Are you still looking for a yearling that could be the next World Champion? Chances are that Harrisburg is the place to look. The largest sale in terms of entries can be a daunting task to find the right horse but if you prepare yourself by creating a short list of what you want, whether it is by sex, gait, jurisdiction or sire it will save you a lot of time when it comes to inspecting your choices in the flesh.
Most successful trainers like to see as many of the horses they can prior to the sale by visiting the farms where they can see the yearlings run in the paddock rather than depend upon the videos. For most prospective owners this is next to impossible unless they are self employed and can take a month off. Since it ultimately is the owners responsibility to pay the bills, not just for buying but for training and staking your purchases over the next nine months till they hopefully qualify to race, a good way to ensure that your investment is a wise one is to do your own research into the pedigrees.
Stallion profiles are an invaluable aid to short listing the sale entries. Every stallion has a profile based on the mares he has been successful with. You can even use the profile of a similar stallion when trying to predict the fate of first crop stallions whose progeny have yet to race. This year there are just a handful of first crop sires including Manofmanymissions and Roll With Joe, both with sizeable consignments. Roll With Joe is a full brother to Bettors Delight and you know what the profile of Bettors Delight is don't you. You don't ? Well join the majority of buyers at any sale who blindly follow their trainers into making bad decisions.
By tabulating the top performers by a particular sire to show the sire lines in their pedigrees you will see a pattern emerge than can be summarized in one or two sentences that key on the presence or absence of certain sire lines e.g. Meadow Skipper, Adios, Volomite, Big Towner etc. For Bettors Delight the profile has two factors and reads:
1. Non Meadow Skipper line dams with a second or third dam by Meadow Skipper, a son of Meadow Skipper or an Albatross line sire (11)
2. Most Happy Fella line dams with a second or third dam by an Adios line sire (5)
A quick scan of the top 16 shows that 15 of them have an Albatross line and 15 have an Adios line through Abercrombie (9), Bret Hanover (5) and Adios Vic (1)
If you go through the 36 Roll With Joe yearlings and eliminate on the basis of not having the requisite Meadow Skipper and Adios lines you cut the list to 17. It is shocking, to me at least, to note that the number of yearlings with Meadow Skipper line dams is 25 or 70%, while the percentage of the top 16 performers by Bettors Delight with Meadow Skipper line dams is the very opposite at 30% - now somebody is not doing their homework when it comes to selecting a stallion. And if you think the consignors of the 45 yearlings by Bettors Delight have done any better, with a profile that has not changed since his first crop hit the tracks in 2003, then think again because the number is slightly worse at 71% Meadow Skipper line dams.
Here are the profiles for the Trotting and pacing yearlings in Harrisburg. Now do your homework and put the percentages in your favor. The pedigrees are all in the PM Online database and if you sign up at the Guru level prior to the Harrisburg sale you can get your first year subscription at half price - that's a saving of $100 and you get my sale reports for Harrisburg for half price too and access to the PM Online library where the all important Stallion Profiles are kept. E-mail me to obtain these special offers with the subject "Harrisburg Offers".
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