Nobody has a master list of horses that would be a good fit for Rockport Harbor. Unbridled's Song is difficult enough to work with, and Rocky's female family isn't a ton of help from a SIM perspective, so the best you're going to be able to do is find a few dirt milers and start experimenting. Some things will work, some things will fail horribly, but thats life.
Generally, it would seen that a pedigree like that is at least worth a chance, provided you don't have to pay a fortune for it.
Nashinda
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Eric Nalbone
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No problem, just pointing out that a large reason you haven't gotten many productive answers to the question is because it would just take too much effort to come up with a coherent answer; the best way is just to experiment.
On a different note, I'm noticing that you may not have as firm a grasp on some of the terminology we generally use in horse racing, particularly as it relates to denoting siblings. Understanding this will go a long way towards making sure you understand what people are saying when they're talking about crosses, so I've explained below:
Horses are considered "half brothers/sisters" or "full brothers/sisters" to a specific horse if they are from the same MOTHER (half brothers/sisters/siblings) or have the exact same parentage (full brothers/sisters/siblings). Horses that share the same FATHER are simply said to share the same sire. To explain with a SIM example:
Stars Come Out (Symbol x Darling Gold) is a half sister to Impressive (Tremendous x Darling Gold). She shares the same sire as Conduit (Symbol x Rain Dancer), but we do not refer to Conduit and Stars Come Out as half-siblings.
So Nashinda, like Silverbulletday, is by Silver Deputy, but the two are not, in horse racing terms, half-sisters.
On a different note, I'm noticing that you may not have as firm a grasp on some of the terminology we generally use in horse racing, particularly as it relates to denoting siblings. Understanding this will go a long way towards making sure you understand what people are saying when they're talking about crosses, so I've explained below:
Horses are considered "half brothers/sisters" or "full brothers/sisters" to a specific horse if they are from the same MOTHER (half brothers/sisters/siblings) or have the exact same parentage (full brothers/sisters/siblings). Horses that share the same FATHER are simply said to share the same sire. To explain with a SIM example:
Stars Come Out (Symbol x Darling Gold) is a half sister to Impressive (Tremendous x Darling Gold). She shares the same sire as Conduit (Symbol x Rain Dancer), but we do not refer to Conduit and Stars Come Out as half-siblings.
So Nashinda, like Silverbulletday, is by Silver Deputy, but the two are not, in horse racing terms, half-sisters.
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Laura Ferguson
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Just to add on to what Eric posted:
The main reason that horses out of the same mare are referred to as half-siblings, but horses by the same sire are not (although genetically, they are half-siblings), is that a sire can have 100s and 100s of offspring, while a mare only has a few.
To use Silver Deputy as an example, it doesn't mean all that much to say that two horses by Silver Deputy are half-siblings, because, not counting 2006 2yos, yearlings and new foals, Silver Deputy has 737 named foals. Moreover, stallions are probably going to be bred to a wider range of mares, in terms of quality, than mares. If you have a mare worthy of being bred to A.P. Indy, you're not going to send her to a $300 stallion the following year (now, she might eventually go there if her first foals stink, but you wouldn't want a half-sibling to a stinky horse anyway). On the flip side, if the mare gets a G1 winner out of a $300 stallion, and then goes to A.P. Indy, you'd probably want the A.P. half to the G1 winner - if she did that well when bred to a mediocre stallion, she might do better with Indy (on the flip side, she might not, but you're taking a chance on a better bred horse).
I think the reason Eric says that Unbridled's Song is difficult to work with is that he didn't exactly set the world on fire in the old sim. A lot of the offspring sired by Unbridled's Song right now, weren't in the old sim. His biggest moneywinners didn't earn all that much money, compared to other sires, and they typically broke their maiden, and never won again, making most of their money by picking up minor checks in rich stakes with small fields. Even if You Sing and Secret Song each won three races and Triumph Song finished second in several stakes. The breeding nicks (what sire goes well with what dam) have changed in the sim, so that doesn't mean that Unbridled's Song is still a mediocre stallion, or that sons of Unbridled's Song are mediocre (I hope not, as I stand Songandaprayer), but you don't have much from the old sim to fall back on, so you're going to have to experiment more than if you had a stallion who had a bit more popular/successful pedigree in the old sim. This may not be a bad thing, as you don't have preconceived notions as to what should or shouldn't work.
If I were you, and looking to breed mares to Rockport Harbor, I'd look for mares with dirt pedigrees - if you want to breed horses more in the 6-7 furlong range, look for sprinters, if you want to breed horses more in the 1 mile to 1 1/8 mile range, possibly a little further, look for those that can get a bit more ground. If you're not sure, come back and post that you're considering these pedigrees, and does the sim generally treat them as dirt? Storm Cat, for example, tends to sire more turf than dirt in the sim, but again, there are exceptions to that rule. I'd also steer clear of using a mare with Unbridled blood (and be careful using horses from the Fappiano line - like Victory Gallop or Cryptoclearance), although the rest of his pedigree is different enough that it's pretty easy to avoid having a horse too closely inbred (where the same sire shows up twice in the 3x3 pedigree chart under "Pedigree Information" on the horse's page).
