| Here's Lookin' At You, Lucky |
"Here's Lookin' At You, Lucky"
by Michael Ventura, copyright May 19th, 2010.
Lookin At Lucky is a bay son of Smart Strike out of the Belong to Me mare Private Feeling.
He just restored the luster of the reputation he earned as the American Champion 2YO Colt, by winning
the Preakness and thereby both defeating Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver and foiling his hopes to
win the Triple Crown.
For those of us who were knowledgeable about the intricacies of his pedigree, this was no surprise.
One of the most impressive aspects of this pedigree is that his Granddam was 3x4 to Native Dancer,
his damsire was 4x4 to Native Dancer, and his sire has an unusually close cross of Native Dancer in
the 3rd generation. All together this adds up to 14% of his pedigree being taken up by Native Dancer
(ranked the 7th greatest US racehorse of the 20th Century by a panel of experts) a horse who was born
60 years ago!
This is the kind of linebreeding that is preferable to a similar intensity of inbreeding.
The thing to understand is that there’s an implication to the fact that Lookin At Lucky’s damsire Belong
to Me was both 4x4 to Native Dancer and successful as a runner and sire, namely that the Native
Dancer genes in Belong to Me were selected for the quality of doing well in the context of inbreeding to
Native Dancer.
And to a lesser extent Lookin At Lucky’s Stakes Placed and Stakes Producing 2nd Dam Regal
Feeling, who was 3x4 Native Dancer, had her genes from the Grey Ghost selected for the quality of
doing well in the context of inbreeding to Native Dancer.
Thus we can see that the Native Dancer genes in Lookin At Lucky’s dam were selected for doing well
in a genomic environment featuring doubled Native Dancer genes.
And thanks to his sire Smart Strike being a Great-Grandson of Native Dancer, Lookin At Lucky's
pedigree pattern provides his genotype with that same context of Native Dancer genes being doubled
via inbreeding.
It comes together, from one generation to the next.
An Analysis of the Eclipse Champion's Sireline and Damsireline (Mr P and Danzig)
Mr Prospector and Danzig, two of the very best stallions of the last 40 years, appear to make a good
cross. With Mr Prospector in the sireside and Danzig in the damside, it manages to get a VGS of 1.8
even though it’s based on a sample size of 307 Stakes Winners.
This means it got 80% more Stakes Winners than predicted, in spite of being based a sample size that
is nothing short of massive, and which would usually pull the score significantly closer to 1.00 via the
mechanism of regression to the mean.
For a relevant comparison I found some other Top American Stallions who also had VGSs with Mr
Prospector based on hundreds of Stakes Winners, and found:
VGS Sample Size
Danzig 1.80 307
Sir Ivor 1.44 335
Halo 1.36 198
Secretariat 1.35 315
What a Pleasure 1.28 118
Lyphard 1.10 226
Dr Fager 1.05 188
As you can see, the Mr Prospector / Danzig cross is better than crosses of comparable sample size,
and has even done better than the crosses I looked up of significantly lower sample size.
This indicates that even though a VGS of 1.8 might not sound so high, in the context of a sample size of
307 Stakes Winners it is.
But how does the specific source of Mr Prospector in Lookin At Lucky, Smart Strike, fare with Danzig?
Quite well actually, and significantly better than other sources of Mr Prospector do.
For a cross based on a relatively large sample size of 10 Stakes Winners to get a VGS of 4.99, or
399% better than predicted, is a remarkably good result.
To demonstrate this I used G1Goldmine’s Affinity Matrix feature to find the 28 Stallions that have
produced 10 Stakes Winners when crossed with Danzig on the Damside, and ranked all these crosses
by VGS:
Damside Anc. Sireside Anc. VGS
Danzig More Than Ready 5.81
Danzig Smart Strike 4.99
Danzig Zeditave 3.95
Danzig Galileo 3.27
Danzig Hennessy 2.99
Danzig Sacahuista 2.67
Danzig Mofida 2.51
Danzig Glowing Tribute 2.29
Danzig Height of Fashion 2.22
Danzig Prides Promise 2.15
Danzig Infatuation 2.05
Danzig Admiring 1.90
Danzig Henry the Seventh 1.89
Danzig Klairessa 1.79
Danzig Majestic Light 1.75
Danzig Baby Doll 1.63
Danzig Chieftain 1.53
Danzig March Past 1.36
Danzig Le Haar 1.25
Danzig Lianga 1.24
Danzig Fleet Nasrullah 1.16
Danzig Determine 1.04
Danzig Milesian 0.98
Danzig Derring-Do 0.97
Danzig Aureole 0.69
Danzig Tudor Melody 0.66
Danzig Green Desert 0.61
Danzig Chop Chop 0.48
As you can see, out of all the crosses involving Danzig on the Damside which have gotten 10 Stakes
Winners, the Smart Strike over Danzig cross has the second highest score of all, and is therefore in the
96.4th Percentile.
