SIM Tools for Breeding Vs Training Vs Racing Success

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 11 years 0 weeks ago

For those that read the forum regularly, they’re probably aware that I’ve been tracking my broodmare assessments (per Anna Liza Doolittle), mare nicks, gallops, workouts, and racing success for my foal crops. I’ve shared these charts with other players, via my website.

Since we only got the help of Miss Anna Liza Doolittle as of Year 30, there isn’t a lot of data to go on. But I do have some thoughts to share about how this all works, based upon my own experiences.


THE IDEAL
First, I think it goes without saying that the ideal situation when it comes to breeding a top quality racehorse is: You start with a “star” mare, breed her to a stallion that provides a higher level nick (B+ or above). The resulting foal gallops “scary good” or “very special animal”, then works a top time for his crop, and then debuts and is a stakes winner right out of the box, and proceeds on to greater glory that includes Grade 1 success.

That’s what we all want. That’s what we’re ultimately trying to make happen when we breed.

I did have this happen with a 400yd Paint filly in my Year 30 foal crop, Dream Splash. She was from a newly retired homebred “star” mare (who was a mediocre racehorse), that nicked A- with the sire. Dream Splash galloped “scary good” and worked a fast time (for a 400yd horse) of 17.68 at 300yds. She debuted with a stakes victory, and raced in four more stakes during the year, winning two with an 80 speed figure, and the other two were narrow losses. Her final race of the year was a victory in the Steward’s Cup, and she was named SIMMY champion of her division.

Ah, if only it was always so easy.


MARE QUALITY
I have decided that mare quality means nothing by itself. After all, even a fake broodmare can’t produce a foal via Immaculate Conception. Without a good nick, star broodmares can’t be stars.

I say this because I’ve had two Standardbred pacer broodmares, and one Quarter Horse broodmare, that were stars, and had already produced at least a few foals, none noteworthy, before I acquired them. The Quarter Horse was even a stakes winner on the track. I had a heck of a time trying to find a nick even as high as a B for these mares, which is saying something, considering that it’s easier to get higher graded nicks with mixed breeds. All three of these mares continued to produce the same poor quality foals for me as they did for their prior owners, and all have now been sold.

So, why would a mare be declared a “star” by Ms. Doolittle if she can’t produce anything good by any of a wide variety of stallions? I can only guess that perhaps the SIM had some genes that these mares could cross well with, but those genes have been eliminated from availability, via horses being sent to Greener Pastures or whatever, before anybody knew how good they might be, and those bloodlines have now been lost to the SIM gene pool. So, studs that these mares might have nicked well with aren’t out there. Again, that’s just a guess on my part. Otherwise, I have no explanation.

But I do have the advice that, if you’re considering spending a lot of money on a star mare, if she’s young or has a puzzling poor produce record, you might want to spend the game points to do a few nicks to see if she’s going to grade well with some stallions you like, before you spend the money to buy her.

I can also support my conclusion that a mare isn’t an island unto herself from the other side. My best Appy foal from the Year 30 crop is out of a “has some potential” broodmare, which is one of the lower assessments. Yet, it’s no surprise to me that the produced a quality Year 30 foal, because she’s been giving me quality foals all along. I have no problem getting B+ nicks with her. So, once again, my experience with her emphasizes that the nick grade is more important than the mare quality.


NICK GRADE
Where the mare quality matters, from what I’ve observed so far, is how it increases the likelihood of getting a certain grade from multiple stallions.

With mixed breeds, here’s my simple guideline of expectations, based upon three breeding seasons of experience:

A star mare should be able to get an A- nicks with multiple stallions
A formidable mare should be able to get B+ nicks
A good mare should be able to get B nicks
A potential mare should be able to get B- nicks

For Thoroughbreds, where bloodlines have been established a lot longer, and things are more competitive, I would go down half a grade on expectations, because I’ve yet to get an A or A- nick with anything other than steeplechasers (though I know other players have, but I doubt it’s very common, unless they’re one of SIM’s super breeders):

A star mare should be able to get B+ nicks
A formidable should get B nicks
A good should get a B- nicks
A potential should get a C+ nicks

As a generality, I would rank Steward-bred mares on the same level as “formidable”, because I’ve had quite a number of them, and have yet to find one that spits out quality foals with any regularity.

So, if you have a mare that can get higher nicks than the above scales, I’d say she’s doing really well. If she can only nick lower than the above scales, I wouldn’t want to hang onto her. (Actually, I wouldn’t bother producing a C+ foal at all. But that’s me.)


THE RANDOM SLIDE
The two breeding factors – mare quality and nicks – have to do with conception. Now we’re at the point of actually producing the foal. My understanding of how this happens is that the computer crunches numbers for the first three generations of the foal’s pedigree, to come up with a certain quality of foal, and then applies a “random slide” number to that result, ending up with a foal that is better, worse, or about the same as what the pedigree dictates. So, just as with real life, breeding the best to the best doesn’t always produce a top quality foal, and occasionally an outstanding racehorse comes from humble beginnings.

In any event, once the foal exists, his potential is set in stone, and it’s up to the player to tap that potential to its fullest.


