The Essential Who’s Who of the Thoroughbred … and probably the most significant and comprehensive reference ever published on the thoroughbred..
In 1995 we published, after 20 years of research, RICHARD ULBRICH’S PEERAGE OF RACEHORSES. With over 27,000 entries on the colts, fillies and mares which have influenced and dominated the breed from the mid 1800’s to 1994, the book was an essential investment for all breeders and buyers of the thoroughbred. Based on the classic/major stakes winners of the world, a typical entry in the 1146 page, A4 sized, 2.3 kg, and 5cm deep book, contains between 50 and 800 words on each horse, including details such as: Pedigree, Bruce Lowe family Number, Performance, Timeform Rating©, Average Winning Distance, relevant contemporary comments on the horse, and influential progeny.
In light of the need to be continually up to date, we now release the book as an online database – www.ulbrichspeerage.net
Below you will find reviews of the book on release. This is equally true today of the database – with now over 55,000 entries.
Peter Tonkes, The Australian Bloodhorse Review, November 1994
Researchers of thoroughbred breeding over the years have tended to be a little like medicos and lawyers when it comes to their craft, indulging in technobabble and not a little mystique so as to distance themselves from their audience and retain their position in the scheme of things.
Doctors do it with Latin and indecipherable scrawl in that and every other language; lawyers with unintelligible language and a uniform that includes hair from slow horses.
Medicine and the law appear to have learned much of the artful use of mumbo jumbo from various religions, most of which are big on places of business and uniformed major players meant to intimidate the masses. Courtrooms, for instance, have much in common with churches, and hospitals are not far behind. This is not intended to be anti-religious, merely an observation.
Some doctors and lawyers have attempted to de-mystify their professions but, sadly, they remain in the minority.
As for thoroughbred breeding experts, in the past century or so, there isn’t a hint of intimidation, but you can take it as read that on the subject of racing and horses myth is perpetuated, generally with relish.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but it’s hard to read some breeding tomes without the feeling they belong to an exclusive club and, even by unconscious agreement, none will break the unwritten rule and go too far to diminish the mysticism.
And like their counterparts in other fields, you have to suspect it’s far less the case of knowledge withheld than what can really be known padded out and tarted up a little.
One myth is the emphasis on the sire line. Sire lines are important, but not to the exclusion of all else and the overwhelming concentration on stallions as the be all and end all in breeding is not only wrong, it’s taking the easy way out.
A hundred years ago, when they formulated the rules for the various Sires’ Produce Stakes – now well past their use-by date – it could be forgiven. The acceptance of evolution took well into this century, however, and was a long way ahead of equality for women.
Now, a year-9 biology student can tell you how genes are distributed; more or less equally. Yet the concentration on the quest for knowledge as far as thoroughbreds are concerned sticks dogmatically to the sires.
The overwhelming reason for this isn’t sexism but, rather, convenience. Overview data on sires is easy as compared to the mares. A stallion can have 50-plus horses of each generation reach the track, more in the case of dual hemisphere sires and even the most productive mares are lucky to get 10 to the races in their stud careers.
The result is that it is much more difficult to be erudite about the females because the research is generally considered just too hard – and not helped when Australasian yearling catalogues refuse to list a first dam’s career record season- by-season, like they do in England. That should read it was too hard. Richard Ulbrich has broken ranks with his new work. Ulbrich’s Peerage of Racehorses, and what a work it is!
It isn’t its voluminous nature of more than 27,000 entries and around 3.4 million words on 1,150 A4 sized pages which separates this from all thoroughbred breeding works that preceded it, but the fresh approach.
Ulbrich has boldly gone where no breeding researcher had gone before, into the realms of treating females with some overdue equality in the scheme of things bloodhorse.
That he has spent a dozen years pursuing some wonderfully lateral, and original thinking is a whole lot more important that its length. Make no mistake, this is no case of never mind the quality feel the width. For the first time, in my experience, the user will have access to information not before grouped in one place. If that doesn’t impress you, I’ll gladly give you my membership to the Racing Sceptics Club.
Ulbrich, any serious student will know added a fascination factor to an almost infinite number of thoroughbred pedigrees with his 1986 work, The Great Stallion Book. A countryman, the late John Hislop no less, called this collection of some 600 dedicated biographies of influential stallions and over a half million well chosen words ‘remarkable’ and the breeder-owner of Brigadier Gerard was at least half right.
