A prime example of the fallacy of dosage was Strike The Gold. He had a dosage of about 9.00 ruining Roman's bogus record of no horse winning the Derby with a dosage of over 4 since 1929. What does Roman do? He immediately upgrades STG's sire Alydar's status in his chef de race charts and "Bingo" Strike The Gold has a dosage of 2.70

I remember being caught up in the Roman theory of dual qualifiers ( dosage of 4 or less and being 116 or higher on the 2 year old experimental highweight) as the only horses that could win the Derby. His shining moment was the '90 Derby when Unbridled, Summer Squall, and Pleasant Tap were the only three duallies in the race. The tri paid about $1600 with Tap at 50/1

I think that at some point in the '80s it may have had some merit, but everytime a sire is upgraded, it lowers the overall dosage numbers. It seems today that almost all contenders fit within the guidelines when years ago not that many did.

Pedigree can matter.
Dosage does not.
In terms of looking at a race like the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, or any race where all of the horses are trying a distance for the first time, analyzing a horse's pedigree can be a useful handicapping tool.
Reducing this process to a single number - especially when using an absurd system like dosage - just doesn't make sense.
The AP Indy example is perfect. I am pretty sure people gave Rags a good shot to win last year's Belmont in part because of her sire. He doesn't need some special designation to let us know that AP Indy's are more likely than most to do well at 10f and beyond.

haha, never thought of it that way but that is precisely what it is.

I don't really think it's any kind of redboarding guide - it's just misguided nonsense.

I guess Strike the Gold was the horse who was over the dosage limit - but was brought under after his Derby win when they made Alydar a chef-de-race.

I don't exactly think it was an act of redboarding for them to finally give there silly rating to a great distance sire like Alydar.

I can't imagine how idiotic a better would have had to have been to discredit Strike The Gold's chances of seeing out a classic distance because he had a high dosage.

Strike the Gold's younger full brother was 19-6-3-2 and made $244K in route races - and was 8-1-2-0 and made $24K in sprint races.

I don't really buy that they redboard - it's just a very half baked way of judging a horses likely development and distance preferences

Uh, there are no horses "out of" A.P. Indy.

Was it ever really alive?

DrugS, I am with Cardus on this one. While I greatly respect your knowledge of the game and your handicapping abilities, I think the dual qualifier and especially dosage index had merit when handicapping the Derby...once upon a time. No longer. Roman has just done too much tweaking to his chef-de-race list in an effort to make sure it holds true that it is now useless.

Are these #'s AS OF the Derby, or right now?

The Dosage is about as ridiculous as the guy who told me Funny Cide couldn't win the Derby "because he was a New York Bred"

Indeed. Dosage is just about as useful as those always useless Derby "angles."

Does it matter??? Yes and no- just like any other handicapping factor. If you take the time to really understand the process and use it, it can assist in the overall picture. People citing specific examples of why it doesn't matter are glossing over the larger picture. Would those of you quick to downplay the validity of the dosage index as a handicapping factor consider speed figures important? Of course they are, but they are only one component of an infinate puzzle that handicapping horse races is.

Using your puzzle example I would say that speed figs are a very important piece in the real 1000 piece puzzle that is handicapping. Meanwhile, the dosage index is a piece in a one of those 8-piece childrens' puzzles that has nothing at all to do with solving the bigger puzzle.

The dosage is basically a point ratio - of speed points versus stamina points - and it relys only on the most prominant names of stallions through the pedigree.

In my opinion, it's nothing than a simple one glance guide, assigning a naked number to rate the speed versus stamina of pedigree - many of the ratings are tremendously flawed - and anyone with even the most moderate understanding of a pedigree could make a better judgement than the dosage number.

I look at thousands and thousands of pedigrees every year - and I can honestly say not once recently have I bothered to look at a dosage.

Understand...but isn't a tool underutilized by the masses what creates an overlay? I'm not going to tell you I look at Dosage Indexes often, but pedigree analysis is a legitimate factor and DI's can often point you in the right direction, same as Tomlinson's or other figures created to place a numerical value on a horse's suitability to specific distances/surfaces. As discussed, most here don't need Dr.Roman to tell them AP Indy's are more inclined to handle routes or Lee Tomlinsin to tell you Danehill's are good on the turf, but when you are dealing with more obscure first generation sires, I think their work is helpful.

I think for the few horses out there that have older sires and broodmare sires that have already been categorized as chef-de-races they could be used as a tool. That is an extremely small percent though and way too many people that use them try and apply them to everyone. It would be like if Beyer figures were only useful at 7 furlongs on cushion track yet everyone used them for all distances on all surfaces.