The equivalent Percentile for I.Q.s is 127, or well above average.
But more impressively, out of the 10 Stakes Winners bred on the Smart Strike/Danzig cross, the only
source of Danzig found in multiple Stakes Winners of that number is Belong to Me, the damsire of
Lookin At Lucky.
Besides producing Lookin At Lucky, this cross of Smart Strike on a Belong to Me mare has also
produced Papa Clem, a Millionaire winner of the Arkansas Derby (G2) and San Fernando Stakes (G2).
Notably, this cross has a VGS of 44.60 based on 2 Stakes Winners.
To show what a remarkable nick Belong to Me on the Damside is Smart Strike, I created a list of every
other Male Damside Ancestor that’s been crossed with Smart Strike in 2 Stakes Winners.
And guess what?
Not only does Belong To Me come out on top, his VGS with Smart Strike is more than 10 Points higher
than second place:
Sireside Anc. Damside Anc. VGS
Smart Strike Belong To Me 44.60
Smart Strike Nalee's Rhythm 33.16
Smart Strike Kings Lake 22.32
Smart Strike Regal Classic 8.49
Smart Strike Sovereign Dance 7.28
Smart Strike Bagdad 4.38
Smart Strike Native Charger 3.49
Smart Strike Habitat 3.40
Smart Strike Dixieland Band 3.37
Smart Strike Storm Cat 3.26
Smart Strike Smartaire 2.71
Smart Strike Raja Baba 2.35
Smart Strike Le Haar 2.30
Smart Strike Warfare 2.28
Smart Strike Promised Land 2.27
Smart Strike Le Fabuleux 2.25
Smart Strike Johns Joy 2.18
Smart Strike Hill Prince 2.06
Smart Strike Battle Joined 2.03
Smart Strike Sea Bird 2.01
Smart Strike First Landing 1.75
Smart Strike Fortino 1.75
Smart Strike Cyane 1.54
Smart Strike Grey Sovereign 1.51
Smart Strike Fair Trial 1.48
Smart Strike What A Pleasure 1.43
Smart Strike T.V. Lark 1.40
Smart Strike Sir Ivor 1.26
Smart Strike Blushing Groom 1.23
Smart Strike Lyphard 1.21
Smart Strike Alydar 1.06
Smart Strike Better Self 0.99
Smart Strike The Axe 0.98
Smart Strike Spy Song 0.91
Smart Strike Seattle Slew 0.83
Smart Strike Tom Rolfe 0.59
Smart Strike Prince John 0.33
Smart Strike Mr. Prospector 0.23
This marks out Belong To Me as the OPTIMAL damsire for Smart Strike.
But why?
Well, a very interesting thing about the cross between Smart Strike and a Belong To Me mare is that it
produces a 1x3 cross of Smart Strike and Belong To Me’s dam Belonging.
Smart Strike and Belonging share enough ancestry to qualify as Equivalents, as both are bred on a
basic Raise A Native over Turn-to cross, while one has Sir Gallahad and the other has Bull Dog in the
5th generation.
In addition, the commonality of ancestry is reinforced by Smart Strike being 4x5 to Nasrullah, whose
sire Nearco and dam Mumtaz Begum are both found close up in Turn-To’s sire Royal Charger.
And finally, there’s a very interesting pattern found where the two Equivalents themselves each have a
female ancestor where one is the equivalent to the other. For in the 4th Generation of Smart Strike we
find Miss Dogwood, a daughter of Bull Dog out of a Blue Larkspur mare, whereas in the 3rd generation
of Belonging we find Nothirdchance, a daughter of Blue Larkspur’s son Blue Swords out of a mare by
Bull Dog’s full brother Sir Gallahad.