Then came See How They Ran, which went beyond the racing records of famous stallions to give us a unique glimpse of the style of racehorses they were.
When reviewed, my copy of Ulbrich’s GSB was pristine. Five years on, it’s proudly dog-eared from so often being the source of discovery. Life has been breathed into many of the names lying in their coffin-like spaces on tabulated pedigrees by the marriage of records with the gleaned eye-witness accounts.
Some of those descriptions were personal as the East Anglia native saw Nasrullah race as a schoolboy, which sparked a lifetime of study of racing in England, South Africa and, since 1973, Australia.
The story behind Pot-8-0’s remains a Great Stallions favourite and imparted characteristics of the champion miler, Tudor Minstrel, and so many others allowed the reader to develop a feel for them. As was the case with SHTR, it was almost as if you’d seen them race.
Ulbrich’s Peerage of Racehorses does as well at the very least for the maternal side of the thoroughbred breeding equation which the others did for the sires. Covering so completely as it does an area hitherto so sadly neglected, casts its value as immeasurably greater.
All that and it’s possible to cross check performances of different horses from the same family for similarities.
As an illustration of this book’s powers and with not a trace of irony, my choice is a favourite stallion, the late and great Carlyle Stud resident Zamazaan.
The author spent 5.5 centimeters to sum up the mighty chestnut son of Exbury: listing that he’s from Bruce Lowe’s family no 7; and the branch of Myrrha. This is followed by his racing record with something of the horses he raced against; and a brief summary of his stud record in New Zealand before his death in 1990.
Along the way there’s an incisive little quote from his owner, that Zamazaan was a horse with a kind, gentle disposition: It’s his lovely nature with the mares that wins out for him. He’s a real gent.
You can learn from Zamazaan’s pedigree in New Zealand Thoroughbred Stallion registers (to 1990) something of his female family and that his mum, Toyama, is placed four times from six starts and a half sister to Buisson Ardent – don’t you love a successful stallion or two right up close in a sire or potential sire’s pedigree.
The point of choosing a stallion for the example is that you can see how the information compares. Many of the horses you would look up don’t have such a detailed pedigree published, unless you could have found it using sale catalogues and that can be hellishly difficult unless you already have a strong knowledge of the family you’re searching through – sort of like a bank only lending you money if you can show them you don’t really need it.
Back to Zamazaan; you could track though any of his antecedents male and female all the way back to a modern tap root mare who, in the instance of his distaff family, is Myrrha, foaled more than a century and a half back. Any route is easy to follow as all horses are inter-related in some way and can be cross- checked.
Working backwards through his dams we find that the first, Toyama, had her six runs at two and three, all other information in her five lines covered in the NZSR, including her stud record.
Back a generation and Peerage starts to earn its keep, the entry for his second dam, Rose O’Lynn throwing far more light on the racing record of the 1944 foaled daughter of Pherozshah and Rocklyn. Among the facts revealed is when she ran second in the English 1,000 Guineas, Imprudence finished a neck ahead and 18 behind her. Also, when she was unplaced in the Prix de Diane – won by Montenica in a field of 19 – Rose O’Lynn’s chances were ruined when another runner came down in front of her.
It continues:
“When racing she was always at a disadvantage in size (she was only 15.1 hands when at stud), but showed her quality as a matron breeding good winners to several different stallions. AWD (average winning distance of progeny) 7.2F (ALMABSOOT, BUISSON ARDENT, BUISSON D’OR, LISCIA, TOYAMA, VENTURE VII)”.
As Toyama wasn’t a winner we know the horses in the capitals and the brackets are not necessarily SW but horses which can (and should) be looked up. In this case all but Toyama and Liscia were Graded winners: Almabsoot of the Prix Lupin, Buisson d’Or a Leger winner of the Prix Royal Oak and Venture VII of a Middle Park, a St James’s Palace and a Sussex Stakes. Liscia is the dam of dual Grade 1 winner, The Bart, whom John Henry pipped in the first Arlington Million – in that brief golden age when such races were on Australian free-to-air television.
Third dam Rocklyn is pushed off the NZTSR page by the success of her daughter so the eight lines in Peerage is new information and the same applies to her parents Rock Flint and Rock Forrard. For brevity’s sake you are left to discover that for yourselves.
