Formerly
@Perf_Genetics
and now Director of Research & Development at Stable Analytics LLC. Bought a few fast racehorses using my 👁️ & machine learning models
My Australian Racing partnership - 6 horses trained by the leading Australian trainers -
@GaiWaterhouse1
& Adrian Bott,
@FreedmanRacing
and
@JohnOSheaRacing
. The 6 were purchased by me using my machine learning models. Have a look at the details here -
Storm Boy takes 25.5 strides to cover the last furlong of the
@mmsnippets
Magic Millions in 11:05s. That's 2.3 strides/second with a 7.8m stride length in the final furlong. Most 2yos can't generate a 7.8m stride length ever, let alone when they are tiring after busting the clock
When you have horses in training in Australia, Ireland and North America, the comparative training methodologies and facilities are stark to say the least. Here’s one a day after a breeze/fast work in Australia. This isn’t ever happening in North America.
That time of year where breeders are visiting stallion farms to inspect stallions. A reminder that the undisputed greatest thoroughbred sire to ever live - Northern Dancer - stood at 15.1. If someone opines to you about a new sire and says “he’s too small” quickly walk away.
Last year with
@starbloodstock
I bought just two yearlings
@GoffsUK
Doncaster yearling sale. A colt for £25,000 and a filly for £20,000. Sold both back at the breeze ups this year for £160k & £100k and both are running in the 2yo stakes
@Ascot
today. Best of luck to connections.
I think it should be mandatory that if you’re going to post her sales cost you should put her winning prizemoney - £3,240 for the winner I believe. Just shows how bad prizemoney needs addressing relative to costs in England.
@edvaughan1
is tip of the iceberg.
@GBRacing
@GBRI_UK
And there are still some in England that can’t quite understand/believe the single issue of why they are losing so many of their better horses to overseas 👇
#itstheprizemoney
🤯 PYLEDRIVER bags a cool £415k for his HK Vase second - more than his entire earnings from 6 wins (inc G1) and 3 placings in the UK.
Worth the trip
@Muir_Grassick
? 👏 🇬🇧
#HKRacing
#HKIR
The whole sales season you walk horses back up and down checking their conformation and being hyper critical, and then you go and look at the graded/group stakes winners at the breeding stock sales and you see front ends like this 👇
Hopefully the European breeze up sales will go in the next few months as
@starbloodstock
has an absolute beauty by American Pharoah out of a stakes winning mare to offer. Being prepared by
@TheBloodstockC
🚀
How do we find the Elite Thoroughbred Racehorse? Here is a series of blog posts describing our journey with artificial intelligence and data science and how we go about selecting yearlings -
#racehorses
#datascience
#machinelearning
10 flights, 8 sales and 7 COVID tests later, I’m all done buying for the 2020 yearling sales series. Certainly a strange year. Thanks to all the consignors and grooms throughout the year who presented their horses in terrific order. Hopefully I’ve found some fast ones!
We work in an industry where elite horses (GSW) are less than 1% of the population. Thats 1 out of 100.
If any agent or consultant in the "prognostication game" looks at 10 horses and tells you that anything above 1 or 2 of the 10 are potentially "elite", they are full of it.
Always thought it was fascinating when he bought him that
@KennyMcPeek
said Curlin had the best hind leg he’d ever bought - a flat, long pelvis from hip to tail, long, forward placed femur from tail to stifle and an open angle to his hock. This photo shows it pretty well.
And he flew. Start to 1f in 10.08s, Start to 2f in 20.59 😮 Despite slipping three times on the ground. 3rd fastest of 142 horses at the sale. A seriously rapid horse.
Thanks to
@BH_EMitchell
for including me in an article in this weeks
@BloodHorse
magazine on using technology for gait analysis. The
@DeepLabCut
package is sure to change industries like the thoroughbred. Read here -
Four bought
@GoffsUK
day one with
@starbloodstock
for breezing in 2023. Filly by Holy Roman Emperor, filly by Havana Grey, colt by Iffraaj and a filly by Inns of Court. All to be prepared by
@DiegoDi41476096
Just booked my tickets to fly to Australia to see my family for the first time since January 2020 and hopefully find a few days (and fast horses) in QLD for
@mmsnippets
I feel like I’ve won lotto.
