FAMILY NUMBERS

This article first appeared in the March 2015 edition of the NZ Standardbred Breeders Association magazine “Breeding Matters”. It excluded a number of pertinent tables due to space restrictions. It is reproduced here, updated with relevant statistics to the end of calendar year 2015, all applicable tables and other appropriate amendments.

Library books are classified using the Dewey system. Accountants prepare financial statements in accordance with prescribed accounting standards. The legal profession drafts laws into statutes.

The establishment of the Stud Book took place beginning in America with John Wallace who created the Trotting Register. He argued that ʻstandard’ guidelines should be set for official recordings into the Stud Book. In 1879, the accepted benchmark was set as a mile rate of 2:30, thus establishing 2:30 as the official recognition for the basis of the standardbred and the benchmark for quality. The American Trotting Register Association adopted a variety of rules to control admission to registration.. “When an animal meets the requirements of admission and is duly registered, it shall be accepted as a standard-bred trotting animal”.

This standard became firmly established by the end of the nineteenth century. Wallace’s index to the first ten volumes of his Standardbred Register in 1892 contained over sixteen thousand registered standardbred stallions and in excess of thirty thousand active brood mares.

Ron Groves advises that :

“Over the last two hundred years, almost 5000 maternal families have contributed to the evolution of the standardbred in America. Almost half of these are either unknown or unnamed, most contributing a single performer. All but a few hundred have been consigned to the pages of history. Today, less than 500 maternal families survive and less than half make any recognizable impact on Modern Era performers.. Over the last fifty years, the great majority of top performers have come from less than one hundred families with the leading twenty families making a significant contribution.”

The following table supports those comments – in the decade and a bit since the original Classic Families (CF) numbering for North American families was created, the top twenty have remained the same, although the order is now a little different making it possible to see those families that are achieving most in the current era, some of which are more pacing or trotting orientated as the case may be :

LEADING NORTH AMERICAN FAMILIES (CLASSIC WINS)

(to 31 December 2015)     

The standardbred industry classifies its horse population into maternal families descending from a source/taproot/founding mare and often assign a specific number to that particular family.

A variety of numbering systems have been created. Starting with North America : the US Trotting Association (USTA) Pathway database containing at least 1.5 million horses going back to the 19th century, all of which have family reference names. In 95% of cases, these names will be identical to those in Classic Families without the numbers allocated.

Heather Reid (Standardbred Canada’s Manager Sales and Stakes) advises that she doesn’t foresee a numbering system being used in either Canada or the U.S.A. Many years ago a committee was set up to change the way they did their pedigrees and putting in stakes as in the thoroughbred catalogues i.e. Grade 1, Grade 2 etc. but that fell through. Heather said many years ago she recommended that the requirements for bold case upper case and bold case lower case should be updated, also to no avail. The U.S. sale companies (Lexington, Harrisburg etc.), United States Trotting Association and Canada would all have to agree to any new concept of family numbering  and in her opinion she doesn’t see that happening.

My own review of a variety of North American catalogues confirms that no mention is made of maternal family names/numbering systems.

In Europe, only Italy list family names in catalogues – similar to USTA – and have included them in their stud books for the past forty years. They are almost identical to CF in name. The CF numbering system is gaining traction in the European trotting community through weekly newsletters distributed and/or articles published on several popular websites; the major ones being Sweden (worldclasstrotting.com & hastkatalogen.se, Austria (trabrennzucht.at) and Slovakia (trotdb.info).

Australasia has seen several numbering systems developed and used over the years. These include :

PGG Wrightson Standardbreds –

Peter Lagan from PGG Wrightson advised that their old family book records winners dating back to the 1900s, each family allocated a family number. The late Peter Rennell advised Peter that this was compiled in those days by Matson and Allan. Regarding the actual numbering system, there appears to be no particular rationale behind it e.g. Pride Of Lincoln 1 is huge but so to is  Norice and she is accorded number 72. North American pedigrees have no family number allocated, instead just the family name is used.

It is likely that the NZ numbering system was first utilised (in published format) by H. Matson & Co in conjunction with Wrightson, Stevenson & Co at the time of first annual national yearling sales on 3 Nov 1944. Until 1983, the NZ yearling sales catalogues showed the family number only (not name) in the maternal line of each pedigree. Each catalogue had a table of family names equating to these family numbers.. Since 1983, the family name and number appear below the four generation pedigree on each catalogue page. In addition, until 2003, the number of family members in 2 minutes was also provided.