It must be said Ulbrich’s Peerage takes you as deep as you would wish and he stresses that he isn’t playing bloodline detective.
His aim with this book is to make the reader the expert, free to explore clues in any direction, many previously marked no through road to the information highway. You are the pedigree equivalent of Hercules Poirot or Sam Spade, free of the scripted constraints of those fictional sleuths.
The information gained from the GSB increasingly led to the conclusion the author is not simply a man ahead of his time, but more one who has brought relevant racing history to our time.
Now, Ulbrich’s Peerage has brought the Great Stallion Book right along with it as a new plateau has been reached.
A must, of course it’s a must.
Tim Greene, New Zealand Bloodhorse, November 1994
How often have you studied a pedigree, been making great progress, the genetic picture slowly but surely being laid out for you until … the inevitable snag.
Who was she by? What sort of sire was he? Did she leave anything a note? Was he a stayer or sprinter?
The questions mount as surely as you know they will appear. Few of us can claim a thoroughbred library with enough scope to provide even the briefest reference to all 63 names featured on any pedigree in the New Zealand Stallion Register.
References are looked up here and there, books and articles spreading across the desk as the frustration mounts.
Till now.
In one incredible publication Richard Ulbrich has provided the means to plug all but the very, very obscure gaps.
Ulbrich’s Peerage contains detailed entries to more than 27,000 thoroughbreds and reference to 100,000 horses altogether. If the horse you are seeking information on is of any moment, he or she is in here.
Ulbrich, English by birth but living in Australia for the last two decades, has previously published The Great Stallion Book, the most comprehensive book of its type and containing detailed biographies on over 600 influential sires.
Now he has turned his attention to the female side of the pedigree equation, an aspect too often forgotten as the compilers of racing and breeding’s heritage record their efforts for posterity. “Ulbrich’s Peerage” traces the classic and major stakeswinners of nine countries back to a modern taproot, and these taproot mares are divided and defined along the lines of the Bruce Lowe families.
This aspect alone should hold appeal to New Zealand breeders given we are the only country in the world still categorizing and cataloguing using this nomenclature.
However Ulbrich’s massive tome (1150 pages weighing in at 2.5kg) is not laid out along strict Bruce Lowe family lines but rather is an alphabetical reference work inwhich the number features for those wishing to be guided by it.
For each horse featured Ulbrich provides the year of birth, sire, dam and damsire, also with year of birth, the Bruce Lowe number and the relevant branch and sub- branch names, and then he provides comments about that horse. Facts such as the races won or major placings are generally accompanied by notes about conformation and aptitude as well as other facts, such as Timeform ratings where available, or quirks which have helped class this performer as a cut above his or her peers. Mares have their progeny and the Average Winning Distance of these offspring recorded while stallions have their Average Earnings Index and notable progeny listed.
So now with this book one can look up the pedigree of say Dance Floor and find the sire of his fourth dam, Rustom Pasha, was a winner at two who went on to win the Eclipse and Champion Stakes in England at three as well as placing in the St Leger. Exported to Argentina he performed with distinction in the stud featuring numerous times among the top three at season’s end.
For many this may be an irrelevance, but for those who place stock in the origins and abilities of individuals featured across a pedigree (and here we must be talking about all serious pedigree students), access to such information and hence an appreciation of its relevance has to often been restricted in the past. Breeders will also appreciate the fact the reference is hinged about the female aspect, for this is one area which has not received the attention it deserves in the past.
It is not a book for those needing pictures to help them from cover to cover, for apart from the painting of Mill Reef on the front cover, there are none. It is instead a book that combines work and passion, a book that can be read for interest as much as for reference.
Its own introduction describes the scope of “Ulbrich’s Peerage” as ‘a foundation from which to travel back in time, to spread sideways introducing new family branches as they emerge, and from this base, a springboard to the future’.
American pedigree expert and columnist Leon Rasmussen describes Peerage as ‘essential material while also providing lasting reading enjoyment…..a reference work that belongs in every breeding enthusiast’s library. Everywhere.” We couldn’t agree more.
Leon Rasmussen, Owner Breeder, January 1995
It has been a 13 year journey for Richard Ulbrich (” a journey I would never have embarked on had a crystal ball hinted the distance”, he explains) but it has been a journey which, thankfully, has been responsible for the most definitive and comprehensive guide involving the female side of the thoroughbred.
