Dr. Roman and 24 New Masters of the Breed
- 3 hours ago
- 8 min read
While looking into Sovereignty for comparisons to the myriad of his half-kin slated for the 152nd Derby, I had noticed that his Roman's numbers looked off. I actually had to go back to last year's analysis just to make sure that I wasn't in the Alzheimer's stage of my life. Thank God, I am not.
They were "wrong." So was Shared Belief's.
So too was Emerging Market. I continued with each and every Top ten horse and the only one that remained untouched was Wonder Dean from Japan.
I immediately sent an email to Pedigreequery, thinking they must have somehow misappropriated new ANZ chefs and corrupted Dr. Roman’s perfect Chef’s list. By this point I was an impatient wreck, so I also sent a message to Stephen Miller asking whether he had approved a number of new chefs.
Graciously, he sent a quick response: "I'm not involved with the placement of CDRs these days Lisa. It should all be with Steve Roman at least for the time being."
Can this truly be? I was flabbergasted.
I went to our Web Editor to update the New Top Ten article, truly not knowing what the heck I was going to say about all this. There were 3 new notifications for New Member Requests from earlier that afternoon. I looked at those first.
One of the new members went by the name of STEVEN ROMAN.
No way… it can’t be - but could it? What do I do? Is someone just messing with me, or could it actually be him - THE MAN HIMSELF? I just stared at that name for a long time.
I had to know, but I didn’t want to bother him. What if it wasn’t him? But what if it was? Not only could I find out what was going on with the Chefs, I might even be able to slip in a few questions.
It took a full hour before I got up the nerve to hit send on my silly email.
"Is this THE Dr. Roman?"
The rest, as they say, is HISTORY!
Hello Lisa,
Guilty as charged.
I signed up to inform you of some developments that should interest you, but I couldn't find a functional contact link on your web site. I recently received an email from Eric Mitchell at The Blood-Horse asking about the future of Dosage following the departure of Steve Miller as the overseer of the project. He put me in contact with an old colleague of mine and Dosage aficionado named Ken Kush who had been pushing for an update to the system. Ken and I agreed to work on identifying new chefs-de-race that reflected developments in North American racing since I "retired" a decade ago. We have since completed the initial phase of the update, and the result is best explained by showing you my latest email to Eric Mitchell. By the way, the changes have already been implemented by Jeff Smith at pedigreequery.com.
________________________________________
Dear Eric,
As you know, Ken Kush and I have completed our update of the chef-de-race list, and I wanted to take a moment to share some background on the methodology behind our revisions, as well as some context for why we have undertaken this project at this particular time.
Steve Miller's primary focus has always been European racing, and so it is entirely natural that his attention as curator of the chef-de-race roster would lean in that direction. The Dosage system itself has European roots, as the original chefs-de-race were identified by a Frenchman and an Italian whose work was centered on Europe. It wasn't until the late 1970s that Abram Hewitt, in a Blood-Horse magazine article, introduced a roster of mainly American-based chefs-de-race in order to make the system more applicable to racing on this side of the Atlantic - and it was that very article that first sparked my own interest in the subject. With Steve having stepped back from his role, it felt like a natural and timely opportunity to refocus attention on North America and ensure the system remains as fresh and useful as possible for American racing.
The key metric we used in the identification process is the Center of Distribution (CD). Although it tends to be overlooked by the general public, the CD is actually the more accurate measure of aptitudinal type. Its primary strength is that it operates on a continuous linear scale ranging from +2.00 (pure speed) to -2.00 (pure stamina), making it more precise than the Dosage Index (DI). Each of the five aptitudinal groups corresponds to a point along that scale: Brilliant (B) at +2.00, Intermediate (I) at +1.00, Classic (C) at 0.00, Solid (S) at -1.00, and Professional (P) at -2.00.
As a reminder, think of the scale as you would a seesaw where the aptitudinal groups are evenly spaced and the assigned values represent distances to the left and right of center. Now consider that the seesaw is pivoted in the middle and that the points in the DP are weights placed on the seesaw at the location corresponding to their aptitudinal group. Depending on the "weights", the seesaw will tip to the left or to the right. The CD is that position along the seesaw where the pivot must be moved to bring the system back into balance. In a sense, it is similar to a center of gravity where all of the weighted aptitudes supplied by chefs-de-race in the four generations merge into a single point. Here is a graphical representation of the concept.
For context, most North American Thoroughbreds have pedigrees with a CD falling between 0.00 and +1.00, with sprinter populations tending toward +1.00 and stayer populations tending toward 0.00.
For this exercise, we began by focusing on sires with at least three sons among the 150 leading sires on the general sire list, since ideally a chef-de-race should display an ability to transmit his influence across future generations. Occasionally, a chef-de-race may be identified solely on the basis that his runners' performance type dramatically contradicts their pedigree; however, that is an uncommon occurrence and is not the case in the current update.
The methodology involves collecting data on a candidate-sire's best runners - usually several dozen stakes winners - in order to obtain a representative sample. We emphasize stakes winners because their performance characteristics are more likely to reflect their true genetic potential. The average winning distance (AWD) of their stakes wins is then compared to their existing Dosage figures to determine whether the distance-pedigree relationship conforms to the model.