I think the lesson of Lookin At Lucky is that combining intense linebreeding to a great and long gone
ancestor, in this case Native Dancer, with a Optimal VGS backed up by a shared cluster of high quality
ancestors is a very powerful pattern.
Papa Clem was a very good horse, but in his recently ended racing career just wasn’t up to Lookin At
Lucky’s quality, and I think this was due to him only having the High VGS based on the Cluster
Breeding, but not the intense and cleverly constructed inbreeding to Native Dancer that his three-
quarter brother Lookin At Lucky has.
For whereas Lookin At Lucky’s dam had a pedigree that was 12.5% Native Dancer, Papa Clem’s dam
had a pedigree that was only 7.03% Native Dancer.
This made the Native Dancer genes that Lookin At Lucky got from his dam be better selected for the
quality of doing well in the context of inbreeding to Native Dancer, than the corresponding genes in
Papa Clem were.
Which was a good break for Lookin At Lucky considering that, as I’ve pointed out, Lookin At Lucky is
himself very inbred to Native Dancer.
It’s like if you were an Eskimo whose ancestors did well in the context of living in the Arctic Circle. You
would do better living up there in the snow because you’d have come from a long line of people who
were forced to successfully survive in that particular environmental context. In the same way, Lookin At
Lucky does well in the genetic context of inbreeding to Native Dancer because he comes from a line of
horses who were successful in the genetic context of Native Dancer inbreeding.
One generation leads to the next. And one of the great advantages of the sort of generational continuity
found in Lookin At Lucky‘s pedigree is that it’s exactly what allows for the accretion of positive
contextual adaptations from one generation to the next.
Given that the cross of Smart Strike over Belong To Me has the highest VGS of all the crosses of
comparable sample size involving Smart Strike, and given that the cross managed to get two
Millionaires from very limited opportunity, one of them an American Eclipse Champion and Classic
Winner, it follows that there could scarcely be a higher percentage play for horse breeders than to find
Belong To Me mares and send them to Smart Strike.
by Michael Ventura, copyright May 19th, 2010.
Lookin At Lucky is a bay son of Smart Strike out of the Belong to Me mare Private Feeling.
He just restored the luster of the reputation he earned as the American Champion 2YO Colt, by winning
the Preakness and thereby both defeating Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver and foiling his hopes to
win the Triple Crown.
For those of us who were knowledgeable about the intricacies of his pedigree, this was no surprise.
One of the most impressive aspects of this pedigree is that his Granddam was 3x4 to Native Dancer,
his damsire was 4x4 to Native Dancer, and his sire has an unusually close cross of Native Dancer in
the 3rd generation. All together this adds up to 14% of his pedigree being taken up by Native Dancer
(ranked the 7th greatest US racehorse of the 20th Century by a panel of experts) a horse who was born
60 years ago!
This is the kind of linebreeding that is preferable to a similar intensity of inbreeding.
The thing to understand is that there’s an implication to the fact that Lookin At Lucky’s damsire Belong
to Me was both 4x4 to Native Dancer and successful as a runner and sire, namely that the Native
Dancer genes in Belong to Me were selected for the quality of doing well in the context of inbreeding to
Native Dancer.
And to a lesser extent Lookin At Lucky’s Stakes Placed and Stakes Producing 2nd Dam Regal
Feeling, who was 3x4 Native Dancer, had her genes from the Grey Ghost selected for the quality of
doing well in the context of inbreeding to Native Dancer.
Thus we can see that the Native Dancer genes in Lookin At Lucky’s dam were selected for doing well
in a genomic environment featuring doubled Native Dancer genes.
And thanks to his sire Smart Strike being a Great-Grandson of Native Dancer, Lookin At Lucky's
pedigree pattern provides his genotype with that same context of Native Dancer genes being doubled
via inbreeding.
It comes together, from one generation to the next.
An Analysis of the Eclipse Champion's Sireline and Damsireline (Mr P and Danzig)
Mr Prospector and Danzig, two of the very best stallions of the last 40 years, appear to make a good
cross. With Mr Prospector in the sireside and Danzig in the damside, it manages to get a VGS of 1.8
even though it’s based on a sample size of 307 Stakes Winners.
