New sires

[Richard prior]

Bit late for this season but Betting Line looks a hell of a prospect

[papagayo]

If the maternal family is what matters, Speedy Crown wouldn't be an average stallion even... There rest consists of Lindy's Crown + a handful of good European trotters and that's it, the maternal family is then relatively weak. And Ready Cash' maternal family ... you can count the number of great horses in that family with one hand with three fingers missing (Ready Cash, Podosis and thank you, good night. That is it from that family.)

[Richard prior]

The same applies to Bettor’s Delights maternal family also, Was looked upon as being very disappointing for years but it exploded with the emergence of Bettor’s and now his younger full brother RWJ is doing the job, If you look closely at the family, You’ll notice that Matt’s Scooter also comes from the same tribe, I wonder if the family is looked upon differently these days, Bettor’s and Matt’s were absolutely outstanding on the track, RWJ was no slouch and I believe No Pan Intended won the Triple Crown in the USA but I’ll have to confirm that

[Messenger]

I don't follow Papa's belief that the maternal family does not matter - it is no guarantee but how can you say it does not matter?
I think you can say it 'might not matter' as there will be champions produced when good sires are bred to donkeys just as there can be champions produced when good mares are covered by ordinary sires (or even fence jumpers) and let's not forget the freaks = where are champion is produced by a couple of donkeys

I cannot help but wonder whether the old theory that

"Genes are passed on randomly from all parts of the pedigree"

could be the explanation for unexplainable good horses

To use Richard's example of Bettors - whose family was weak until his dam Classic Wish lit it up
If the dam did not matter (was not a factor) - that it was all thanks to Cams Card Shark
how is it that Classic Wish was such a good vehicle for not only CCS but also sires Pacific Fella (No Pan Intended) and Rocknroll Hanover (Classic Rock NRoll)

It would seem pretty fluky that she hit with 3 sires and contributed nothing

http://classicfamilies.net/CF/Descen...rseID=10029345

[Richard prior]

I’m going with the Randomly theory Kev but I must say that Classic Wish was freakish, Have a look at what her daughters are leaving now, Gee she has been influential

[papagayo]

To rephrase: there is no evidence to suggest it matters

Also don't overlook the random distribution. If the odds of producing a good horse from a mating between "poor sire" and "poor mare" (loosely defined) is 1 in 500 (I am just randomly picking a number to illustrate the point so don't get hung up on it), then 1 in every 500 will be good and the reason is just the variation involved, i.e. produce enough foals and *at some point* there will be good ones just by virtue of the number of foals. There is no further explanation to it and no more logic or explanation to be read from it

[alphastud]

This study was interesting. ..

http://www.publish.csiro.au/RD/RD15063

Abstract
Many studies have focused on identifying the genes or single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the athletic ability of thoroughbreds, but few have considered differences in maternal and paternal heritability of athletic ability. Herein, we report on our association study of career race performances of 675 Australian thoroughbreds with their pedigrees. Racing performance data (prize money per start) were collected from the Bloodhound database. The performance of all horses was categorised as either poor or elite athletic achievement. Then, 675 foals were divided by their parents’ performance (elite or poor) into four groups: (1) elite dams and elite sires; (2) elite dams and poor sires; (3) poor dams and elite sires; and (4) poor dams and poor sires. The performance of foals was then compared between the four groups. The results show that the heritability of race performance between dams and foals (r = 0.141, P < 0.001) is much higher than that between sires and foals (r = 0.035, P = 0.366), and that this difference is statistically significant (P < 0.05). We also examined the effect of the child-bearing age of dams and sires on the ratio of elite foals. We found a strong correlation between the number of elite foals and dams’ child-bearing age (r = –0.105, P < 0.001), with the ratio of elite offspring reaching a high level between a child-bearing age of 8 and 11 years (χ2 = 14.31, d.f. = 1, P < 0.001). These findings suggest that the maternal line may play an important role in the selective breeding of athletic performance in thoroughbreds.

[Messenger]

To rephrase: there is no evidence to suggest it matters

Also don't overlook the random distribution. If the odds of producing a good horse from a mating between "poor sire" and "poor mare" (loosely defined) is 1 in 500 (I am just randomly picking a number to illustrate the point so don't get hung up on it), then 1 in every 500 will be good and the reason is just the variation involved, i.e. produce enough foals and *at some point* there will be good ones just by virtue of the number of foals. There is no further explanation to it and no more logic or explanation to be read from it

There seems to be evidence in the post above this one Sturla

I am not sure what your random distribution paragraph is attempting to say other than

A poor sire x A poor mare = will produce a good horse 1/?00 (say 1/500)

Are you suggesting the odds are no different for :

A good sire x A good mare = A good sire x A poor mare?

I can understand that it is not essential but not irrelevant

ps From a personal/human perspective - I looked and ran like my mother ('s brothers)

[papagayo]

I may misunderstood but in my eyes you are mixing apples and oranges.

The study mentioned above proves a clear correlation between the dam's on-track performance and the on-track performance of her production. This is not in doubt and has been proven by many studies in the harness world as well. I have done two such analyses on European trotters which have proven the same correlation (one of which was on the Scandinavian coldblood trotters which showed the correlation to be borderline extreme actually but that's beside the point). My original comment was that the maternal family of a stallion is insignifant to the stallion's performance at stud. I hope it is clear that those are two very different things.

There is also nothing in the quoted analysis which shows anything about performance at stud of the foals. Clearly those are not the same thing, hence my apples and oranges reference. (The analysis also looks at the dam-foal relation which naturally is much stronger than the relation with the maternal family (or tail female) as a whole.)

So when you say "There seems to be evidence in the post above this one Sturla" I would say "though the above is correct there is absolutely nothing in it contracting what I said."

...

"I am not sure what your random distribution paragraph is attempting to say other than" ...

"Are you suggesting the odds are no different for :

A good sire x A good mare = A good sire x A poor mare?"

I am sorry but who can you possibly extract that from what I wrote? I am puzzled you make that inference because I didn't say that nor do I even see how that can be read into it.

[Messenger]

OK, I looked at your "there will be good ones just by virtue of the number of foals. There is no further explanation to it and no more logic or explanation to be read from it"
and I think I took your 'no more logic' too literally