Ian Daff –

Ian Daff, a Victorian,  whose numerous publications especially his “Black Books” became industry bibles for many in the latter part of the twentieth century. Ian’s publications included :

• Standardbred Families in Australasia
• Ian Daff’s Breeding Manual
• The Standardbred in Australia (1983)
• Ian Daff’s Black Book of Harness Racing (1988 and 1996)

Daff’s publications incorporated his own numbering system, probably based on most winners, however many families (US) were linked further back. A significant number of NZ families went back to Australian mares. Ian’s collation of better Australasian harness horses was limited to the post 1940’s period. As John Peck of Melbourne who wrote the forewords to the Standardbred in Australia and the Black Books noted, they were phenomenal works of research and collation considering everything had to be handwritten and then typed. I concur entirely.

The Daff numbering system identified both the relationship and generation of the standardbred.. Each dam is an ancestress of every horse tabulated until a number corresponding to her own is reached. A mare is the dam of every horse carrying a number one higher than her own, until a horse bearing her number comes along e.g. Pride of Lincoln (family no. 1) is dam of Thelma; Thelma is dam of Cameos; Cameos is dam of Onyx and Intagilo etc. Where a horse is tagged with no.6, it indicates that it is six generations removed from the foundation mare. The NZ numbering system was incorporated into Daff’s book by including it in brackets against the mare’s entry. A NZ foundation mare may not be listed as a foundation mare where she was a descendent of an American or Australian mare e.g. Whisper (Daff family 47), dam of NZ Family 99 Hush.

Classic Families (CF) –

A worldwide standardbred pedigree database (www.classicfamilies.net) was developed in the early 2000’s by Western Australian based Ron Groves. It Is the most comprehensive numbering system in existence and superior to all others. A logical numbering system based on the number of classic winners produced (2005 in total) has been allocated to all maternal families originating in North America (U), Australia (A) or New Zealand (N).

The family number adopted reflects BOTH success and an indication of when that success occurred..

A more detailed explanation of the CF family numbering system follows :

NORTH AMERICAN FAMILIES :

U 1-199 are the current performing families, U200-299 those that had not performed since the 1980’s (alive with only some having performed again in the last few years), U300-399 families that had largely been exported to Australia or NZ and were still active in Australasia but not so much in America, U400-499 those exported to Europe with same results, U500-1295 basically defunct but once great (e.g. Billy Direct U500) with some of these having since come to life briefly. U1296-999 (odds and ends with little known about pedigrees). From U1300-U3000 are basically defunct sire line families with small contributions.

Examples of North American Maternal families with NZ, Daff and CF numbers appear below :

Selected North American Maternal Family Numbers –

NEW ZEALAND FAMILIES :

New Zealand numbers were formed using the same reasoning as adopted for North America.

Examples of NZ Maternal families with NZ, Daff and CF numbers appear below :

Selected NZ Maternal Families –

AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES :

Australian numbers were formed using the same reasoning as adopted for North America.

The CF) numbering system is used in all Australian Pacing Gold (APG) Sales catalogues.

Examples of Australian Maternal families with NZ, Daff and CF numbers appear below :

Selected Australian Maternal Family Numbers –

EUROPEAN FAMILIES :

The European numbers are arranged by country of origin of the root mare commencing with France (E1 – E299), then Germany, Italy, Denmark etc. CF originally split Europe into countries due to the then small number of classic performers. France was the dominant country by number and were allocated the first 299 numbers based on the 1990 publication “Lignees Classiques du Trotteur Francais”. Numbers above 1000 are mostly defunct sire line families with small contributions.

SUMMARY :

There is no universal or uniform family numbering system in use worldwide. Using the analogue of the differing sale/purchase dockets used in earlier days by credit card companies, no one system has yet been adopted. Only one of the various numbering systems in use allocates a family number whether the horse has been bred in Australasia, North America or Europe.

Postscript –

LEADING AUSTRALASIAN FAMILIES (CLASSIC WINS)

(to 31 December 2015)     

Peter Craig

7 January 2016

Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
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