This means it got 80% more Stakes Winners than predicted, in spite of being based a sample size that
is nothing short of massive, and which would usually pull the score significantly closer to 1.00 via the
mechanism of regression to the mean.
For a relevant comparison I found some other Top American Stallions who also had VGSs with Mr
Prospector based on hundreds of Stakes Winners, and found:
VGS Sample Size
Danzig 1.80 307
Sir Ivor 1.44 335
Halo 1.36 198
Secretariat 1.35 315
What a Pleasure 1.28 118
Lyphard 1.10 226
Dr Fager 1.05 188
As you can see, the Mr Prospector / Danzig cross is better than crosses of comparable sample size,
and has even done better than the crosses I looked up of significantly lower sample size.
This indicates that even though a VGS of 1.8 might not sound so high, in the context of a sample size of
307 Stakes Winners it is.
But how does the specific source of Mr Prospector in Lookin At Lucky, Smart Strike, fare with Danzig?
Quite well actually, and significantly better than other sources of Mr Prospector do.
For a cross based on a relatively large sample size of 10 Stakes Winners to get a VGS of 4.99, or
399% better than predicted, is a remarkably good result.
To demonstrate this I used G1Goldmine’s Affinity Matrix feature to find the 28 Stallions that have
produced 10 Stakes Winners when crossed with Danzig on the Damside, and ranked all these crosses
by VGS:
Damside Anc. Sireside Anc. VGS
Danzig More Than Ready 5.81
Danzig Smart Strike 4.99
Danzig Zeditave 3.95
Danzig Galileo 3.27
Danzig Hennessy 2.99
Danzig Sacahuista 2.67
Danzig Mofida 2.51
Danzig Glowing Tribute 2.29
Danzig Height of Fashion 2.22
Danzig Prides Promise 2.15
Danzig Infatuation 2.05
Danzig Admiring 1.90
Danzig Henry the Seventh 1.89
Danzig Klairessa 1.79
Danzig Majestic Light 1.75
Danzig Baby Doll 1.63
Danzig Chieftain 1.53
Danzig March Past 1.36
Danzig Le Haar 1.25
Danzig Lianga 1.24
Danzig Fleet Nasrullah 1.16
Danzig Determine 1.04
Danzig Milesian 0.98
Danzig Derring-Do 0.97
Danzig Aureole 0.69
Danzig Tudor Melody 0.66
Danzig Green Desert 0.61
Danzig Chop Chop 0.48
As you can see, out of all the crosses involving Danzig on the Damside which have gotten 10 Stakes
Winners, the Smart Strike over Danzig cross has the second highest score of all, and is therefore in the
96.4th Percentile.
The equivalent Percentile for I.Q.s is 127, or well above average.
But more impressively, out of the 10 Stakes Winners bred on the Smart Strike/Danzig cross, the only
source of Danzig found in multiple Stakes Winners of that number is Belong to Me, the damsire of
Lookin At Lucky.
Besides producing Lookin At Lucky, this cross of Smart Strike on a Belong to Me mare has also
produced Papa Clem, a Millionaire winner of the Arkansas Derby (G2) and San Fernando Stakes (G2).
Notably, this cross has a VGS of 44.60 based on 2 Stakes Winners.
To show what a remarkable nick Belong to Me on the Damside is Smart Strike, I created a list of every
other Male Damside Ancestor that’s been crossed with Smart Strike in 2 Stakes Winners.
And guess what?
