Reader Q&A - Derby Contender Nicks?

Byron's response: Thanks for taking the time to send us this email. Judging by your question we should probably make a better effort at getting the TrueNicks ratings integrated and displayed on The Blood-Horse web site (www.bloodhorse.com), but here are a couple of areas where you can find the answers you seek.

Firstly, on The Blood-Horse web site there is one of the neatest features to find the results of all the races run in North America and some beyond these shores. The Blood Horse Racing Results page is a fully search-able database of race results. If you haven't tried it already, I suggest you bookmark the site as a research tool. Under each race, you can view the race detail and the TrueNicks score for the first, second and third placegetter are displayed for you to see and you can also look at the race replay for most races which is a very neat feature. If you click on this link for example, you can take a look at the Fountain of Youth Stakes where the nominal favorite for the Kentucky Derby Eskendereya (by Giant's Causeway (TrueNicks,SRO) makes a mess of the field.

To look at the ratings for the promising maiden and allowance horses who are on their way to stakes competition, you can run the nicks the same way as prospective breeders. The rating for horses by subscribed stallions can be obtained free of charge at the TrueNicks site (www.truenicks.com). Just click on the sire of the horse in question and follow the prompt to add the mares name. The list of stallions can be generated from near the top left of the site, and are available alphabetically, by farm, and by state. This is provided courtesy of the farm standing the stallion.

For horses that are by a stallion that is not subscribed, you can click on "Named Foal Report" which is one line above the subscribed stallions. From there it prompts you to go to Equineline, through one of two different places to click, depending on whether or not you have an Equineline account. That will take you to the Equineline site. There you will see that it is offering product 10TP (hypothetical). If you hit click on her to start over, just above the box where you would enter the sire's name, it will give you an option to put in the named horse. Note that there is a charge for the named horse nick.

You can also run the ratings direct from Equineline (www.equineline.com), where you will find it under "Race Records" and as product 10TP. However, if you start there, you don't have the list of subscribed stallions, that is available on the TrueNicks site. If you do enter the horses as named horses there would be a charge for each one, but if you enter them as hypothetical foals, again you do not get charged for subscribed stallions, but unlike the TrueNicks site, a list of stallions is not available.

Good luck with picking your Derby horse!