Delighted to be asked by
@jackcantillon
of
@SyndicatesHQ
to talk about how we use machine learning and A.I in racehorse selection - Horse Racing's Tech Transformation: Are Machines Taking Over? | Art of t...
Always a timely reminder to seek a little respite in the Northern Dancer bar
@keenelandsales
and look at the photo of him after winning the Blue Grass Stks. All 15.1 hands of him and full of muscle, to then go outside and see a load of giraffes masquerading as future racehorses.
A thread on the
@jockeyclub
proposal to limit stallion book numbers to 140. Overarching everything is something that must be understood....As we have a closed stud book, once we reach a point where inbreeding becomes an issue to the breed its too late to do anything. Its over.
One of the goals I have when buying yearlings is to buy shape similarity. The idea is by reducing the variability (eg. buy one type), and incrementally learning of errors, it increases the chance of buying a good horse.
G2SW Malavath (L) - Lot 42
@Goffs1866
Dubai Breeze Up (R)
A good day racing
@BreedersCup
with the highlight watching Malavath, a filly we bought for just £29,000, line up as a 3yo in the Mile and run a gallant 5th. Hopefully more to come from her as she looked outstanding on the day.
A patience game
@keenelandsales
but managed to snag this sharp looking filly by Mizzen Mast for Blackbriar Racing for just $11k. A May born filly that’s out of a SW and a full to a SW and her 2yo half sister is stakes placed.
Imagine being the manager
@SkyRacingAU
and letting real talent like
@LizzieJelfs
and
@TonyBrassel
find their way out the gate, but having some absolute C grade oxygen thieves stay on the payroll. Unreal.
Ghaiyyath must be awfully efficient in terms of his biomechanics, cardiovascular and respiratory capacity to do what he does. That type of efficiency is generally heritable.
Offered by
@EcurieMonceaux
, the very well named 𝑴𝑨𝑳𝑨𝑽𝑨𝑻𝑯 🏔 adds another top to her name as she sells for €3,200,000 to
@MoyglareStud
at TheVentedElevage ❄️.
A very well researched tome has arrived on my desk, just in time for the Christmas break. Some reading ahead. For those interested contact
@shigeru_hotta
It looks well worth the cost.
Took photos of the "shortlist"
@GoffsUK
. Interested to see how there is a basic 'shape' that I like, but that some horses are more similar to one another than others.
Still can’t believe that in this seemingly strong market
@Tattersalls1766
I was able to buy this absolute weapon for the
@BrzUps
sales next year. A Night of Thunder filly no less out of a full sister to the brilliantly fast July Stakes G1 placegetter Main Aim. 🚀
Had to wait for her but as they say, buy the one you want not the one you’re left with. A beauty by
@DarleyStallions
Night of Thunder found
@Goffs1866
A bit partial having bought the stakes performed Lady Penelope last year who looked like this also.
Using
@DeepLabCut
& 'walk-with' videos to look at body dimensions/bone lengths/joint angles & what we see at the walk, & how that correlates to stride length/frequency at sub-maximal speeds (trot and canter)....let's see if what we think generates length/frequency, actually does.
Happy 5 year anniversary to
@HRIRacing
@bkav2011
on the announcement that races in Ireland would have sectional timing by Jan 1 2017.
SIS still take the cash each year but never implemented part of the agreement in creating sectionals. What other business allows such ineptitude?
A generalization, but racehorses that can lead/press pace in high class races tend to be better stallions. Why? Because to lead in those races requires biomechanical and cardiovascular efficiency and that efficiency is somewhat heritable.
