Retired Mare Series – Age and Race Statistics

This is not to say that either of these traits relate in any way to the ability of the mare’s children. There could be no correlation. It could be that better retired mares have more races run because the mares with more races were better on the track, thereby passing down better racing qualities to the children. This article makes no claim about causation; it merely provides a brief analysis at yet another angle of retired mare breeding. So without further ado, we will dive into a look at the statistical analysis.

Overall, the 2008 racing records of 54,625 active horses as of January 9, 2009 were analyzed. These horses came from a total of 34,656 retired mares in the sim. The statistics below reflect these numbers.

———–

The first analysis is based on the age of the mare when she first ran in the sim. Of the 34,656 mares who had at least 1 active horse, 18,372 (53.01%) debuted as a 2yo. This is not that surprising, as most breeding is done for the 2yo age. 12,284 (35.45%) mares debuted as a 3yo. 3,838 debuted at 4, while a total of 61 debuted after the age of 4. Surprisingly, 101 horses, including some well bred ones, were retired without ever racing in the Sim. Their placing, Graded Stakes, and Stakes performances are listed below.

So what does this data show? Well, it shows that the age in which a horse begins does not really seem to matter. The large number of races that 2yo, 3yo, and 4yo have in 2008 implies that the percentage data is accurate, and in each of these three cases, the percentages are fairly similar. On average, it appears from this that a 12% Winning percentage, 36% ITM, 2.5% Stakes ITM, and 0.35% Graded ITM seem like standards. Sure enough, the overall averages are a 12% Winning percentage, 36% ITM, 2.5% Stakes ITM, and 0.35% Graded ITM. This seems to show that there is no real difference based on age of the horse when it debuted.

There are slight differences, however. It seems as though horses that began as 4yos are slightly above average in their statistics. Two of the mares that help contribute to this are Almost Blush and Legally Summer. Almost Blush, by Blushing John, an unowned 15yo mare, has three children. Pimlico(IRE), owned by ceacho, is Stakes Placed, but has not run since 2007. I’m Not Blushing is winless in 12 career starts, also not having raced since 2007. Poet’s Choice(ENG), however, has 6 wins in 9 starts (all claimers) with 2 additional 2^nd place finishes for owner Fortune500. Legally Summer, by Summer Squall and owned by knowlton, has picked up 12 wins in 20 starts. 2 of those were stakes wins, including the G1 Sunny Florida for then-3yo Lovestruck(KY). Both Lovestruck(KY) and full-sister Striking Lass(KY) are now Stakes winners, with the latter’s first stakes win coming in 2009. In total, the two horses had 20 races in 2008, with 12 of those ending in wins. Of the remaining 8 races, 5 were 2^nd or 3^rd place finishes, with 4 of those coming at the stakes level or higher.

One final mare to look at for the 4yo level is from mv4ever’s mare Laura Storm. Although only 2 of her children were active in 2008, jerrylee’s Dictation(JPN) took home the G2 Real Danger Handicap by a nose to earn the mare the highest Graded Winning percentage of 17% (1 win in 6 starts).

It is interesting to see a mare who debuted as a 7 year old, and seeing as there is only one, I will mention her here. Bung2’s Psycho Babe is the only one of these horses in existence. Her one child, now-4yo Psycho Babe GB(AUS), won 4 times in 14 races in her 3yo season. All four were in claimers, 2 for bung2 and 2 for ivanyamil. The filly is now trained by aksarben and is unraced for her new owner.

————-

The next analysis is based around the number of races a mare had run in her career. I have created four different groups, to encompass the largest number of mares in each. The groups are unraced mares, those with 20 or fewer races, those between 21 and 30 races, and over 30 races. Below are the results.

Again, the results tend to be fairly close to the 12%-36% averages. While not significant, however, there does appear to be a slight trend towards horses with more career races having better offspring. The data could show that more experienced horses produce better offspring. However, it could be a completely different reason; that better horses produce better mares, and better horses also run more career races. In fact, there seems to be some evidence to back up this latter theory. Only 360 of the 12,822 mares with between 0 and 20 races have a Grade of E or higher. However, 4,939 of the 13,053 with over 30 races meet the Grade E requirement. This may lead one to believe that it is the quality of the horse, not the number of races itself, that leads to the better results.

Many of the top horses in the three large categories have already been mentioned previously in this series. So instead I will focus on the Unraced category, and give some recognition to the top mares in this group. The only Graded winner in 2008 belongs to unowned 19yo mare Frank’s Footballs. The Mr. Prospector mare has 6 children, of which 4 are currently active. 4 ran in 2008, compiling a total of 11 wins in 29 starts. The one graded win belonged to sabbath’s Go Ireland(IRE), who won the G2 Disco Inferno Stakes in January of 2008. The filly also won 4 additional stakes on the year. Sky Buda, a now-6yo son, finished the year with 2 2^nd place finishes in stakes company. The remaining two horses had 1 win combined. A new 2yo, Perfect Season(KY), ran a fast-closing 5^th for Super in her first start, and looks to be on the rise.

