Welcome!

Welcome to my page of thoroughbred pedigree musings. As my "About Me" section indicates, I am a fan of thoroughbred racing and not anything close to being a real "pedigree consultant." This site will contain my thoughts on thoroughbred pedigrees in general, and I invite any and all comments. I always wanted to write about pedigrees, and blogging gives me my best venue for doing so. Constructive feedback is always welcome.

I knew I was hooked on pedigrees when, in high school, I used my hard-earned dollars working as a library page, and later a library clerk-typist, to subscribe to both The Blood-Horse and the (then) Thoroughbred Record. Later, I purchased Sire Lines by Abram Hewitt. I wound up earning a B.A. in History and a master's degree in library science. So, I guess the combination of those two degrees with being a thoroughbred racing fan makes my interest in pedigrees a natural. (A second master's a computer information systems came a few years ago.)

As the years went on, I enjoyed reading the debate over such things as Steven Roman's dosage figures, which--I have to say now--I DO endorse, if only because it gives a casual fan such as myself a relatively easy way to spot potential prepotency in a sire. I remember reading Leon Rasmussen's columns in the Daily Racing Form when he talked about dosage using Franco Varola's Typology of the Racehorse as his model, but back in the days when Rasmussen went through an entire pedigree rather than four generations, it seemed impossible to replicate his research. When he adopted Roman's methodology, it put the casual fan in the picture. I know the majority of pedigree enthusiasts usually (and often violently) disagree with Roman's methods, but most pedigree research--it seems to me--is down to one person's opinion, anyway, backed by the racing statistics he or she can find to back them up. To be sure, even I don't agree with all of Roman's choices of chefs-de-race. Ah well, debate is good. And let's face it: dosage figures appear in almost all pedigree-related programs and web sites, like them or not.

While I certainly look at free sites such as Pedigreequery (see list of links) I am a big fan of Simon Morris' TesioPower software. While expensive, it is important to support software development such as this, and Mr. Morris provides excellent customer support. The G1 Goldmine software is another important resource, and their ability to search by specific places in a pedigree (not just entire generations) as well as their "Affinity Matrix" for analyzing potential nicking patterns makes it well worth the money.

Anyway, that's what I use for my research. How about you? I look forward to hearing from you and sharing your opinions.