“Just once, I would like there to be something special about being the kid stuck in the middle.”

– Karen Tayleur

When Karen Tayleur wrote these words, little did she know that her wishes and fantasies were about to become reality- at least as it pertains to horse racing.

For years the racing industry has had this belief that broodmares do not produce great foals in the beginning and end of their careers, rather it is the middle of their broodmare careers in which they shine.

The statistical analysis that has been done over the past decade suggests that there is some truth to this – sort of. In terms of stakes winners, broodmares have great success with their second, third and fifth foal, but even statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt.

The raw numbers show broodmares producing stakes winners at a 3.25% clip with the first foal and 4.59% clip with the fifth foal and if my math serves me correctly, this is a 41% difference. The difference seems pretty significant; and it is, until we look at the qualitative side of things. Everyone in horse racing knows that selecting the right sire for a broodmare is crucial. We also know that breeders usually do a terrible job of this – picking a big name sire even though he nicks terribly with the broodmare. This genetic mismatch is why the resulting foal usually underperforms. It is not until the second mating that the breeder has a good handle on how his broodmare will match up with a prospective suitor. So, we would expect that other than the stakes win percentage of the first foal, all other win percentages when ordered by birth rank would be approximately the same right? Well, something is rotten in Denmark because this is not the case. There appears to be a significant statistical drop-off after the mare’s ninth foal. Once a mare hits double-digit foals she indeed does appear to lose some of her magic! So, why is this?

Well, older mares are usually bred to either lesser stallions like a $3,000 Florida stallion or they are bred to new, unproven sires who may not be as good as the market had hoped for. The latter is done in order to get the new stallion off to a good start, but it drags the broodmare down unfortunately. If you look at the careers of some famous broodmares, you do tend to notice that they are bred to stallions that have plenty of hype behind them but not a lot of substance. For instance, Mineshaft has covered some of the most famous broodmares on the planet, but surely there are better sires. Smarty Jones covered the best older broodmares in the country, but has shown to nick much better with younger cheaper females for whatever reason.

So, here is where it gets confusing. There is a drop-off between a broodmare’s second through ninth foals and the foals that she has after that. The majority of this drop-off can be attributed to the fact that she is being bred to lesser sires; however, a small part of it is due to old age. So, if you mated the same broodmare to the same stallion ten times, the first born through ninth born would all be slightly better than her tenth child on average. In other words, the middle children in horse racing are the beneficiaries of a perfect storm. The breeder gets the hang of what his broodmare likes and dislikes after the first foal or two, and breeds her well the next five or six tries, and the broodmare is slightly more adept at passing off her genetic material the first nine times, hence giving the middle children a slight advantage. Of course, I must reiterate that the broodmare is only slightly at fault, and only after the ninth child. The breeder is the main culprit in all of this. It also needs to be said that there are exceptions to every rule of horse racing. Secretariats dam-Somethingroyal- was eighteen when she gave birth to Secretariat. I believe that he was her 16th child. Due to the stigma against the children of older mares, he was not highly regarded upon birth. I say all of this to remind everyone that birth rank and racing performance are only slightly correlated, and good judgement should always be used. If Penny Chenery were a fan of statistical research, she never would have picked Secretariat. As legend has it, when Bold Ruler had a boy and a girl the Phipps family received first pick and chose the girl, but Chenery didn’t mind because she saw something in the boy and wanted him anyway; that boy would grow up to be Secretariat.

So, the next time you are at an auction and you see a foal who is the tenth child or higher of a broodmare, you should definitely inspect him closely, but if your gut tells you that there is something special about this foal you should listen to your gut, you might just be in the presence of the next Secretariat.