A review of the effectiveness of a PRI score is due. The yearling sales are about to commence. I thought it opportune to see how successful or otherwise my selections have been. In my postings to my website in 2020 I selected 14 yearlings. You soon learn that two of the most important things you need in racing horses is money, followed by patience. Being patient is emphasised by the fact that my selected horses earned more money in their 4yo career than their combined 2yo and 3yo efforts. This result is of course the expression of the genes in the pedigree. I made my selections with a few exceptions on PRI values alone.

Table for Comparisons

There is little information available on the net about the financial return from racing horses. The excellent article by  Gary Macrell is a must for anyone wishing to own a race horse. There is difficulty in finding comparative data. The best I can come up with is in the table above. I stress this is useful for comparison; there is not enough to reach the level of significance. In my calculations I have used only the capital cost of purchasing a horse. My figures for Return on Capital (ROC) consider only the prize money earned divided by the capital purchase value. The operational costs (training, veterinary, breaking in, transport etc) are considerable and are different for every horse.

1. The horses chosen by Flavonebr from the Sales were obviously slow to mature. At present five of the fourteen continue racing as 5yo. This includes two that have been placed in Stakes races so an improvement of ROC is anticipated with time.
2. When I developed my PRI Index system, I had no way of measuring if it was better than random. Consequently, I used a random generator to select the same number of horses in the Sale that PRI had selected. Initially the results were almost the same but as more data become available the PRI method rapidly became dominant.
3. I did find some interesting data in a paper “ Investigation into the profitability of horses sold at the Magic Millions Yearling Sales.” They (COPR)* are hardly friends of the racing industry and I would dispute some of the conclusions they have drawn from the data. However, I have no reason to believe their data is suspect. In fact, their calculations on the data mirror mine   They compared the profitability of the ten highest and lowest yearlings in the 2017 Sales. In their view none made a profit and the ROC value of the expensive was 9%. The income was taken up to September 2022.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that a PRI score can improve the chances of selecting a good horse. It is double that of using random selection.For the ten most expensive yearling at the 2007 Sale. PRI was six times more effective.

For my horse performance of the year I have selected White Abarrio, winner of the

Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita. Everyone thought he was a good horse as a miler, but suspect at 10f. Moved out three wide to make his run he nevertheless shot forward at the turn into the straight. No-one could catch him. Great Effort.