Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, the late Joe Estes, then editor of The Blood-Horse magazine and later of The Thoroughbred Record, published a long series of articles extolling the superiority of racing class over pedigree as a predictor of the future success of prospective broodmares.

Using statistical methods that were then revolutionary in the Thoroughbred industry, Estes proved unequivocally that, on average, the best racemares made the best broodmares.

While that statement hardly seems a revolutionary concept these days, Estes was both correct and ahead of his time. Although high-class racemares have always been perceived as good prospects, the many successes of breeders August Belmont II and his protege, William Woodward, had led to an increasing belief in the importance of pedigree regardless of racing class.

Anecdotally, of course, it is always easy to come up with many examples of top racemares who fail to reproduce themselves at stud. But the relative importance of pedigree, race record, conformation, and other factors is critical when it comes time to build a broodmare band. A prospective breeder starting out to develop a broodmare band must decide which factors are most important to meet his or her goals in the industry.

Perhaps the first and most important decision is whether the breeding operation will be expected to produce commercial weanlings or yearlings, racehorses for a private home-breeding operation, or a mixture of the two.

Historically, breeders of all persuasions have come up with differing formulas to try to attain the same ultimate goals.

Hunt buys stakes winners

Estes found an apt pupil in the 1960s when Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt entered the breeding industry with the aim of breeding his own racehorses. With Estes as an adviser, Hunt started building his broodmare band by buying stakes-winning racemares, almost regardless of pedigree and regardless of where they had achieved racing success.

"Joe Estes was the first one that I know of that applied mathematics and mathematical figures on horse probabilities," Hunt said. "And he was very helpful to me. I used a lot of his ideas early on. He was a wonderful fellow and a real visionary."

Over the next 25 years or so, Hunt achieved spectacular success with the offspring of those top racemares. Virtually all of Hunt's top horses among the more than 100 stakes winners he bred were out of stakes-winning racemares, including French Horse of the Year Youth, Epsom Derby (Eng-G1) winner Empery, and multiple European and American champion Dahlia. He was voted an Eclipse Award as outstanding breeder three times. Hunt's Bluegrass Farm broodmare band was so successful at breeding racehorses that his 1988 dispersal set a record for total dispersal proceeds that still stands.

Even for private breeding operations, however, racing class cannot be the sole criterion. Bill O'Neill, now owner of Circle O Farm near Winchester, Kentucky, helped develop the late Millard Waldheim's Bwamazon Farm as a private breeding operation in the 1950s.

"Firstly, conformation was the thing," O'Neill said. "We always wanted to have a mare that looked like something. We went mostly on race record and conformation rather than pedigree because we were interested in racing horses.

"But when we started out in the early '50s, we paid top dollar. We paid $55,000, I think, for Judy Rae and maybe $50,000 for Your Hostess, two of our foundation mares. We were breeding to race, so we emphasized race record and conformation."

Two main strategies

There are at least two routes to buying mares with good race records, of course. The most obvious is to buy stakes-winning fillies out of training or young in-foal mares with good race records. Alternatively, one can buy yearling fillies and try to prove their ability on the racetrack.

Ted Carr, now manager of Gerald Ford's Diamond A Farm near Versailles, Kentucky, helped the late Allen Paulson build the broodmare band of his Brookside Farm, which occupied the site of the current Diamond A, by purchasing well-bred, well-made yearling fillies in the 1980s.

"We bought yearling fillies," Carr said, "so you try to buy a lot of pedigree and pretty good conformation. Then you've got to hope some of them run. And of course some of them that couldn't run produced some of our best racehorses."

"He (Paulson) was sure that the only way we were going to have a future was to have numbers. It's a numbers game. A lot of it's luck, and it takes a lot of money. It's scary trying to buy right now because it's so high. Of course, Mr. Paulson jumped in right at the height of the 1980s, and if you sicced him on one, he'd make the Arabs pay for it if he didn't buy it."

It is, indeed, a numbers game. One of Estes's most famous illustrations showed that about six times as many broodmares of average racing ability were required to produce the same number of high-class runners annually as would be produced on average by a smaller number of top racemares.

Commercial pedigrees

Even today, however, a breeder aiming to produce horses for the commercial yearling or weanling market must pay much more attention to pedigree than would someone who is breeding strictly to race.

Robert Courtney Sr. of Crestfield Farm has carried on a highly successful commercial breeding operation for more than 50 years and has advised both commercial and private breeders over that period.

"I look at pedigrees," Courtney said, "but if I'm buying to produce sales horses, I look to see if there's some champions or genuine quality black type in the immediate family. Then I look at the individual and go from there. You have to weight a little higher on pedigree than conformation and race record if you're going to sell. But there are certain things I won't accept in a mare.

"I look for a mare with a good, straight hind leg, and I'll accept a few more faults up front, but I still don't want to buy a mare that's real back in her knees. You have to worry about what the mare has (her foals), not what she is."

As often happens, though, Courtney bought his best mare almost in spite of himself.

"I went out at one November sale and found a mare I wanted to buy very, very badly, and the owner said there was a reserve of $15,000. I couldn't give that kind of money. The next January there was a half sister to the mare, in foal to a better sire, and I bought the mare for $11,000, even though I didn't especially like her. She wasn't really my type of mare. That was Hasty Queen II, and I sold a million dollars worth of yearlings out of her."

Hasty Queen II produced six stakes winners for Courtney and partners, topped by handicap triple crown winner Fit to Fight.

Emphasis on pedigree

Lee Eaton developed a highly successful commercial operation with his Red Bull Stable partners by placing the emphasis on pedigree.

"I couldn't afford to buy race record," Eaton said, "so what I always bought was female family, without much regard to sire or conformation. If you looked at Comely Nell (dam of Eaton-bred Kentucky Derby [G1] winner Bold Forbes), she was by Commodore M and hardly looked like a Thoroughbred horse. If the mare had a strong female family and had a fashionable sire, we couldn't buy them.

"If I had to do it over again and didn't have unlimited money, I'd go to strong female families and not even look at them."

Rob Whiteley, general manager of Carl Icahn's Foxfield, a highly successful commercial operation, uses a somewhat different approach.

"I want it all (conformation, pedigree, and race record)," Whiteley said. "My goal is to produce the best physical individual and athlete I can while still appealing to the commercial marketplace. Therefore, I start with conformation. I can easily forgive minor faults if I love the way the frame is put together and the