The Book, Richard Ulbrich’s Peerage of Racehorse, is a monumental achievement without international barriers. In the “Author’s Note and Preface,” Ulbrich writes: “In essence, Peerage is a Bruce Lowe orientated family saga, tracing the classic and major stakes winners of nine countries of the world back to a modern taproot, with comments, as far as I have been able to trace, on racing and breeding, performance, nature, and conformation, etc. ~ in fact, I have tried to answer all the questions that I, myself, would ask and want answered.
“It is a sad fact that the mares of racing have been neglected. Yet, at worst, they are 50% of any thoroughbred, and many suggest the more important factor in the relationship between the sire and dam.”
Several years ago when Ulbrich was nearing the completion of his incredible achievement, this gentleman who was born in England, not far from Newmarket, but now living in Australia for some years, wrote and asked if I would consider writing a forward for Peerage.
Being acquainted with his marvellous reference publication, The Great Stallion Book (GSB), and his explanation of what he was doing with Peerage, I was truly flattered and readily agreed. Now that I have Peerage in hand, I can only say how grateful I am that my name in this small way will always be associated with this magnificent contribution to those of us who appreciate the Thoroughbreds who have taken part in what is the world’s most civilized and cultured sport.
Peter Tonkes reviewed Peerage in the November issue of The Australian Bloodhorse Review. It covered a full page of unstinted, and deservedly so, praise without exception, for the book, noting:
“It isn’t its voluminous nature of more than 27,000 entries and around 3.4 million words on 1,150 A4 sized pages which separates this from all thoroughbred breeding works that preceded it, but the fresh approach. Ulbrich has boldly gone where no breeding researcher had gone before, into the realms of treating females with some overdue equality in the scheme of things bloodhorse.
Ulbrich’s aim with this book is to make the reader the expert, free to explore clues in any direction, many previously marked no through road to the information highway. You are the pedigree equivalent of Hercules Poirot or Sam Spade.”
Tonkes might also have suggested why Ulbrich requested this writer to do a forward when he explained: “The Daily Racing Form’s (Former) ‘Bloodlines’ guru, Leon Rasmussen, says in his forward that he became a ‘family man’ in the sense of appreciation the maternal side of pedigrees a good many years ago.” In my forward I also wrote: “As any one who has studied and written about the Thoroughbred realizes, finding information on the females gender is infinitely more difficult than finding information about stallions…”
But the beauty of Peerage goes well beyond this incredible compilation of essential reference material, as much of the information, as was so abundant in his GSB, provided fascinating and lasting enjoyment.
I would like to complete this review of Peerage with what I consider a perfect example of its contents. What follows is the entry for Pocahontas, the most influential matron in the 19th Century and the only mare on Mon. J. Vuillier’s original list of 11 of the most significant progenitors responsible for the improvement of the breed up to that time.
“POCAHONTAS (1837) by GLENCOE (1831) ex MARPESSA, by MULEY (1830). BL Fam. no 3, Branch of POCAHONTAS. Bay. A first foal. Failed to win in four seasons of racing, and 9 starts, although placed 3 times at five years. Bred 15 foals. Standing little bigger than a pony, just 14.3 hands, and a ‘roar’, she had a pronounced influence on the GSB. She did not transmit her wind infirmity. She lived to the ripe age of 33 years, and was 25 years when she bred Araucaria. Pocahontas was found to be barren after each of eight consecutive visits to The Baron, before conceiving her first foal. In 1867, she was sold at Stamford, to the Marquis of Exeter for 10 guineas! In ‘The American Thoroughbred”, published in 1905, Charles Trevathan wrote: “Pocahontas became the most wonderful broodmare in English History. Her three sons, Stockwell, Rataplan and King Tom, have been amongst the greatest sires which the English have ever known. There is hardly a good racehorse today which does not trace to one of these.” (ARAUCARIA, AURICULA, HEROINE OF LUCKNOW, INDIANA, KING TOM, KNIGHT OF KARS, KNIGHT OF ST. PATRICK, RATAPLAN, STOCKWELL).”
And I thought I knew something about Pocahontas! As the headline on Tonke’s review noted: “Forget Debrett’s, this is the Peerage for you.”
