was to make running top horses at 4 more attractive than retiring them, what would you propose?

I'm glad you answered- I thought Danzig started a fun thread and it's nice to keep discussing it!