The good folks at West Point won the 6th race at Churchill today with a horse that really made me stop and think. The race was a scheduled as a turf race for 2-year olds, but it was taken off the turf and run at 1 mile on the dirt. The pace was much too fast and Arabian Prince came from well back to win at 12-1.
The horse is a son of Mshawish so it not that surprising he ran well on the dirt. What is surprising is the price paid by West Point for a horse with little pedigree.
West Point paid $235,000 for hip #34 at last years Fasig-Tipton yearling sale in August at Saratoga. With over 5,000 yearlings yet to be sold West Point paid about 20x the Mshawish stud fee of $12,500. The dam was by Malibu Moon, but had won less than $100,000. She did run a 99 Equibase speed fig, but only won a Delaware allowance race. The second dam was also an unremarkable daughter of Subordination. The rest of the pedigree was not exciting.
This was the first foal of the dam. The nick with sons of El Prado and Malibu Moon is only C+.
At best the pedigree might be considered slightly below average, but many might call it well below average compared to the other horses at these sales.
Yet some of smartest guys in the business paid 20x, and the horse paid off by winning a $97,000 maiden race at first asking. Maybe this race was just a fluke, or maybe this will be a good horse.
What might that really mean?
It might mean that judging yearlings is 80% evaluating their physical characteristics, and pedigree is only a small factor. Why else would West Point pay so much for this horse? This horse is similar to several purchased by Starlight that almost had “negative” pedigree.
If judging yearlings can only be done by physical appearance, you might as well just throw out the sales catalogs.
The implications of this horse cannot be underestimated.
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Then I sat in a nice quiet room and thought about this horse some more. Here is the theory I want to propose:
I will call it the Unicorn Theory
There will be X % of yearlings that will be purchased with almost no regard to their pedigree.or stud fee
X will be some number between 1 and 5, so somewhere between 1% to 5% of horses will sell as “Unicorns”
That means that pedigree is still important for 95% to 99% of the other horses at the yearling sales. I hope I can believe this theory.
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Maybe there is even another theory:
Let’s call this one the Insider Information Theory:
There are a certain number of mares whose physical characteristics are much better than their actual performance. There are certain people that are aware of these facts, and they will bid for the mare’s children accordingly, The mare of Arabian Prince was trained by John Sherriffs, not Joe Nobody and this was her first foal.
One way to look for this is to find mares for high percentage/high quality trainers with lots of chances that are never dropped into claiming races. This mare was 2 for 12, but was never dropped.
Buying A Race Horse 