To illustrate, an analysis of 61 stakes winners by Tapit, encompassing 208 stakes wins, reveals an AWD of 8.67 furlongs and an average CD of 0.69. The present model predicts an average CD of 0.43 at that AWD, indicating that Tapit is transmitting more stamina to his runners than is currently reflected in his Dosage figures. When Tapit is assigned as a Classic chef-de-race, the average CD drops to 0.45, just 0.02 CD units from the predicted value, bringing his sub-population almost perfectly into alignment with the general population.
Using this process, we have initially identified 24 sires, past and present, that qualify for chef-de-race status, 23 of which are new designations, with one being a revision of an existing chef-de-race. That may seem like a considerable number; however, it has been a decade since the North American-based sires were last updated, and several were already under consideration when I stepped away from the project.
The list below presents each new chef-de-race along with the following information: the sire's name, the AWD of his stakes winners, their current average CD, their new average CD following assignment, the aptitudinal group or groups to which they have been assigned, the predicted CD based on AWD, and the difference between the old and new average CD. In every case, the new average CD is satisfactorily aligned with the predicted value.
The chart below offers a visual representation of the updated model and how well the new additions fit within it. The R² value indicates that approximately 96.9% of the variation in the new average CD is explained by AWD. Prior to the new assignments, that figure was just 14.0%, reflecting the degree to which these sires' influence had been overlooked.
The final chart displays where the new chefs-de-race fit within the model.
Let me know if you have any questions.
All the best,
Steve
Of course, I have a thousand questions but I didn't want to overstep this opportunity that I have waited YEARS for.
I did ask Dr. Roman two questions.
Would it be okay to post an article with the explanation that you sent for my readers?
"Feel free to post the explanation from my earlier email for your readers. If you need additional input, let me know."
Now, the biggest question of all and your honest opinion would mean a great deal:
Besides being your #1 fan, I am also enamored by Federico Tesio. I have read everything I can get my hands on that he either wrote or said. He claimed that a thoroughbred is made up of 60% sires and 40% mares. When they finally added the "Conduit Mare Profiles" to Pedigreequery I did a deep dive into every Triple Crown participant, every Grade 1 and 2 stakes winners across the country, etc, going back decades with your dosage profiles and the conduit mare profiles. A pattern was revealed that took my breathe away and from that day forward, I could easily detect the players from the pretenders, especially with the Triple Crown races. It began to make sense. Year after year, spot on. What is your outlook on Tesio's "philosophy" and what do you truly think about the conduit mare bloodlines and their profiles.
"No reason to fret over the past. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the emergence of new chefs-de-race will alter our perspective of pedigrees. And to be honest, a couple of dozen additions over 10 years is not extraordinary, especially since a half dozen or so were already in the pipeline when I left. When I began in 1981, there were about 150. When I left in 2016, there were 224. That’s about 75 new chefs-de-race in 35 years, so a couple of dozen in 10 years is not out of the ordinary. And, I believe this new set will affirm the system going forward. There are a few others Ken Kush and I are thinking about, but for the moment I think we are in good shape.
It appears the key link in both Sovereignty and Emerging Market is Empire Maker, but even more important is the growing stature of Unbridled. IMO, he is establishing himself among the key drivers of contemporary Thoroughbred pedigrees.
I can’t say enough about Tesio’s insight into and his influence on Thoroughbred breeding. And although many might argue that there is a disconnect between Dosage and Tesio’s conduit mare theory because mares aren’t an obvious component of the Dosage analysis, I would disagree. It's worth noting that Tesio's theories, including the conduit mare concept, have always, much like Dosage, attracted both devoted followers and skeptical critics. Some pedigree analysts tend to view his ideas as anecdotal rather than scientifically rigorous because the sample sizes he worked with were small, and confirmation bias is difficult to rule out when you're the one selecting the matings and interpreting the results. Still, his intuitions produced results that speak for themselves, and the conduit mare idea remains a lively topic among serious students of Thoroughbred pedigree.
This is where it gets interesting.
A conduit mare, in Tesio's framework, would amplify the effective weight of her sire's influence in the pedigree. That means a chef-de-race appearing through a conduit mare might punch above his statistical weight in Dosage terms. Conversely, a chef-de-race filtered through a non-conduit mare might contribute less to the actual horse than the Dosage arithmetic suggests. In either case, chefs-de-race definitely do not ignore the influence of mares.
A sophisticated pedigree analyst trying to use both frameworks together might ask not just which chefs-de-race appear in a pedigree but also through what kind of mares does each chef-de-race's influence travel. A chef-de-race whose influence reaches the subject horse through a line of conduit mares might be weighted more heavily than the raw Dosage arithmetic suggests. Perhaps that’s part of your thinking.
It’s interesting stuff to ponder in the search for an all-encompassing theory, much like the elusive “Theory of Everything” in physics – a single theory that unifies all the fundamental forces of nature."
With that, I have finally caught my breathe. I didn't have the nerve to ask him about those Pace Parameter rankings and if there was ever a chance of seeing them just one more time. Nothing compared to the day when he would release them. Remember?
My heart is racing!!!!