I spent some time today on Keeneland's two 2-year-old maiden special weights contested yesterday. Scatman won the first division in 1:09.19; Full won the second in 1:09.45. If we had had a special day of all 2-year-old races, as they do at Churchill, I don't think either race would have ranked in the top half of the day's races, time wise. The connections of Scatman might go home happy that they won the faster division, but the perspective of speed figures would eliminate the false comfort. The mediocre times do not mean Scatman and Full won't be good horses, though; I thought Scatman particularly gave an above-average performance using the eye test.
Scat Daddy, sire of Scatman, has obviously made a splash. Maybe a month or a month-and-a-half ago, I looked up his statistics, and was surprised to find that his offspring were only winning 11% or 12% of their starts. That's basically average; you can interpret winning percentage in terms of corresponding field size. (Twelve percent is an average percentage if the field has 1/.12, or 8.3 starters; 20% is an outstanding percentage, because the average race has easily more than 1/.2, or 5 starters.)
It's not an appealing statistic on the face of it, because it doesn't adjust for class, but total winning percentage does a good job of separating good and bad sires. Just run it on a bunch of sires and see. What it tells you more specifically is how quick or fast a sire's offspring generally are. There are some sires who get important horses, usually important distance horses, who don't have an impressive winning percentage. But producing fast horses is an important part of a stallion's evaluation, and wins/starts is very informative in this regard (the number is part of the free equineline.com reports available from the on-line Blood-Horse Stallion Register and other places).
So, because of his average wins/starts start, I had a closet theory that maybe Scat Daddy was a creation of his large number of runners, which are tops among first-crop sires. (See that list <a href="http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/thoroughbred-breeding/sire-lists/first-crop">here</a>). But through 10/10, not even including Scatman's win, Scat Daddy's winning percentage had rebounded to 19%. It appears this isn't a weakness of his, or a leading indicator of eventual anonymity. His wins/starts have caught up to the rest of his record.
Incidentally, I'm surprised the number has changed so much in a relatively short period of time. Have the Scat Daddys been winning at a torrid 30% or so since I last checked, or have Scat Daddy's numbers of starts increased quickly as he's had returning runners added to first-time starters?
The race behind Scatman was crazy bunched, with 2nd and 10th only separated by 3 1/4 lengths. Running 7th by 5 1/4 was Bold Front.
Scat Daddy will have to go a ways to overtake second-crop sire War Front in my eyes, War Front being the sire of Bold Front. War Front could be one of the sires we are talking about in 10 years.
The best owners of young horses in my mind are Jay Em Ess Stable. Their horses do well in absolute terms, and for the money paid, they are even better. They have talented, exciting horses. Couple War Front with Jay Em Ess....and a handicapper has to have a lot of confidence in such a 2-year-old, doesn't he? Bold Front also sold well, at $145,000 last September. Yet, making his debut, Bold Front was the longest shot in his race, an ice-cold 32-1.
I saw enough in his race to think he is going to live up to his stallion and owner. The chart says he "broke slowly." Now, there are countless degrees of this mishap, so one really needs to watch races and draw personal conclusions. The slow start in thus was not negligible. I also saw a horse finishing willingly. Bold Front's price will probably improve dramatically as he continues his career, and I think his finish position will as well.
It's frustrating to me, because I feel like I reliably pick out first-time starters from their profiles who are going to be much better than their starting odds would indicate. But the bettors do tend to know who is a threat on that day. Horses with strong pedigrees often run to their lackluster odds first time out, or at least don't run well enough to figure into the payouts, but continue on to be good horses.
Still, it's hard for me to believe the bettors are as smart as this pattern would suggest. It's hard for me to believe they wouldn't give a second look to a horse if they knew it was going to win a stake. I understand that certain stables aim for winning first out, but is first-out evaluation so exact that bettors can be extremely sure a good horse isn't going to win first out? It might just take a few Bold Fronts for the superior insight (if I do flatter myself) to pay mutuel dividends
Doing about as Bold Front did, that is to say running mid-pack in a bunched affair, was Fifty Five South in division two (to be precise, he was 5th by 3). This horse's pedigree caught my eye because he is a half to The Factor. His dam also was a half to the very fast Chief Seattle, who placed in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, and got a shot at stud. Fifty Five South was only a $2,000 weanling, selling a couple of years ago, obviously before The Factor had made any noise. This was only so much of an oversight, as Fifty Five South is by Cuvee, and now gelded. But the good female families do hold up, and produce runners to one degree or another. Chief Seattle was also an inexpensive Seattle Slew, if I remember correctly, although again, I can't really term a $2,000 Cuvee weanling as inexpensive, or as underselling.
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