Quality Road is currently the #18 stallion on the 2021 Leading Sires list, with $6,701,478 in progeny earnings so far this year. As the sire of twelve G1 winners and three champions, Quality Road is one of the best in the industry, and it should be no surprise with a look at his pedigree.
Quality Road is from Bruce Lowe family 13-c, the family of the 1872 mare Stray Shot. More specifically, Quality Road traces back to the great early 20th century mare Frizette, who is also the tail-female ancestor of such great stallions as Seattle Slew, Mr. Prospector, and Candy Ride. She is also the 8th dam of Quality Road’s sire, Elusive Quality, meaning Quality Road is inbred 9×9 to Frizette via his sire’s tail-female line and his own tail-female line (technically, she appears 9x9x9 in his pedigree, as the sixth dam of Elusive Quality’s grandsire Mr. Prospector).
What makes Quality Road’s linebreeding to family 13-c even more interesting is that he seems to have an affinity for mares by stallions who exhibit the same pattern – being the result of a breeding between two horses from the same female family. Quality Road nicks exceptionally well with mares by Hennessy and Dixie Union, with three stakes winners from eight starters out of Hennessy mares (37.5%), and four stakes winners from seventeen starters out of Dixie Union mares (23.5%). Hennessy and his sire Storm Cat both trace tail-female to the 1889 mare Belle Rose of family 8c – the 11th dam of Hennessy and the 9th of Storm Cat. Dixie Union and his sire Dixieland Band both trace tail-female to family 4m’s Sallie McClelland – 13th dam of Dixie Union and 10th dam of Dixieland Band.
I found it interesting that Quality Road was so prolific with mares by two stallions who were bred on the same type of pattern he was, and sought statistics on how he has done with all mares by stallions exhibiting this linebreeding pattern. It should be noted that I specifically restricted this first group to stallions who were by stallions from the same Bruce Lowe family. Using pedigreequery.com to determine which stallions I needed to check, I compiled the following statistics using equineline.com. For reference, Quality Road sires 51% winners and 6% stakes winners overall.
When bred to mares by stallions who are the result of breeding two horses from the same Bruce Lowe family, Quality Road shows a significant increase in the success of his foals, especially when it comes to his straight win percentage.
I decided to expand the criteria to include stallions who were from related Lowe families. These stallions are still from the same female family as their sires, just more distantly. This brought in foals by mares such as Deputy Minister, who is from Bruce Lowe family 10-a and by family 10-c’s Vice Regent. In that case, Deputy Minister’s 14th dam is Vice Regent’s 9th dam, Queen Mary (the founder of family 10-a, from which 10-c splits).
Intriguingly, the numbers stay very similar, with only a slight decrease in winner and stakes winner percentages as the total number of starters increases. Six of Quality Road’s twelve G1 winners are out of mares by stallions bred on the same pattern as Quality Road – Abel Tasman, Caledonia Road, Sprint Quality, Hootenanny, Salty, and Klimt.
Additionally, Quality Road’s highest earning runner City of Light is from family 2-e, out of a mare by family 2-o’s Dehere. You have to go back to family 2’s 1737 mare Miss Makeless to find their most recent common ancestor, but the connection is there. This is a slightly different pattern, but is still an example of Quality Road excelling with linebred mares.
The dams of Bellafina, Dunbar Road, Illuminant, and Corniche all show distant linebreeding to family 1 via various damsires, and while that honestly feels more like coincidence than a pattern necessarily, I did find it interesting enough to note. Of Quality Road’s dozen G1 winners, only Roadster shows no female family linebreeding on his dam’s side.
Of course, pedigree analysis is all about attempting to make deductions based on circumstantial evidence, and there are countless factors that go into a good mating, but I think the evidence suggests that Quality Road shows a particular affinity for mares by stallions exhibiting the same linebreeding pattern he himself was bred on.
Better Talk Now, by Jessica Tugwell 