Aptitude Profile Explained
Stallion Match answers a single question: if you put this mare to this stallion, how closely would the resulting pedigree resemble the pedigrees of horses that have actually reached stakes level?
It works on any male horse, not only commercial stallions, so unproven sires, first-season sires and horses standing privately can be assessed on the same terms as an established stallion.
How the matching works
You supply a mare and a stallion. The platform builds the pedigree their foal would have, then searches for stakes winners whose pedigrees share a pattern with it.
A match does not require an ancestor to sit in the same position in both pedigrees. What matters is that the shared ancestor appears on the same side. An ancestor in the sire half of your proposed mating matching an ancestor in the sire half of a stakes winner counts, even if one sits a generation further back than the other. An ancestor matching across different halves does not count, because that describes a different genetic relationship.
Two grades of match are distinguished in the results:
- Anywhere Match. The same ancestor appears on the same side of both pedigrees, in any position.
- Exact Match. The same ancestor appears in the same position in both pedigrees. This is a special case of an anywhere match, and it is shown in a darker shade.
The platform also checks whether the sireline of the proposed mating agrees with the sireline of each stakes winner returned, so line agreement is visible as one component of a match rather than the whole of it.
Reading the results
The main output is a list of graded stakes winners sharing a pattern with your mating, showing how many Group or Grade 1, 2 and 3 races each won, and how strongly each one matches.
Clicking a horse's name opens the pattern-matched pedigree, which shows exactly which positions matched and where. This is the part worth spending time on. A rating tells you a resemblance exists. The pattern-matched pedigree shows you what the resemblance actually consists of, and whether it runs through parts of the pedigree you care about.
Clicking the plus symbol on any row opens that horse's race history, so you can see what it won rather than only that it was a stakes winner.
From these results, the mating is assigned a rating. See Perfect Match and 20/20 Match for how the bands are determined.
What sits alongside the results
The results panel carries several supporting analyses:
- Stakes Winners Comparison. The matched stakes winners set against your proposed mating.
- Aptitude Profile. The ages and distances at which those stakes winners actually won.
- Dosage Summary. The speed-to-stamina balance of the proposed pedigree. See dosage explained.
- AI Name Assistant. Name suggestions drawn from the pedigree and any themes you supply.
Results can be exported to PDF.
Promoted stallions and any stallion
There are two ways in.
Promoted Stallion Match works across the stallions listed on G1 Goldmine and Stallion Match by their stud farms. A promoted stallion carries an enhanced profile and is searchable by breeders worldwide. Because the farm has listed him, you can send an enquiry directly from his page using Contact Farm, and the farm can respond to you.
You can filter this roster by location, farm, year to stud, colour, fee range with a currency selector, and by sire and dam sire.
Any Stallion Match removes the roster restriction and matches any sire and mare combination in the database, including non-commercial and emerging sires. This is the mode to use when assessing a horse before the market has formed a view on him.
Hypothetical matings
Every match is a hypothetical mating: a pairing that has not happened, analysed exactly as a real horse would be. If your mare is not already in the database, you can add her using Add a Horse and match her immediately.
This is the practical point of the tool. Mating decisions have to be made before any evidence about the foal exists, and often before much evidence about the stallion exists either. Analysing the pedigree the mating would produce is the only way to bring data to that decision at the time it is actually made.
Testing a whole roster at once
Running stallions one at a time is slow when you are working through a farm's full list. Roster Mating tests one mare against every stallion standing at a given farm in a single pass, so you can rank the roster and then examine the leaders in detail.