How to read a horse's pedigree: sire, dam and damsire

What do by, out of and the brackets mean in a pedigree?

A horse is by its sire and out of its dam. The name in brackets after the dam is the damsire, the dam's father and the horse's maternal grandsire.

Take Frankel. He is by Galileo (IRE) out of Kind (IRE), and Kind is by Danehill (USA). On a racecard that is compressed to Galileo, Kind (Danehill): sire first, then dam, then the damsire in brackets. The letters in brackets after a name are the country where the horse was foaled, so IRE is Ireland, GB is Great Britain, FR is France and USA is the United States.

The rule never changes: sire is by, dam is out of. A common slip is to read the damsire as the sire because it is the last name on the line. Racecards shorten pedigrees to fit one row, so the full sentence version, by X out of Y by Z, is worth keeping in your head.

How do you read a pedigree chart generation by generation?

A pedigree chart puts the horse on the left, its sire and dam in the next column, then their parents, doubling each generation. The sire always sits above the dam in each pair.

The top line of a chart, sire, sire's sire and so on, is the sire line or male line. The bottom line, dam, dam's dam and onwards, is the female family. The damsire sits where the two meet in the second generation, on the dam's upper branch, which is why breeders talk about a sire line crossed with a damsire.

Three generations give fourteen ancestors, which is enough for most form study. A name appearing twice, such as Northern Dancer on both sides of many modern pedigrees, is inbreeding, written as a pattern like 3x4 for the generations where it appears. That detail matters more to breeders than to anyone reading a racecard, but it explains the notes you see in sales catalogues.

What do sire records by distance, going and surface show?

A sire's progeny record shows where his offspring have run best, such as sprints, middle distances, soft ground or the all weather.

Sires pass on tendencies, not certainties. A stallion who was a top sprinter often gets fast, early maturing two year olds; a stallion who won over a mile and a half tends to get horses that improve with age and trip. The table below this section splits leading Flat sires by two year olds, trip band and surface, which shows those tendencies in numbers.

Read the sample size before the strike rate. A sire with a handful of runners on soft ground can show an extreme figure by chance, while a record built on hundreds of runs is a real pattern.

What do the dam and her other foals add?

The dam's other foals show what her offspring have achieved on the track. A dam with several winners, especially at the same trip, adds weight to a pedigree.

The female family is the part of a pedigree most often skipped. Yet a dam's produce record is direct evidence: if her previous three foals all won over middle distances, a new foal by a stamina sire is well bred for the trip. A dam who was herself a good racemare adds more again.

Words you will see in pedigree notes include half brother or half sister, which in racing means a horse out of the same dam by a different sire, and full brother or full sister, which means the same sire and dam. Black type, meaning a win or place in a Pattern or Listed race, is the standard mark of quality in the family.

When does pedigree matter most?

Pedigree matters most for unraced and lightly raced horses, and for horses trying a new trip, going or surface for the first time.

A two year old on debut has no form at all, so the sire's record with first time out runners and the dam's produce record are the main evidence. The same applies to an experienced horse stepping up to a trip it has never tried, running on heavy ground for the first time, or making its all weather debut.

• Debutants and horses with one or two runs
• First try at a longer or shorter trip
• First run on soft or heavy ground, or on firm
• First run on the all weather
• Jumpers switching from hurdles to fences, where the sire's chase record helps

How does pedigree compare with proven form?

Once a horse has several runs, its own form outweighs its pedigree. A proven record on the ground or trip says more than what its relatives achieved.

The mistake to avoid is letting breeding overrule the evidence. A horse by a sprinter that has already won twice over a mile has answered the question for itself. Equally, a horse bred to love soft ground that has run poorly on it three times is telling you something the pedigree cannot.

Use pedigree as a tiebreaker and a starting point. It is strongest before the form exists and weakest once it does, and it is most useful when it agrees with small signs in the form, such as a horse finishing strongly over a trip that looks too short.

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