I have a spreadsheet with data for all of my non-breeding horses. It shows their age, maturity rate, length of career peak, best distance, and their rating on all surfaces. I find it very handy. In fact, I refer to it frequently when I am analyzing the horses and making entries.
I was glancing at it today and was noticing a few things. I have 37 horses listed and:
- Three have a Very Long career peak. 5yo Shatterstar, 3yo Crossbones, and weanling French Twist all project to have careers spanning many seasons. I also have four horses that project with Long careers. They are 3yo Methy Bus, yearling Jack the Ripper, and weanlings Vinyasa and Zombieslayer.
- The vast majority of my horses are Quick to mature. However, I do have a few who are growing up slowly. They are 4yo Kayson, 2yo Mocha Milkshake, and weanling Slaya. Those three will not be fully mature until 4-5 range.
- I've got a couple horses who absolutely hate dirt. With 5/5 reflecting Prefer/Prefer on Hard/Soft dirt, 2yo Captain Britain and Weanling Anck Su Namun both check in at 1/1. My worst on turf are 2yo Xtra Run and yearling Trebuchet, both at 1/2.
- 27 Males vs just 10 Females. That surprised me a bit, especially since four of the ten fillies are weanlings and hence, a long way from racing.
3 comments:
I like this kind of stuff, and I like seeing other peoples numbers to see if what I've got is in line with everyone else.
For comparisons sake (since I've been looking at this stuff anyway while trying to decide if I have enough room/mares to stand another stallion)...
1 of my 50 has a very long peak (the moderate 3yo Mama I'm A Misfit). Four have long peaks; a foal, a yearling, a promising 2yo and Princess Royale.
46 of 50 mature quickly, with the other four all being "average".
5 of them hate hard dirt, all by Color of Fame (who himself was 1-1-2-5-5). Two of them hate soft dirt as well. Strangely, one of the five loves soft dirt, mud and hard turf, but hate hard dirt and soft turf.
I have none who dislike hard turf, and of the five who dislike soft turf four of them are "prefers" on hard turf.
19 males, 31 females. I've had some luck with breeding plenty of fillies, and I prefer them anyone so I'll sell a bad colt before I sell a good filly.
I have a lot of influence from one family; Parisian Sheikh is the sire of 20 of the 50, plus four by his sister, plus three by her daughter, plus one by a half-brother. I'm especially interested in how much his influence colours the stats for my whole stable.
For example, he matured quickly, as do 19 of his 20. Is his 95% rate much higher than the rate for the whole PF population? Is the 92% for my whole stable above average?
If the vast majority of yours mature quickly, and 11 of the 12 Color of Fames I own do too (even though he only matured at the average rate), I suppose maturing quickly is nothing special.
The "Your Foals" thread last year was interesting in this vein, with some people posting that most of their crop had "good" speed. I managed 76% (10 of 13) and 100% quick maturers.
If that thread's anything to go by, it looks like breeding fast horses that mature quickly is unavoidable. There's no point in focusing your breeding on those attributes since they're pretty much universal, so you're better off targeting stamina, peak length (something I've already been looking at with a thread in the Breeding section) or specific combinations of other attributes. By that I mean fast-starting sprinters that are great in traffic, so that they don't have any trouble in the big 2yo fields. Or stalking sprinters that can take advantage of the suicidal pace in most of the big sprint races (it seems like the bulk of top sprinters have been frontrunners who dominate smaller races with lesser opposition where no-one can keep up with them, but can't hack it when they all get together in the Silver Arrow legs or BC sprint races and end up setting the race up for something that was 3L off the pace early. My best ones have been, anyway).
And given that speed doesn't seem very relevant at times anyway (Princess Royale "unfortunately doesn't have a lot of speed") it's even less worthy of being focused on.
Jeez, this was supposed to be a quick little comment, but it turned into a rambling journey to nowhere. Oops.
Hey I appreciate the long comment Smack. Your data is very interesting.
I have never focused on career length in the past, but it has become more relevant to me lately.
I agree with your assessment on speed. I do try to breed for it with sprinters (hopefully combining with the front-running trait). For classic or distance, I almost prefer poorer speed because the game will allow for more stamina if the speed number is somewhat lower. I've got a foal named Vinyasa who likes alot of distance and unfortunately has no speed. I'm thinking, with luck, he could have a very high stamina number.
Matures Quickly happened in 32 of my 37 horses.
Thanks for the info. Very good stuff!
I've changed up my breeding a bit the past few seasons, breeding my sprinting mares with only sprinter/miler stallions with speed, track records, ability to get a mile, and consistency. Consistency is one of the top attributes I want when looking at records, another attribute I like is courage, but I cant view that just by looking at results so I would have to watch the race. I have one two year old who gets lazy just as soon as his nose gets in front, its going to cost him a race someday... I just hope not alot. He isnt one that gets the lead and doesnt give up, bleh, he gets the lead and eases up.
I have a few horses with long/career peaks, something I have been paying attention to but wont do much good if they cant run.
In the very long/career peak category I have:
5 Broodmares
1 5y/o Racer (Escaflowne)
2 3y/o Racers (Kultrun/Thestral)
3 2y/o Racers (Remus/Fubar/Corridor of Power)
3 Yearlings (Check Yes Juliet/Helena/Sword of Elendil)
5 Foals (Semedemihemiquaver/Rich Scandal/ Paradox / Lovan / Claymore)
Two of those have poor surface ratings, but you never know what they can really do until you try em.
Most of them have early peaks, few mature later 3-4, and only a couple after 4.
Also,another thing to take into consideration is if the horse can carry weight, besides consistency. Escaflowne has a long peak, she had some very good races at 8f-9.5 furlongs, but now she cant get past 8f, perhaps its inconsistency or perhaps weight or perhaps a bit of both are influencing her runs.....or maybe she isnt really long peak. I've had to lower her all the way to a G3 race before she got her first win in a long time, but her weight was highest ever, but still seems her times are getting slower and slower no matter where I put her so I might retire her despite the long peak, and she wasnt an early maturing horse either.
Post a Comment