Not only does Belong To Me come out on top, his VGS with Smart Strike is more than 10 Points higher
than second place:
Sireside Anc. Damside Anc. VGS
Smart Strike Belong To Me 44.60
Smart Strike Nalee's Rhythm 33.16
Smart Strike Kings Lake 22.32
Smart Strike Regal Classic 8.49
Smart Strike Sovereign Dance 7.28
Smart Strike Bagdad 4.38
Smart Strike Native Charger 3.49
Smart Strike Habitat 3.40
Smart Strike Dixieland Band 3.37
Smart Strike Storm Cat 3.26
Smart Strike Smartaire 2.71
Smart Strike Raja Baba 2.35
Smart Strike Le Haar 2.30
Smart Strike Warfare 2.28
Smart Strike Promised Land 2.27
Smart Strike Le Fabuleux 2.25
Smart Strike Johns Joy 2.18
Smart Strike Hill Prince 2.06
Smart Strike Battle Joined 2.03
Smart Strike Sea Bird 2.01
Smart Strike First Landing 1.75
Smart Strike Fortino 1.75
Smart Strike Cyane 1.54
Smart Strike Grey Sovereign 1.51
Smart Strike Fair Trial 1.48
Smart Strike What A Pleasure 1.43
Smart Strike T.V. Lark 1.40
Smart Strike Sir Ivor 1.26
Smart Strike Blushing Groom 1.23
Smart Strike Lyphard 1.21
Smart Strike Alydar 1.06
Smart Strike Better Self 0.99
Smart Strike The Axe 0.98
Smart Strike Spy Song 0.91
Smart Strike Seattle Slew 0.83
Smart Strike Tom Rolfe 0.59
Smart Strike Prince John 0.33
Smart Strike Mr. Prospector 0.23
This marks out Belong To Me as the OPTIMAL damsire for Smart Strike.
But why?
Well, a very interesting thing about the cross between Smart Strike and a Belong To Me mare is that it
produces a 1x3 cross of Smart Strike and Belong To Me’s dam Belonging.
Smart Strike and Belonging share enough ancestry to qualify as Equivalents, as both are bred on a
basic Raise A Native over Turn-to cross, while one has Sir Gallahad and the other has Bull Dog in the
5th generation.
In addition, the commonality of ancestry is reinforced by Smart Strike being 4x5 to Nasrullah, whose
sire Nearco and dam Mumtaz Begum are both found close up in Turn-To’s sire Royal Charger.
And finally, there’s a very interesting pattern found where the two Equivalents themselves each have a
female ancestor where one is the equivalent to the other. For in the 4th Generation of Smart Strike we
find Miss Dogwood, a daughter of Bull Dog out of a Blue Larkspur mare, whereas in the 3rd generation
of Belonging we find Nothirdchance, a daughter of Blue Larkspur’s son Blue Swords out of a mare by
Bull Dog’s full brother Sir Gallahad.
I think the lesson of Lookin At Lucky is that combining intense linebreeding to a great and long gone
ancestor, in this case Native Dancer, with a Optimal VGS backed up by a shared cluster of high quality
ancestors is a very powerful pattern.
Papa Clem was a very good horse, but in his recently ended racing career just wasn’t up to Lookin At
Lucky’s quality, and I think this was due to him only having the High VGS based on the Cluster
Breeding, but not the intense and cleverly constructed inbreeding to Native Dancer that his three-
quarter brother Lookin At Lucky has.
For whereas Lookin At Lucky’s dam had a pedigree that was 12.5% Native Dancer, Papa Clem’s dam
had a pedigree that was only 7.03% Native Dancer.
This made the Native Dancer genes that Lookin At Lucky got from his dam be better selected for the
quality of doing well in the context of inbreeding to Native Dancer, than the corresponding genes in
Papa Clem were.
Which was a good break for Lookin At Lucky considering that, as I’ve pointed out, Lookin At Lucky is
himself very inbred to Native Dancer.
It’s like if you were an Eskimo whose ancestors did well in the context of living in the Arctic Circle. You
would do better living up there in the snow because you’d have come from a long line of people who
were forced to successfully survive in that particular environmental context. In the same way, Lookin At
Lucky does well in the genetic context of inbreeding to Native Dancer because he comes from a line of
horses who were successful in the genetic context of Native Dancer inbreeding.
One generation leads to the next. And one of the great advantages of the sort of generational continuity
found in Lookin At Lucky‘s pedigree is that it’s exactly what allows for the accretion of positive
contextual adaptations from one generation to the next.
Given that the cross of Smart Strike over Belong To Me has the highest VGS of all the crosses of
comparable sample size involving Smart Strike, and given that the cross managed to get two
Millionaires from very limited opportunity, one of them an American Eclipse Champion and Classic
Winner, it follows that there could scarcely be a higher percentage play for horse breeders than to find
Belong To Me mares and send them to Smart Strike.
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