This sire line isn't necessarily the soundest, so you might also ask, would this cross be likely to produce a sound foal? As a newer player, you probably want to try and stay away from superfragile horses, as they're more likely to break, and less forgiving of "trainer error". Silver Charm-line horses are typically (not always) more fragile, so I'd probably avoid them for now. They might be a good cross, and a fast cross, but it does you no good if the horse breaks down in his/her second or third start.
Hope that helps!
Laura
The main reason that horses out of the same mare are referred to as half-siblings, but horses by the same sire are not (although genetically, they are half-siblings), is that a sire can have 100s and 100s of offspring, while a mare only has a few.
To use Silver Deputy as an example, it doesn't mean all that much to say that two horses by Silver Deputy are half-siblings, because, not counting 2006 2yos, yearlings and new foals, Silver Deputy has 737 named foals. Moreover, stallions are probably going to be bred to a wider range of mares, in terms of quality, than mares. If you have a mare worthy of being bred to A.P. Indy, you're not going to send her to a $300 stallion the following year (now, she might eventually go there if her first foals stink, but you wouldn't want a half-sibling to a stinky horse anyway). On the flip side, if the mare gets a G1 winner out of a $300 stallion, and then goes to A.P. Indy, you'd probably want the A.P. half to the G1 winner - if she did that well when bred to a mediocre stallion, she might do better with Indy (on the flip side, she might not, but you're taking a chance on a better bred horse).
I think the reason Eric says that Unbridled's Song is difficult to work with is that he didn't exactly set the world on fire in the old sim. A lot of the offspring sired by Unbridled's Song right now, weren't in the old sim. His biggest moneywinners didn't earn all that much money, compared to other sires, and they typically broke their maiden, and never won again, making most of their money by picking up minor checks in rich stakes with small fields. Even if You Sing and Secret Song each won three races and Triumph Song finished second in several stakes. The breeding nicks (what sire goes well with what dam) have changed in the sim, so that doesn't mean that Unbridled's Song is still a mediocre stallion, or that sons of Unbridled's Song are mediocre (I hope not, as I stand Songandaprayer), but you don't have much from the old sim to fall back on, so you're going to have to experiment more than if you had a stallion who had a bit more popular/successful pedigree in the old sim. This may not be a bad thing, as you don't have preconceived notions as to what should or shouldn't work.
If I were you, and looking to breed mares to Rockport Harbor, I'd look for mares with dirt pedigrees - if you want to breed horses more in the 6-7 furlong range, look for sprinters, if you want to breed horses more in the 1 mile to 1 1/8 mile range, possibly a little further, look for those that can get a bit more ground. If you're not sure, come back and post that you're considering these pedigrees, and does the sim generally treat them as dirt? Storm Cat, for example, tends to sire more turf than dirt in the sim, but again, there are exceptions to that rule. I'd also steer clear of using a mare with Unbridled blood (and be careful using horses from the Fappiano line - like Victory Gallop or Cryptoclearance), although the rest of his pedigree is different enough that it's pretty easy to avoid having a horse too closely inbred (where the same sire shows up twice in the 3x3 pedigree chart under "Pedigree Information" on the horse's page).
This sire line isn't necessarily the soundest, so you might also ask, would this cross be likely to produce a sound foal? As a newer player, you probably want to try and stay away from superfragile horses, as they're more likely to break, and less forgiving of "trainer error". Silver Charm-line horses are typically (not always) more fragile, so I'd probably avoid them for now. They might be a good cross, and a fast cross, but it does you no good if the horse breaks down in his/her second or third start.
Hope that helps!
Laura
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Eric Nalbone
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Eric Nalbone
- Hall of Fame
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- Joined: 18 years ago
Don't take my earlier response as a hint to be less post-happy. Trust me, you'd be hard pressed to post enough to be considered "post-happy." I simply posted that because you'd been asking a lot of questions about Rockport Harbor with no real responses, I didn't want you to feel like we'd all completely forgotten you or were ignoring the posts, its just that when we don't immediately have an answer, we pass it over and trust that someone else will answer it.
Keep asking questions, its how you learn. The one thing that would be helpful for us that frequent the Breeding Forum is a little bit of explanation from your end with the various mares you ask about. What ideas do you have for the mare, what justification for those ideas do you have, etc. With that kind of information, we can either endorse your ideas or help you refine them; it also winds up being a lot more of a learning experience for you when you go through and do a lot of the leg work yourself, because trust me, nothing can substitute for experience!
Keep asking questions, its how you learn. The one thing that would be helpful for us that frequent the Breeding Forum is a little bit of explanation from your end with the various mares you ask about. What ideas do you have for the mare, what justification for those ideas do you have, etc. With that kind of information, we can either endorse your ideas or help you refine them; it also winds up being a lot more of a learning experience for you when you go through and do a lot of the leg work yourself, because trust me, nothing can substitute for experience!