Many of you will have already spotted this blog about siring lines on the View from the racetrack grandstand blogspot posted in February this year – but the announcement today that Highview Tommy (son of Bettor’s Delight) will stand at Woodlands Stud has prompted me to revisit it and seek your views. And of course to share mine!
Take time to read his post, and mine, and send in your comments via “Comments” at the very bottom of this blog. (Update: already had a very interesting comment posted from Murray Brown, check it out).
It raises the question of when and if two of the top racehorse producing sires of recent times – Cams Card Shark (Bettor’s Delight) and Artsplace (Art Major) – will have the ability to continue their siring lines into the future.
It is remarkable that after so long at the top of his game, Bettor’s Delight has so few sons (such as Kenneth J, Betterthancheddar, and now locally Highview Tommy) as candidates to take over that dynasty. I blogged on that myself in September last year.
Likewise Art Major, although less tried in New Zealand, has had plenty of time internationally to throw up more than Art Official as a candidate for the Artsplace succession so far. I mean candidates that grab the commercial interest of breeders as well as their admiration for past deeds on the track. Sires than gain traction and can hold their service fees. Siring success is such a tough venture.
I can see Art Major’s fortune as a sire or sires changing locally if the crop of young Art Major colts racing here like Isaiah, Sky Major, Tiger Tara and Follow The Stars keep performing like they have done to date. But Kiwi breeders will want to wait a year or so until they show a step up to the Cups and Interdoms before getting too carried away.
The blog highlights the rise and rise of the Direct Scooter siring line, which only 15-20 years ago looked like it might be a goner. There’s the Matt’s Scooter / Mach Thee / Somebeachsomewhere line from the Northern Hemisphere and In The Pocket / Christian Cullen and Changeover giving every chance to the line in the Southern Hemisphere.
Another factor the “View from the racetrack grandstand” blog highlights is the increasing arsenal of the Western Hanover branch of Meadow Skipper’s line internationally – most strongly through Western Ideal / Rocknroll Hanover (neither of which had much influence directly here in New Zealand), most potently through the latter’s sons Rock N Roll Heaven and now A Rocknroll Dance who are both available in Australia and New Zealand.
And yet there are no guarantees, are there!
It would have been a brave person 15 years ago to predict that Western Hanover / Direct Scooter combination in ascendence now.
Siring lines turn up some lovely surprises. For example, the strongest Meadow Skipper line we have today was founded by Oil Burner whose one outstanding son at stud was No Nukes – no other son of Oil Burner reached anything like No Nukes’ siring success. (Downunder we had Oil Burner’s son Devil’s Adversary standing for about 10 years from 1992, and he got a couple of decent books but didn’t show up much and dropped right away).
In the same way, it only took one of No Nukes’ sons – Western Hanover – to open up a range of strong branches that are still evolving and sorting themselves out. Will the Western Ideal branch keep growing? Or will a “dark horse” like Shadow Play or Well Said turn out to be Western Hanover’s most successful siring son?
Cam Fella, born in the same year as No Nukes, appeared to have many more successful siring sons to carry on his legacy – Cambest, Camluck, Cam’s Card Shark, Presidential Ball…. and yet he is struggling now with just one descendant – Bettor’s Delight – as a top sire, and no proven inheritors yet.
What does this tell us? That it takes just one, just one, to turn a line’s fortunes around.
And that one “sire of sires” can come from the less-than-obvious sources.
As breeders, we have a role to play in all this. Thoughtful breeding and giving quality new sires an opportunity are two ways we can contribute.
In another 15 years we might be looking back and saying: “Well, you’d never have guessed a son of Mister Big would reignite the Artsplace line.” Or perhaps: “Cam Fella line was almost gone until those sons of Roll With Joe really stood up to be counted!” Or even: “So it’s the Changeover line rather than Christian Cullen that’s blossoming down here.” Or in my own dreams: “Thank heavens for Tintin In America, keeping that Bret Hanover line alive, and his outstanding son Tantan has already left 50% winners to foals.”
What do you think?
b4breeding 
After half a century of being involved in the breeding of Standardbred horses and studying various theories involved with doing so, I have come to the conclusion that GREAT SIRES STAND ALONE. They are great sires simply because they are great sires. Its almost as though they have contracted a rare disease. Show me a rule and I’ll show you one or more exceptions to it. Of course it helps to have a great pedigree, to have been a great horse on the racetrack, to have been blessed with exceptional conformation and a multitude of other factors. The bottom line becomes trial and error. The vast majority of stallions entering the stud barn will fail. Only a chosen few will succeed on a high level. In simplistic terms – Many are called, but few are chosen.
Murray Brown
Great response Murray, thanks! To be a great sire is hard enough, but to be a sire of sires (i.e. to leave one or more who are also successful as sires) is incredibly rare. In the whole history of standardbred breeding we come down to a handful of names. When you say “the bottom line becomes trial and error” do you mean the process of finding the mares that work best with the sire?
Yes and no. I’m of the belief that truly great sires will conquer all obstacles placed in their way. Examples of such sires were Adios sand Stars Pride. Neither of them initially received many mares. They also received very few if any quality mares. But they overcame. Once they started getting quality mares it became obvious that they did better with some than with others, such as Adios doing well with mares by Billy Direct and his son Tar Heel. Stars Pride did the same with mares by Hoot Mon and Rodney.
You had one Down Under in Vance Hanover. He lacked virtually all of the prerequisites that most people feel that a sire needs, yet he overcame.
Hi Bea…Good article, yet another unproven sire to stand at stud.
Highview Tommy very good bloodlines but is that enough in today’s market for just off the track entires. Is a million dollar earner and a 1.55.2Mr unproven sire
going to attract mares.? As we are both well aware the amount of mares being bred in Australia and New Zealand is shrinking every year,but the amount of sires available is growing year by year..If some of these new off the track entires are not marketed and promoted to breeders with unique incentives
to breed to these new sires, most of them will just stand in the paddock
chewing grass…
A bit like me..
Kind Regards.
Standardbred Breeding For All.
Thank you! We got a better range of incentives in NZ last season, nothing very innovative but a good start. There was a range from loyalty discounts, to payment timing options, to pay-back incentives. I’m hoping this continues to grow, and will be keen to see what is offered this time around. My preference as an industry is that we find breeding-wide incentives, and hopefully across Australasia, and the one the most appeals to me is some sort of return for breeders from the horse’s actual performance. This rewards quality and would bring more support to breeders who go to sires that produce better older horses, as well as successful rewarding risk-takers who support new sires.