Logician's St Leger: Far Be it From Me to Criticise John Gosden, But…

I admire John Gosden enormously. From the crown of his wonderful panamas to the soles his black Oxfords, John Gosden is a hero of the racing game, and does not deserve to have his opinions questioned by oiks like me.

But….

Before Logician won the St Leger, he said “I think the big question always with the Leger is whether he will get the trip,” “He’s by Frankel, who never went beyond a mile-and-a-quarter, out of a Daylami mare. Daylami was a good miler though he did go up to a mile-and-a-half.”

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I mean fair enough, factually correct. He got the distances right. But surely I’m not alone in thinking that a stallion’s race record is only one factor in assessing the potential of their progeny? And, moreover, it is the factor which becomes less relevant over time, as a large enough sample size of their offspring hit the track and the real influence of their genes becomes evident.

To make my point succinctly, a stallion’s race record is a rough guide as to the strengths his children will have, especially in his first few years when none of his sons or daughters are actually running. But as time goes on, many stallions’ children develop differently to how their fathers ran. Sprinters beget milers. Milers beget middle-distance champions. Classic winners sire jumping greats. Sometimes (most often) this is the influence of the dam and dam sire, but sometimes a stallion retains the ability to pass on traits which were not evident from his own career, or the careers of the dam’s family. In the case of Logician, staying power as well as speed.

Frankel proves my point. His best son, Cracksman, won from 1m to 1m4f, but looked his best at a stiff 1m2f, a distance his sire won twice at. Those two runs in the Champions Stakes at Ascot were just the most glorious races. I will never forget 2018, where he stretched out his shoulders, running from sunshine into the shade, completely untouchable. But Cracksman was not ‘bred’ for middle distance success, if we take Gosden’s statement at face value. His mother Rhadegunda won between 7 1/2f and 1m1f, and was sired by Pivotal, who only ever ran at 5 and 6f. Her mother St Radegund ran twice at 7f, and was a Green Desert mare. The dam’s side of the pedigree is splattered with sprinting blood, not classic blood. So where does Cracksman’s middle distance form come from?

Well, partly from Frankel’s pedigree – I’m guessing a couple of you have heard of Galileo? But also Cracksman is an example of a phenomenon best described by Tesio: ‘In the pedigree of a stayer of classic quality, you will nearly always find the name of a horse that was a good sprinter.’[1]

In fact, Tesio goes further. ‘Without a representative of the 1 mile race in his pedigree it will be difficult to produce a horse of outstanding quality, because he will be incapable of those bursts of nervous energy which are synonymous with speed.’[2]And finally: ‘Therefore it will never be possible to inherit either speed or staying power exclusively, because speed and staying power are not separate and individual characters but the combination of many separate characters – combinations which are determined simply by the laws of chance.’[3]

It is in this way that sprint and mile champions often sire middle-distance winners. To win the St Leger, indeed most staying races, horses still need the burst of speed which is most reliably provided by sires whose own careers were run at much shorter distances. To balance the need for speed, we should not assume the absence of staying quality just because a horse’s pedigree looks like an F1 paddock. Staying ability and speed exist together, and a dash of staying class married with real speed is often enough to produce staying champions.

To pick out a couple more examples, Supasundae, the winner of the Aintree Hurdle and Irish Champion Hurdle, is by Galileo out of Distinctive Look. Galileo was a Derby winner, who never went beyond 1m4f. Distinctive Look, by champion sprinter-miler Danehill, won a Class 5 maiden at 1m1f, and never ran beyond 1m2f. Yet Supasundae’s biggest wins have come at 2m4f and 2m.

Stradivarius was bred out of two classic types – Sea the Stars, magical Derby and Arc winner, and Private Life, winner at 1m and 1m3f, a granddaughter of Pawneese and from a Wildenstein family which was bred to do nothing but win classics and eat hay. Yet Stradivarius is a stayer in excelsis, his blistering run of form coming between 1m6f and 2m4f. Indeed, his Ascot Cups victories were run over a full mile more than his father ever won at.

The raw statistics bear out my line of argument. Whilst the bulk of his runners compete at similar distances to his own racing career (733 runs between 7f to 11f from 1018 total progeny runs) Frankel’s progeny have run 210 times beyond 1m4f, with 41 wins, a 19.5% hit rate. Indeed, for runners going 1m6f or more, the win rate is 26.3%. This compares to a win rate of 24.2% of runners below 1m4f (196 wins from 808 runs). Some of the leading lights of his crops, Cracksman, Anapurna, Logician, have won at 1m4f and above. This picture becomes more impressive when you account for the fact that two-year olds do not run further than a mile, thus skewing the figure towards the shorter distances.

This I think is the normal pattern. Most horses will run at similar distances to their parents, but a large minority will excel at a longer distance. It is not unusual for children to be better at different distances than their sires were.

It shouldn’t have been assumed that Logician would be unlikely to stay. The track career of a horse’s parents is not the definitive guide to its potential, and should come second in precedence to an analysis of the talents of its brothers and sisters. Stayers need sprinting blood to succeed. Many of Frankel’s progeny have succeeded in the best middle-distance races. Frankel’s genius is his ability to impart both his blistering speed and the staying ability of his father’s family. In many cases, most notably Cracksman but also with Logician, he is the staying influence in the pedigree.

[1] Tesio, Federico ‘Breeding the Racehorse’, 1958 p. 75

[2] Ibid

[3] Tesio, Federico ‘Breeding the Racehorse’, 1958 p. 76