BloodHorse Launches New Sires List Interface

More lists and customizable sorting and filtering are the biggest improvements to a new BloodHorse.com sires list interface launched online last week.

The new interface provides easy access to dozens of leaders lists that can draw upon the stallion populations in North America only, North America with Europe, Europe only, or for the entire Northern Hemisphere. As in the past, lists are available for sires standing in individual states and provinces.

For all stallion populations, BloodHorse has added new lists including fourth-crop sires, fifth-crop sires, sixth-crop sires, and sires of 3-year-olds. Each of these lists can be filtered by surface type, allowing for a quick review of this year's leading sires by 3-year-olds on dirt.

See the new BloodHorse.com Sires List Page

This year's inauguration of the $20 million Saudi Cup sparked a lot of discussion about the industry tradition of ranking leading sires by progeny earnings. BloodHorse addressed the desire to see rankings by other key metrics by adding options to sort sires by number and percentage of black-type winners, number and percentage of black-type performers, average earnings per runner, and average winning distance.

Ranking sires by percentages is always tricky business because a stallion with very small crops can achieve an extraordinarily large percentage with one black-type winner in a minor, restricted stakes. The goal of any sires list is to present valuable and relevant data, so with lists ranked by percentages, the list pulls from the top 70% of the stallion population selected. The cutoff for the number of runners will vary depending on the population of stallions selected, and that minimum will be displayed in the explanation at the top of the sires list page.

For example, if the list is sorting the leading North American and European sires by percentage of black-type winners for only North America and European racing, then only stallions with 49 or more starters year to date will be included in the search. If just North American sires were included in the search for all Northern Hemisphere racing, then sires with 43 or more starters would be included.

The new interface is backloaded with leaders lists going back to 2015. For anyone who wants to see the leaders lists back to 2001, a link to the archived lists is available within the text at the top of the page. A few of the BloodHorse leaders lists can only be found in the old format. Those are leaders by lifetime Average Earnings Index and leading broodmare sires, which will be incorporated into the new interface at a later date.

BloodHorse's default general leading sires list includes North American-based stallions with Northern Hemisphere race results. Along with this change, stallions who have been exported to other countries fall off this list. The most notable stallion to disappear from this list is New Year's Day, who is now standing in Japan and is the sire of Maximum Security, who has earned $10 million this year.

Breeders and owners can still track New Year's Day's progress by conducting a search using all Northern Hemisphere stallions. But for the purposes of the North American general leading sires list, the top spot as of June 27 belongs to Spendthrift Farm's Into Mischief  with $5,680,674 in progeny earnings.