Pedigree Search Explained: Strains, Affinity and Generation Targeting
Pedigree Search is the core analytical engine. Rather than starting from a horse and asking what its pedigree contains, it starts from a pedigree pattern and asks which stakes winners carry it.
That reversal is the point. It lets you test an idea about a combination of ancestors against the historical record directly.
Three ways to search
Standard Search. Enter up to two main ancestors, one on the sire side and one on the dam side, plus up to four qualifier ancestors to narrow further. This is the general-purpose mode.
Gen Search. The same structure with generation-level targeting, so you can specify that an ancestor must sit in the second, third or fourth generation rather than anywhere in the pedigree. Use this when the position of an influence matters and not merely its presence.
Visual Pedigree Search. An interactive pedigree tree that updates in real time, with colour-coded cells showing proven and weak crosses as you build. Exports to PDF.
Filters
Strain. Narrows results to pedigrees carrying a particular ancestral influence. This is how you isolate a specific line of descent within a broader search rather than accepting every pedigree that happens to contain your main ancestors.
Sireline. Restricts to a given male line.
Tail Female Line. Restricts to a given female family.
Country. Available across searches, and worth using deliberately. Racing programmes differ, and a pattern that produces stakes winners in one jurisdiction may not in another.
What the results give you
A search returns the stakes winners carrying your pattern, along with several supporting analyses:
- Race history. Expand any horse to see what it actually won.
- Runners history. The number of runners carrying the pattern year by year, which is the context you need before reading any percentage.
- Strike rate. Stakes winners as a proportion of runners for the searched cross.
- Pedigree. Five generations by default, extending to seven in full screen.
- Aptitude Profile. The ages and distances at which those stakes winners won, with a country-by-country summary matrix.
- Affinity Matrix. Described below.
The Affinity Matrix
Affinity analysis highlights pedigree patterns statistically linked to higher performance, which in practice means identifying which ancestors combine well with the ones you searched.
The Affinity Matrix counts how often each horse appears in the pedigrees of the stakes winners your search returned, and shows how many stakes winners and Group 1 winners that ancestor has produced in combination with your searched horses. It also shows where those horses are, with the number and proportion of stakes winners by location.
It defaults to the first three generations, with options to extend to five or seven.
This is the part of Pedigree Search that generates ideas rather than confirming them. You search a cross you already had in mind, and the matrix tells you which other ancestors keep turning up alongside it in the pedigrees of good horses. Those are the influences worth investigating next, and they are frequently not the ones you would have guessed.
How to use it well
Check the runner counts before the percentages. A strike rate calculated on forty runners is not the evidence a strike rate on four thousand is, and the two look identical on screen.
Filter to your own programme. A pattern's record in a jurisdiction you will never race in is interesting rather than useful.
Follow the matrix outward. The most productive way to use this tool is iteratively. Search a cross, read the Affinity Matrix, search the combination it suggests, and repeat.
Watch for opportunity effects. A combination that appears frequently in stakes winners may simply be a common combination. The runner's history is what separates a genuinely productive pattern from a merely popular one.