GALLOPS VERSUS WORKS
I’ve gone back and forth over which I think is more important. When it gets down to it, I pay more attention to the gallop, unless it's a top working youngster. But since I breed all my horses to race myself, I don’t cull slower training horses, so I don’t have any reason to put an excessive amount of importance on training before racing. Still, however, that early training can be a big factor in influencing whether I debut a youngster in a stakes, a maiden special weight, or a maiden claimer.

Most of the time, from looking at my charts for my Year 30 foal crop, the best galloping horses are also the horses that give the fastest workouts. (Bear in mind, I do meticulous equipment training, so the only works that I take seriously are the fastest ones after equipment training is complete.)

An important thing to note about gallops is that they can change, and per the Steward, a horse changing is a little more likely, starting with Year 33. Also, gallops have their own scale. So, one “wings” horse can be substantially better than another “wings” horse, or even better than a lower-scale “wow” horse.

An important thing to know about works is that some bloodlines seem to consistently produce faster or slower working horses, and such speed or pokiness might have nothing to do with how good of a racehorse the youngster will be. My first homebred Grade 1 stakes winner was an Appaloosa route mare that was a slow on the training track, and she did her best racing at age 4. Her first foal was a “scary good”, but he was also a bit on the slow side during workouts. He didn’t break his maiden until his third start. The next year, at three, after finishing second most of the season, he finally put it all together to win the Steward’s Cup.


RACING PERFORMANCE
So, after all of this – mare quality, nick, gallop, and timed workouts – the horse is finally ready to race.

Generally, my best training youngsters are also the youngsters that jump right out with stakes victories. In other words, everything works like it’s supposed to... at least for a race or two.

But there are inevitably those huge disappointments. Horses that come from great bloodlines, with a great nick (or was an expensive Steward-bred), trained fantastic, and then after the player being so certain they have a superstar on their hands, the horse goes out and gets solidly defeated in his first start. That’s a tough blow.

In my opinion, the best thing the player can do for themselves and their horse is to adjust their mindset to catering to the horse’s demonstrated racing abilities, rather than wishing the horse was something he isn’t (or isn’t quite yet). I’ve made the mistake time and time again of putting a well-training youngster in stakes competition, having him get beat, and then taking too long to drop him down to maiden special weight, and having his confidence so severely compromised that it then takes the horse forever to simply break his maiden.

On the other side of the coin, I can sometimes get my lesser training horses to win right out the box, by placing them carefully. This first week of racing for Year 33, I had a “claimer” galloping ordinary horse debut in a $1500 claimer in Alaska. He won and was claimed. Since he was by a stallion that stands for 35k, I took quite a loss on him. But he only won with a 65 speed figure, so I think the writing was on the wall that he was going to be a loss all the way around, and his debut might very well be the best race he ever runs. Most importantly, for me, I’ve got the win as the trainer and breeder.


ODDITIES
Where things get fun with trying to produce a good horse is in the oddities and unusual circumstances.

My Year 32 2yo Quarter Horse sprinters had two colts that hit the top training list for 100yds, both going in 6.29. One was a homebred from a “good” mare with a B+ nick to an $8500 stallion. What was interesting is that this homebred colt was only a “wings” galloper. The other colt was a “wow”, from a B+ nick, that I purchased as a yearling for 300k, because he was by one of my own stallions.

By the end of their 2yo season, the expensive “wow” colt had yet to win a race, finishing second six times out of seven starts. (Thankfully, he did win his 3yo debut.) One of those placings was in a stakes, and he earned 23k for the season, with a high speed figure of 73. In contrast, the “wings” colt broke his maiden in his third start, followed it right up with a NW2 victory, and then stunned me by being beat a nose in his first stakes effort, which had a field of nine. He was beat a neck in another stakes, earning a try at the Steward’s Cup. He finished seventh, but was only beat about a length for the whole thing. He ended the season with 47k in earnings and a high speed figure of 75. Not bad for a mere wings by an $8500 stallion.

My top five homebreds, where I now know what their nicks are (considering you can’t nick with horses no longer alive or at stud), are as follows:

Copper Clone (QH mid) 554k, B- nick
Authentic Royalty (turf router) 389k, B+ nick
Spotted Zip (Appaloosa router) 368k, B- nick
Ghost Rodeo (QH sprinter), 364k, B+ nick
Malable Contestant (trotter), 339k, B nick

So, a lesser nick certainly isn’t automatic doom. But then, one might also argue that the ones above from B- nicks where pretty much a first generation of homebred mixed breeds, so if we would have had nicks back then, maybe most breedings would have been lower grades.

My next highest TB homebred, where I know the nick grade, is turf miler Magic Dance, at 222k, who is from a B nick. As a side note, she was originally a wings galloper, but was downgraded to “OK” as a 2yo with the Year 30 gallop adjustment. That didn’t stop her from being a multiple stakes winner, Grade 1 placed, and winner of 7 races in a 17-race career.


We players strive to do the best we can, and make use of the information given to us by various SIM tools to breed good horses, and then have an early indication of how those foals turned out. Mostly, we get disappointments, but sometimes things work out just like they were supposed to. Occasionally, we get the horse that beats the odds of its mediocre parentage and/or early training in the best possible way.

I want to emphasize that the above is *my* experience based on foal crops of 100-120 in size, covering all breeds and types. I don't doubt that other players will have other types of experiences, especially those players with a much more narrow focus.

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