With the 2 year-old racing season fast approaching, I wanted to look at this year’s Freshman Sires and try to predict who will do well with his First Crop of 2 year-olds. My goal was to use only quantitative factors that I could measure, leaving aside subjective judgments that are difficult to prove. For this article the term Freshman Sire is used to mean any sire whose First Crop will be two year-olds of this year.

First Crop success seems to be of paramount importance in making the long-term career of a sire. The market tends to punish stallions that fail to produce good numbers with their first two-year-olds. Even if a stallion subsequently begins to produce good horses, he may still be perceived as a poor value.

In order to predict the success of the 2007 freshman class, I analyzed two years worth of data for 50 Freshman Sires. I looked to find out which factors, if any, would predict the success or failure of a sire’s First Crop. I singled out many factors that were quantifiable and that could be indicative of First Crop earning potential including:

(a) Running ability of the sire,
(b) Quality of mares bred,
(c) Number of foals produced in the First Crop,
(d) Initial stud fee, and
(e) Yearling average of their first yearlings.

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