At Fat Jockey we are always looking for a betting edge. We are not “dosage” experts but are curious to learn.
We will start with the basics and then try and apply the approach to a few races. You can follow us on our path to dosage enlightenment on this regular blog.
Q1: What is the purpose of dosage analysis?
The ultimate purpose for most people will be to help identify winners or losers and bet accordingly. Potentially owners and trainers could use the technique to help identify the correct running distance for their horses. Dosage analysts look at the breeding of horses to determine which sires of race horses transmit raw speed, and which sires transmit stamina.
Q2: What is dosage?
A lot of the definitions we have seen would definitely encourage the inner lazy man. If you go researching this you will see stuff about the theories of Vuiller, Varola, Rasmussen et al that will have you reaching for the back button.
The definition we like best is Dosage is a mathematical way to find a horse’s stamina.
Q3 What are mathematics behind Dosage calculations then?
This is complicated but thankfully the pedigreequery.com people will do the calculations and provide a set of dosage numbers to us.
The numbers they generate for the reigning Champion Hurdler – Hurricane Fly – look like this:
HURRICANE FLY (IRE) b. G, 2004 DP = 2-1-9-4-0 (16) DI = 0.88 CD = 0.06 – 24 Starts, 14 Wins, 3 Places, 2 Shows Career Earnings: £880,912
Q4 : What does DP mean ?
DP is the Dosage Profile – on the table above it is the first set of numbers after the horses name .
These Hurricane Fly DP numbers i.e. DP = 2-1-9-4-0 (16) have been calculated by analysing the four displayed generations of Hurricane Fly’s parentage and establishing how many of the sires therein are ‘Chef-de-race’. If the horse’s sire is on the “chef-de-race” list it counts as 16 points ,a grandsire counts as 8 points, a great-grandsire 4, and a great-great-grandsire 2. The ‘Chef-de-race’ sires are basically considered masters of the thoroughbred horserace breed. The designation of horses as chef-de race is currently determined by Dr Steve Roman and is the subject of some debate – for example Danehill has not yet been designated chef-de race.
Once a horse has been identified as a ” Chef-de race” sire it is also given an “aptitudinal analysis” and classified into the appropriate aptitudinal classes – the maximum number of classes a horse can be allocated to is two. These classes range from brilliant -a sire noted for getting top-quality sprinters- to professional -a sire noted for getting horses to run in the top races at long distances. The five classes are Brillant – Intermediate – Classic – Solid – Professional.
In Hurricane Fly’s Profile above we see DP = 2 Brillant-1 Intermediate-9 Classic-4 Solid -0 Professional . This is followed by the number sixteen in brackets. The (16) is the total number of dosage points and is just the sum of points in all classes. In theory the greater the total number of points the classier the horse.
That is enough to start.
We will have look at the other numbers after the horse name above i.e. the DI and CD numbers in our next Fat Jockey Dosage article.
