At one of my early meetings with my now good friend Simon Morris many years ago (founder and creator of Tesio and the best harness racing program in the world Testmating ) I asked him (what l thought at the was a very simple question at the time).
What in his view was the biggest mistake people make with breeding or matching horses?
Simon’s answer gave me a massive change in thinking and it’s one of the most important factors that’s been driving me (plus Harnessbred & Testmating in more recent times) for the last 7 years.
Simon was of the view that far too many people were just trying to “PREDICT HISTORY”. In other words they would come up with an idea or system and then find a way to manage, twist or even manipulate data to try and validate their idea/program.
I found this answer to be completely disturbing. In fact, it made me feel sick knowing the financial cost, time and hardships associated with breeding horses. It was that day, I made the decision committing myself to never make the same mistake like so many that Simon had seen before me.
Most people who have been around the industry for a while have the ability or knowledge to follow a couple of really simple rules that will increase their chances of breeding that horse which can win a race or two. However, the cost now for breeding is so expensive l don’t believe that’s good enough.
For me, the minimum goal for any potential match needed to be set at $100,000 life time earnings, and it didn’t take long to realize this was very achievable if you had three main components; The ability to understand how to assess and match a very good mare with the correct leading sire (a small crop of sires average more than 4 times that of their contemporaries) for her, and the main ingredient a fat wallet. Please don’t forget this is only the first phase, nutrition, education, type, confirmation and soundness, plus the track record of the trainer/driver is also extremely important.
The fat wallet part of course didn’t interest me in the slightest, as like me, the large percentage of our Harnessbred followers don’t fit that brief and there was now real upside for the sport in helping the people that already are taking more than their fair share. The easiest thing I could do would be to find the right, In The Pocket or Cullen mare and bred her to Bettors Delight, that helps no one.
The way Testmating viewed it ,we could add value to the industry and my Harnessbred friends if we could find mares that were affordable to any breeder and that the service fees of the stallions had to average less than $6,000. Now, just because the mares were affordable, don’t think a huge investment of time and effort didn’t go into their selection process and, to add to that fact, l believe people should spend more time on getting this right, than dreaming about the chances of success with the next sire that’s been sent from NA.
So the process was far from simple, outside consultant’s from Australia and oversees were paid for reports, data from all over the world was purchased and amalgamated into a useable format by the help of my mathematician friend. Hundreds of hours running reports and the odd plane ticket to get in front of the right people to make sure I had ticked as many boxes as possible. Although l did solely fund and manage this project, I need to be really clear: A lot of great harness racing people were very kind in sharing their time and experience to make this happen.
So in order to uphold my commitment to myself, Harnessbred followers and the harness racing community, unlike those before me, that are really good at PREDICTING HISTORY, I am releasing the first one of the resulting foals of this program, who will be sold in the APG Melbourne sale, LOT 83 a Western Terror –Bute Sister (Artiscape) Colt. This stunning colt will be under the care of Annie Dolton over the weekend.
The numbers, reports, programs suggest, coinciding with my personal view, this colt has a much superior chance of exceeding $100,000 career earning than his contemporaries. The new owners of this colt on Sunday will have the confidence that no stone was left unturned when producing this colt.
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
Driving The Future Of Harness Racing