The only other unraced mare to record a Graded Stakes placing in 2008 is 19yo unowned mare Mama In The You (not yet bred, but likely to be after this article appears). The graded placings are the result of Lucky’s now-6yo horse Lucky Dixie. They were both 2^nd place finishes, and very close ones. The first was a 1 length miss in the G1 Gotta Fix the Sprinklers Classic, and the second was a loss by a nose in the G3 Queen of the County Stakes. The mare’s other 3 children, while active, have not been as good, as the Affirmed mare only picked up 4 wins in 40 races for the year.

The best ITM percentage, 75%, belongs to Dance Brightly mare Ibiza As Well. The mare, owned by jahskunk4, has one runner, who placed in 8 of his 12 races. The now-4yo colt is Ataraxia(VEN), owned by Bung. The placings are not in any special races, as the first was a maiden claimer and the remaining races run were in Starter Allowances. The horse has not raced since his tag expired in July.

————–

The final analysis of the article is a combination of the previous two. The mares were separated into thirteen groups. Aside from unraced mares, the mares were separated into first races as 2yo, 3yo, 4yo, and 5yo+. Each of those four age groups were further separated by less than 20 career races, 20-29 career races, and 30+ career races. The results are listed below.

The results here are not all that surprising based on what we saw earlier. It seems that the longer a horse races, the better the results, but only by the tiniest margins. Similarly, there does not seem to be a major difference between a mare debuting at 2 versus a mare debuting at any other age. Graded Stakes results are only the slightest margin better for mares debuting at 3 versus mares debuting at 2, but the difference is certainly not statistically significant. The best percentage above for Graded Wins and Graded ITM belongs to the 5yo+, less than 20 race category.

The one Graded Stakes winner that falls in this category belongs to laceyfaye’s mare Storm Over Seattle. The Storm Cat x Seattle Slew x Sadler’s Wells mare is Theo’s horse Journey’s End(KY). The now-5yo horse took home the G3 Saints Handicap in 2008, and placed in 2 other stakes races. He is not the only stakes winner from Storm Over Seattle, however. Both My Third Cat, takemypic’s 7yo horse, and Roman Storm, owned by Chuckrock, are stakes winners (although not in 2008), while retired mare Stormey Pines was stakes placed in her career.

One other 5yo+ mare with under 20 career races had a stakes winner in 2008. That mare is Tribute II(GB), owned at one point by both stardom and favetrick5. One of her two children, now-6yo Star Tribute, owned by Ace, picked up a G1 3^rd place finish in his 5^th race for Ace after being picked up in the auction. Since the purchase, Star Tribute has won 2 stakes in 8 races. Prior to the sale, the mare had won 1 stakes in 33 races.

:::EDITOR’S NOTE – After finishing the write-ups of the previous two horses, I discovered an error in my data. Neither of these horses debuted at the 5yo+ level. Instead, both debuted as 2yos. The Horses.mdb file I was using to determine the data was “tricked”, as both horses had name changes sometime between their 3yo and 5yo seasons. Storm Over Seattle was known as Storm In Seattle for her first 9 races as a 2yo & 3yo, and Tribute II(GB) was known as Tribute(GB) II for her first 4 races as a 2yo & 3yo. Rather than erase these and redo the data, since I felt it was still interesting and the data is statistically insignificant, I have decided to add this note. I apologize for any inconvenience.:::

There is only 1 mare in the 5yo+ 20-29 race range, so now seems like a good time to mention her. Thirteen Disorder, owned by Vettori, is the mare with this distinction. The mare earned 2 wins in 2008 out of 8 races. One came from a $30,000 MCL win for her now-5yo daughter Out Of Disorder(AUS), while the other came from now-4yo Fifthteen Disorder(AUS) in a $60,000 NW4L Claimer.

—————

Overall, this data does not seem to provide too much insight as to whether you are better off breeding to a horse that was more lightly or heavily raced, or what age they began their career at. In fact, this seems to disprove the notion that these factors matter in the breeding shed. And in fact, they shouldn’t. There is no real reason why a horse’s breeding abilities should be dictated by their age on the track, or by how many times they raced. But it was something that deserved some form of look, to see if the sim does have the realistic tendencies that it claims to have.

This article was a nice break from the lengths of previous articles, as well as acting as a bridge into the biggest statistical analysis of this series, and the culmination of this work, which is coming in the next article.

One of the biggest questions in the sim, and one that is asked every year, is the following: “Should I breed to this mare?” Either the mare has good bloodlines but was a poor runner, or she was a great runner with poor bloodlines. In the next, and most likely final, statistical analysis of retired mares, the Retired Mare Series will look at the statistics of bloodlines vs. racing record. Based off of September 2008 closing Sire Prices and Mare Grades, the Retired Mare series will seek to answer that question once and for all…Or at least to provide a basis for argument.

The series may be off next week as the data is analyzed (and I attend a wedding without computer access), but when it returns, the sim will (hopefully) not be disappointed.