Quote Originally Posted by strong persuader View Post
How about the 'pedigree experts' explaining Our Jericho's success in making the ID Final to us

Here is a horse that is by a skewbald stallion that could only manage 1 2nd from his 6 lifetime starts and has only sired 3 winners from 38 foals.

Even though he is now being raced by millionaires, I'll wager he has made some smalltime breeder very happy along the way!
This thorough answer has been sent to me Phil, I trust you will enjoy it

"Don't know what the formal qualifications of a "pedigree expert" are but here are my suggestions as to why Our Jerichos performance exceed what most people would expect from his ( immediate ) pedigree.

Whilst Tesio never actually revealed what he looked for in selecting matings subsequent analysis of the pedigrees of the champions he bred showed that they all exhibited sex balanced line breeding to superior siblings usually in generations 4 to 8 but often with further reinforcements even further back.

Looking for Tesios principles in Our Jerichos pedigree shows that like many of the New Zealand stock he has multiples of Scotland and his sister Rose Scot. More specifically Christjan Cullen has Knight Dream and his sister Marjorie Armstrong in his pedigree and many of his better stock have multiples of Knight Dream and his sire Nibble Hanover in their dams. Whilst Tomahawk doesn't appear to be one of his better ones ( though lack of success on the track isn't definative proof of lack of ability ) he also multiplies the Knight Dream influences frequently found in the better performed CC's, and no doubt in some lesser performed ones too

Our Jerichos dam is by Deal Direct who also adds more Knight Dream and his second dam is by Timely Knight who is a son of Sweet Dream who is a full sister to Knight Dream, thus Our Jerichos pedigree exhibits the Tesio principles of reinforced line breeding to superior siblings.

For those who follow Tesio principles what further adds to the potential potency of Our Jerichos pedigree in addition to the Knight Dream and his siblings is that Timely Knight is by Good Time and that Good Time over Knight Dream is repeated several times, and in one instance a son of Good Time over Knight Dream throughout Our Jericho, so the pedigree has multiples of near genetic siblings as well as actual siblings.

I don't think there has been any actuall statistical analysis on the position of a common ancestor on the sire line in stbs in general or on Direct Scooter in particular, but analysis from TBs indicate that the 4x3 position for a common ancestor on the sire line is quite favourable for performance and it's not unreasonable to think that that would hold true for stbs as well. Of course the analysis does pertain to sires who are considered superior sires and would probably not give the same results for inferior sires.

Of course Tesio principles are unproven science and correlation does not automatically mean causation so Our Jericho's apparent ability above what his immediate pedigree would suggest could simply be the result of the laws of genetic variation. "