Guest Post: American Pedigree Witnessed from Abroad

--Mark Cramer

   When a horse named Slow Pace is the front runner, something strange is happening

   For one thing to change, something else needs to stay the same. Either American breeding is getting better or European racing is becoming more Americanized. I suspect it’s the latter.
Horses bred in the USA are regularly running “better than their odds” in France. Let’s look at two consecutive racing days at Deauville, the Del Mar of France.
   In the first race on Monday, Aug. 26, Shepherd Gate (Kitten’s Joy) finished second by a neck at 10-1. That was a fibresand sprint and the Americans are supposed to excel in both those categories, so perhaps it should not be a surprise. On to the fifth race, Great George (Gulch) was only a head from the victory, beating out 14 other horses for the second prize, at 14-1 odds! This was still on fibresand, but it was the Euro classic distance of a mile and a half.
   The sixth race was a flat mile on grass and another Kitten’s Joy, Shirley’s Kitten, finished third at 21-1. Finally, in the seventh race, Auditor (Kingmambo) was second at 3/1 as third favorite in a six-horse field.
   None of these USA-breds won, but using the odds as an indicator, they had all over-performed. Quite a return on the show (placé) parlay!
   The day before, Aug. 25, was not as clear at first sight, but still showed that horses bred in the USA had a positive impact value, partaking in more than their fair share of the pie. Two of the American-breds on that card provide the player with a significant profit if we just play them blindly in all their starts.
   One of them is New Outlook (Awesome Again), who defeated 15 others in the third race on the grass at a mile and a quarter, paying off at 20-1. If you had invested an equal amount on this horse in his 21 career races, you’d make the most aggressive hedge-fund operator blush, producing more than a 100% return on investment.
   The same day, in the G2 Grand Prix de Deauville, Slow Pace (that’s the name of the horse), helped along by Olivier Peslier, finished third on the grass at 1 9/16 miles. Euro surface, Euro distance, but American breeding (Slow pace is by Distorted Humor out a Seattle Slew mare). An equal amount bet on all of Slow Pace’s races would have yielded nearly a 100% profit.
   What I think is happening may be originating in France, where the pace of racing seems to have quickened considerably over the last decade. Slow Pace has an apt name for a horse that led the field all the way, putting away the likes of Cirrus des Aigles, and getting caught in the last 20 yards. If he had been 9-5, we might argue that he had hung at the wire. But at 20-1, you could say that the result was beyond expectations.  
   I recall years back when Ken Ramsey spoke of taking Kitten’s Joy to race in the Arc de Triomphe, only to be forced to back off when his charge had health problems. Within the next five or six years, we could see an American owner and trainer coming to France on the first Sunday of October and winning the Arc.
   In the meantime, if you just come over here to enjoy the racing without much time to handicap, my tip is to play the American-breds. 

Guest Post: American Pedigree in Europe

--Mark Cramer

For several years, I have been observing a certain advantage for American pedigree in European races, specifically France and England. I know enough empirically but not being an expert in pedigree, my reasoning may be flawed.

The method is simple. American-bred horses should be expected to have more speed breeding than the Euros, so as 2-year-olds, they can win early in sprints against their Euro-bred rivals.
When I first began testing the hypothesis, with real money, I limited the plays to American breds with obvious sprint pedigree. But I began noticing that even horses that I perceived as bred to route were still winning more than their fair share of sprints against the Euros, as first- or second-time starters. I could often find a longshot payoff at the smaller tracks. I limit the plays to when the trainer has a good statistic with 2-year-old horses, such as Ralph Beckett in England, or simply by seeing that the horse is getting late betting action.

Here’s a recent example worth looking at:

Chantilly, June 13, Race 3: 5 ½ furlongs:
The 6-horse, Her Star, was the only American bred in a field of 10. The sire was Harlan’s Holiday, and I remembered him as a route stakes winner and Derby contender. The trainer of Her Star is Pascal Bary (who won the BC Mile with Domedriver). I knew that Bary does well with 2-year olds, but the trainer advantage was neutralized by the fact that other “designer trainers” had horses in the same race: André Fabre (trainer of surprise BC Classic winner Arcangues), for example, and Freddie Head, of Goldikova and Miesque fame.

The pedigree of several other starters seemed to be formidable (Dansili, for example).
So in fact, the only differentiating factor was the USA pedigree of Her Star. However, there was a question of distance. Her Star’s full-sister, Silver Reunion, was a route horse, having raced only four times, all at a mile and an eighth. Her stakes win came in a Grade III race at Tampa, just after she turned three, and then her racing career vanished from the face of the earth.

Looks like I had a first-time starter in a short sprint whose immediate family liked long distances. Harlan’s Holiday’s average winning distance was 9.3 furlongs. What to do? Digging for more information, though, I discovered that Harlan’s Holiday had indeed won two sprints as a 2-year-old, one of them at 5.5 furlongs. 

The USA-bred Her Star raced forwardly, alternately challenged and was even passed for a few moments from left and right by several other runners. But in the end, she dug in and prevailed. The odds were only 2.3 to 1, but if you were a believer in American pedigree in Euro sprints, that was generous enough.

In TDN discussions I’ve seen many comments suggesting that American pedigree is in decline because unfit horses are in the pool, horses that have raced with Lasix or Bute and therefore might be passing on masked weaknesses to the next generation. Meanwhile, the past performances of Euro horses can be trusted as legitimately representing their class level, since doping is absolutely banned. So I wonder, if this is true, am I witnessing a renaissance of American pedigree or a last hurrah?

As you can tell, I am not a connoisseur of pedigree, but I do know that American bred horses in Euro sprints offer an advantage to the horseplayer. The question is, where will horses like Her Star be a year or two from now?

Mark Cramer is the author of the crime novel Tropical Downs and the bicycle racing chronical Handicapping on the Road. He lives in Paris.