Racing ability of broodmares of great horses
 

I just started looking a few minutes ago - but a lot of the ones I looked at haven't been much. Secretariat's dam got drubbed in her only race - and John Henry's dam was getting slapped about at River Downs.

Here are forms of a few:

* Dam of Dr. Fager starting for a claiming tag for the 1st time:




* Dam of Seattle Slew was beaten a couple times for a maiden claiming tag:



* Dam of Man O' War beat double digit lengths in a maiden race at some track I've never heard of:



* Dam of Native Dancer was a respectable racer - but no star:

You gotta admit though, the track name that the dam of MOW lost at as a maiden claimer is freakin awesome!!!

I hope it was in NJ.

You should check out the dam of Melair.

It was a MSW - but yeah - I knew you'd like the name of that track.

No luck getting PP's with Melair's dam - the dam of Swaps ran 8 times and never hit the board... only can find a few result charts for her though. Not much for West Coast stuff sadly.

Google came up with a few hits.

http://cgi.ebay.com/5-x-7-HORSE-RACE...-/220735248221

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive...D8415B838DF1D3

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive...D8415B858DF1D3

I often thought about how Somethingroyal had only raced once. It's interesting that what makes these mares so super special is the ability to pass along greatness even though they were not runners themselves.

It seems that there are many more mares like this than those that were great runners and passed their abilities directly along to their offspring.

Makes me think about Zen and Rachel and what their abilities will be as broodmares.

The odds are against them.

While no great horse, the dam of Hard Spun was interesting. She was drubbed at Penn National in her debut. She couldn't beat a goat on dirt. Ran like five times on dirt, and never did better than a 40 Beyer. She improved from a 16K claimer on turf to briefly being a stakes class Turf horse.

Considering Hard Spun won both of his synthetic races nicely - he would have probably absolutely loved the turf.

The dam of City Zip and Ghostzapper was claimed in her final start. A lot of claiming mares produced well.

Larry Jones told me that he really had hoped to get Hard Spun on the grass. He thought he could be a superstar grass miler.

Do you have the pps for Hasili?

Toussaud was, to this day, one of the handful of best turf mares I've ever seen.

A complete nutcase perhaps, but that girl could run.

There are at least as many unraced,non-winning mares bred than there are race winning broodmares. It doesn't mean they are better producers.

Take the dams of the last twenty horses of the year.
2 were unraced
2 were maidens
5 were winners
8 were stakes winners
1 G1 winner
1 G2 winner
1 G3 winner

Over half of these broodmares were stakes winners. Stakes winning broodmares are outnumbered at least 10-1 by all broodmares yet over half of the last twenty HOY are represented by stakes winning mares.

A more valueable stat would be as follows:


What percentage of stakes winning mares produce stakes winning foals vs. non stakes winners which have been bred to the same stallions.

If you look at the books of 10 high end stallions I think you would find a much more interesting evaluation doing this research.

No doubt.
I would separate the broodmares into five categories
unraced
maidens
winners
stakes winners
graded winners

I have all of her offspring but not her.

The lone Grade 1 winner was Mineshaft's dam Prospector's Deelite?



Glenn Wismer trained Luv Me Luv Me Not beat her in the Kentucky Oaks with Fabio riding.

Glenn's the only trainer who ever made me breakfest before - and the one time he did, it resulted in the only time I can ever remember literally sh!tting my pants in my life.

Turnback the alarm crushed her in GOOSE and was a dude as a broodmare also

Wouldn't surprise me. Here was his dam...

Here's an article from 2004 that looked at racing ability vs. family.

http://www.thoroughbredreview.com/MythoftheFamily.htm

They didn't look at unraced mares, as there's no way of determining their quality on the track, but it's an interesting read.