🌋 The brilliant Pinatubo, Shamardal’s three-time Group 1-winning son, looks a hugely exciting recruit to the
@DarleyStallions
Dalham Hall Stud ranks. His introductory fee has been set at £35,000 🔵
Seven two-year-olds that were either bought for clients as yearlings to race/pinhook in Europe or bought as two-year-olds with Royal Ascot as the goal have been entered to run next week. Best of luck!
Found a gem to breeze next year with the lads
@tatts_ireland
Fast looking first foal colt by the underrated Dragon Pulse out of a half sister to G1 winning sprinter Caradak. Good buying at €8k!
Its a fairly lengthy read at 50 pages, but if you are interested in "how" a horse goes quickly (or not), its worth downloading
@Arioneo_off
white paper on the subject. Full of interesting information -
Two runners bought as yearlings with
@starbloodstock
and
@DiegoDiasracing
taking their chances
@Ascot
today. Make Haste (pic) in the Queen Mary and Brosay in the Windsor Castle. Only bought 10 for the partners so to have two lining up today is quite satisfying.
Got to admire the Japanese when it comes to understanding why an elite horse is what it is. An article on Contrail - In after work recovery, it takes an average of 11 minutes for a racehorse to reach a heart rate of 100 beats/min or less. Contrail takes 6
Using
@Arioneo_off
….first horse, in relative terms, uses stride frequency (brown line) over stride length (green line) to generate speed. Just an average horse. Second horse, at about 45kph use of stride length to frequency inverts. Same peak speed. This is a stakes class filly
Sprinters or stayers, it doesn't seem to matter for
@Ballydoyle
. The combined use of a crossover and tongue tie and it's known effect on run time to fatigue is an advantage they take nearly every time. Surprised others don't have it as standard gear also.
Breeze morning
@curraghrace
for some of the breeze up group with
@starbloodstock
.
@DiegoDi41476096
sends up our
@JuddmonteFarms
Arrogate-Funny Moon colt on the 5f all weather. Great to have the opportunity to prepare these horses at the Curragh. They learn a lot, very quickly.
A reminder….any process a buyer uses to select at a yearling sale should end up selecting “the most likely to happen” as it is a game of probability. Efforts to capture the elite outlier will send you broke as they don’t share enough characteristics common with all elite horses.
If you are lining up to buy one at the Classic sale today, don’t have sire envy and don’t fault judge.
Remember
Mr Brightside is by Bullbars.
Doriemus had a jowl the width of a ruler.
Elvstroem failed the vet.
I Wish I Win born with a crooked leg.
Brawny Spirit was a midget
Notice the different colored wraps on the limbs. This is so the trainer can visually see changes in stride as the horse works. Of course IMUs are significantly more accurate and easily applied.
Here is the relative risk ratio for US racetrack fatalities:
RR = 1 means that track does not affect outcome
RR < 1 means that risk of fatality is decreased by the track, so a "protective factor"
RR > 1 means that the risk of fatality is increased by the track, so a "risk factor"
Before the North American breeder sacrificed stride efficiency for stride length and bred a taller,longer, leggier (and less sound) horse...there was this guy...
Had a good visit to
@coolmoreamerica
this morning. Maximum Security is a much better looking horse than I was expecting to see. Not too big, plenty of muscle and well balanced. Terrific walk to him. Should suit an awful lot of mares physically. Thanks
@MwAdrian
If you listen between me saying "this is where I need to convince you...", you'll hear
@starbloodstock
say "you've got no chance...."
Nunthorpe winner now....the ribbing will last a lifetime...
If there’s ever a time that
@keenelandsales
@FasigTiptonCo
and
@CBAKy
needed to jointly come out with an “inspection card” app that buyers can download and fill out their inspection requests without touching a pen or card at a barn, and consignors can mange inspections, now is it
A new paper on mtDNA and how it relates to Thoroughbred families. Turns out when you us DNA to trace mares back to the start of the Stud Book, there are actually a lot of "families" we think are distinct, that actually come from the same founder mare -